OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Thursday
NAMIBIAN President Sam Nujoma has announced plans to repossess under-utilised commercial land to resettle thousands of landless blacks, but his government has ruled out Zimbabwe-style land grabs.
”Land that is not being effectively utilised must be repossessed by the state in accordance with the law,” Nujoma said in an address to his cabinet.
”We can only implement our poverty eradication strategy effectively if we address the issue of land,” he said, giving no details of how his government would expedite its land acquisition programme.
However, Namibian Finance Minister Nanogolo Mbumba last month ruled out Zimbabwe-style land grabs.
”Some of the best commercial lands remain in the hands of a few people… but our saving grace is that we have a small population and a big country,” he said. ”We have lots of land for the landless. We just need to develop it.”
The Namibian government’s policy, based on a willing-seller willing-buyer principle, has been criticised for being too slow. This is partly due to absentee landlords, a high average price of 250 Namibian dollars per hectare and a lack of external funding.
”It has been 10 years of waiting. It’s time to switch gears,” said Pintile Davids, acting president of the communal farmers’ body, the Namibia National Farmers’ Union.
A cabinet report released this week showed that land distribution in Namibia had not changed significantly since independence from South Africa in 1990, when 52% of the land was owned by 4000, mostly white, people.
Almost 30.5m ha of land is owned by white commercial farmers and 2.2m ha by black commercial farmers. Foreign nationals own 2.9m ha and the state 2.3m ha.
Since independence, only 92 farms of just over 500000 ha have been acquired in commercial areas for 3400 black families out of a total population of almost two million people.
The government said at the weekend that it planned to acquire a minimum of 9.5m ha of land for redistribution and resettlement over the next five years. – Reuters