people stay here, and the annual "Marterpfahl" (literally ) angling festival between Christmas and New Year's Eve lures several thousand visitors to the sleepy village. Wlotzkasbaken is not electrified and not connected to the public water system. Water is delivered by road and stored in private water towers that characterise the settlement's skyline. It consists of 106 houses which are all designed and built by their owners. Every house is self-sustaining with regards to water and electricity. Privacy of the holiday parcels is achieved by the large distance between the houses. There are no walls or fences anywhere; boundaries are demarcated with rocks. The village thus features a unique form of settlement in Namibia and has even received some international attention. Close to the village Namibia's first desalination plant was opened in April 2010. The plant supplies water to the Trekkopje uranium mine 65 km north-east of Swakopmund which will be Southern Africa's largest uranium mine when it reaches full production capacity in 2013. Land dispute Originally, land parcels in Wlotzkasbaken were leased for 99 years. The contracts were later changed several times with the lease period reduced to at first ten years, and in 1972, along with the proclamation as peri-urban area, to only one. Plans to develop the area into a holiday town and prime tourist destination comprising 2,800 separate properties led to a multitude of lawsuits between the Wlotzkasbaken Home Owners Association and the Erongo Regional Council. An agreement was reached in 2000 to expand the amount of erven to 248, giving the existing lessees the option to buy the piece of land they had rented before and built houses on. An attempt to change the conditions of this agreement went to the Namibian Supreme Court and was decided in favour of the owners. History and structure of the settlement—most prominently the situation that its last expansion occurred before Namibian independence and the abolishment of apartheid—have led to accusations that the community of Wlotzkasbaken intentionally keeps Blacks out of their holiday village. On the other hand, Government has been accused to plan the distribution of 28 seafront properties to high-ranking Government officials, and to deliberately destroy the unique character of the settlement. The homogenous character of the village and its special community rules have also evoked some mockery; the place is called the "Free Republic of Wlotzkasbaken" in jest. References Populated places in the Erongo Region Populated