Renthia Kaimbi
Homeless people in Walvis Bay are turning to cemeteries for shelter, with some also engaging in illegal activities among the graves.
The discovery was made after Landless People’s Movement councillor Ryan Gordon investigated reports of a young homeless mother and her son living in the Narraville graveyard.
Gordon said he was alerted by residents concerned about the woman.
He later found that she had hidden her belongings inside a gravestone but had since been hospitalised fter an assault. Before moving to the cemetery, she had been living near the KFC area in town.
During his visit, Gordon also found signs of criminal activity, including a fire pit on a grave used to melt copper cables believed to have been stolen and sold to scrapyards.
“These guys all have a story to tell, but with some, you sense the criminality. One of them apparently worked at a mine, as I’m told by people who recognised him in the clip that I shared on social media,” Gordon said.
According to him, about eight people were living at the Narraville graveyard, three at the Kuisebmond cemetery, and others in bushes at Lover’s Hill near the lagoon.
He said the issue reflects a wider homelessness crisis in Walvis Bay, which faces a housing backlog of 36,000 units and has more than 50,000 people living in shacks or rented rooms.
For years, many homeless people settled at the municipal landfill in makeshift shelters.
Fires often break out at the site, which the municipality suspects are deliberately started by scavengers. The municipality has now engaged legal services to evict people from the landfill while looking for longer-term solutions.
“I tabled a motion at council that we introduce showers at all parks, where these people can take showers at a small fee. One wants to help but also not to a point where you’re actually enabling homelessness, because some of these guys have relatives in Walvis Bay but choose to live on the streets,” Gordon said.
He added that addressing the issue will require emergency shelters, better access to social services, faster housing projects, community engagement, and stronger security for vulnerable people.
“The people sleeping on tombstones represent the most visible manifestation of a systemic problem that has been developing for years, one that will require concerted effort and community will to resolve,” he said.
Three weeks ago, residents of Narraville raised alarm over crime and drug abuse in their community.
At a recent meeting, they voiced frustration over police response times and said cemeteries had become sleeping places for the homeless. They linked the problem to unemployment and hardship.
Residents also complained of mistrust toward the police, saying they feared reporting drug-related cases because of alleged mistreatment by officers. They called for random searches at schools, which they claimed had become hubs for drugs.
Walvis Bay has three cemeteries.
Last year, councillors debated closing the unused cemetery in the industrial area, which was established in the early 1960s.
Remains from the old site were later moved to a location near the fishing factories. Councillor Ronald Bramwell suggested that the unused site be redeveloped for industrial purposes, as it sits on prime land.
