POLITICS-NAMIBIA: Clear Criteria Needed For Expropriations – Farmers

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rosemary Nalisa

WINDHOEK, Feb 27 2004 (IPS) - An umbrella group for Namibian commercial farmers, the Namibia Agricultural Union, says the announcement that farm expropriations will take place in the country has sent has sent shock waves through its agricultural community.

“It is shocking, just like death which is always inevitable but people get shocked, frustrated and disorientated when it occurs in a family. It is the same (as) this news: it causes sorrow and disturbances in the farming community,” said the union’s President, Jan de Wet

On Wednesday (Feb. 25), Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab said on state television that a number of white-owned farms would be expropriated to accelerate the process of land reform.

This was because the existing policy of “willing seller, willing buyer” was not delivering results. “The process has become too slow because of arbitrarily inflated land prices and unavailability of productive land,” observed Gurirab.

Like other countries in the region, Namibia is saddled with racial imbalances in land ownership that date back to the colonial era.

Fourteen years after independence, more than 240,000 people are still in need of land. The Namibian Parliament last year passed a land reform act allowing government to acquire properties in the public interest, with the payment of just compensation.

Although the Prime Minister did not say which land would be expropriated, it is believed that farms belonging to absentee landlords are likely targets.

De Wet called on the government to make clear the criteria that would be used to select properties, as the current situation was creating uncertainty that could spill into unrest.

“The situation also affects the surety of the farms, because financial institutions now regard them as risky investments, and farmers might in future have to struggle to get loans from banks. The question is: are we going the Zimbabwe way?”

At the start of 2000, Zimbabwe embarked on a violent land reform programme that has seen about 4,000 white-owned farms confiscated. A number of black peasant farmers have been resettled on the seized properties. However, several choice farms are also reported to have been taken over by government officials.

Discontent over land ownership in Namibia has been stirred up in recent months by the dismissal of certain farm workers who have stayed on the properties concerned for decades.

The layoffs have led to clashes between farm owners and unions, and angered the government.

“Committed to seeing the ‘willing buyer, willing seller’ approach (work), the government has witnessed with dismay and outrage how farm workers are left destitute and dumped with their families and belongings on the roadsides by their employers,” said Gurirab.

The Secretary-General of the Namibia Farm Workers Union, Alfred Angula, welcomed the government’s announcement – and highlighted the need for further reforms in the farming sector.

“Farmers need to realise that they do not pay pension or any other compensation to their workers who sometimes work on such farms for decades, and when they become old they want to evict them and make it the government’s problem,” he said.

Late last year, Angula’s union called for farm occupations in those areas where the evictions were taking place.

Gurirab has cautioned both land owners and the landless to cooperate with government and refrain from engaging in unlawful action during the implementation of the redistribution process. He says the “willing seller, willing buyer” policy will continue alongside expropriations.

Various opposition parties have described Gurirab’s announcement as a ploy to gain favour for the government ahead of presidential elections scheduled for December this year, when President Sam Nujoma is expected to step down.