Activist and |Khomani Axab, Shaun Gariseb, led a group of |Khomanin people to the city's Central Business District demanding the government's action over ancestral land rights—an issue that has frustrated the community for 14 years.
According to Gariseb, the |Khomanin community has tirelessly petitioned the government, only to see little meaningful change.
The group is calling for change and urgent government intervention, adding that today's march and the petition were the final calls.
Without elaborating on what further steps it plans on taking, Gariseb said the petition represents years of struggle and lays out an ultimatum with specific demands.
One of the community's core grievances is the change in the status of two communal farms to resettlement farms.
Gariseb questioned why these farms, initially meant for communal use, were, according to him, "secretly" reclassified under resettlement criteria.
"Why is the government not being transparent with us?" he asked. "We are hearing that people are already being settled there in secrecy."
He expressed disappointment with a traditional authority he believes has betrayed the community.
"We had hoped they would help pave the way forward for our people; instead, they aligned themselves with the farmer and even sabotaged a crucial meeting."
The human toll of these land disputes is evident in the 8ste Laan informal settlement, where Gariseb claimed that 90% of residents are |Khomanin community members, many of them descendants of farm workers who once laboured on farms now owned by a controversial figure.
The |Khomanin people are also raising broader concerns about land ownership patterns, with Gariseb criticising the government for allegedly allowing individuals to control multiple farms, with one particular farmer owning as many as eight.
This farmer, he claims, has been systematically displacing and mistreating community members, destroying grazing land, and violating ancestral rights, including graves.
He also said that the |Khomanin community will be petitioning the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Indigenous Inhabitants.
Lydia Kandetu, the Secretary to parliament received the petition on behalf of the Speaker of the National Assembly, while the Deputy Executive Director for Land Management, Alfred Sikopo, was sent to receive the petition on behalf of the Minister of Land Reform Carl Schletwein who was unable to receive it due to other pressing matters.
The community however refused to hand it to Sikopo and instead handed the document to the minister's office.