Germany will finance infrastructure development on communal land in Namibia in a bid to boost land reform, the German Minister for Development Heidemarie Wiezcorek-Zeul said in Windhoek on Thursday.
”We will financially support initiatives on communal land to make that land more productive and develop its infrastructure,” she told reporters after meetings with President Sam Nujoma and Namibian Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba.
She said the finer details of the financial support still needed to be discussed.
”In 2005, Germany and Namibia will hold a new round of inter-governmental co-operation and the land reform issue is very important.
”Land reform will be a bigger factor in future,” she added.
Asked whether she was concerned about Namibian farmers being thrown off their land, Wiezcorek-Zeul replied that her Namibian counterpart had assured her that land reform would ”proceed in line with the Namibian Constitution and relevant laws”.
”We discussed land expropriation. The minister said again they would stick to the Constitution and laws and that no expropriations have taken place so far,” she said.
The Namibian government sent out letters in May and June to about 15 white farmers asking them to make an offer to sell their properties to the government.
The letters marked the first time that the government in Namibia led by the South West People’s Organisation party has moved to expropriate farmers under its land reform programme, but no actual expropriations have happened yet.
Namibia’s 3 800 white farmers own most of the arable land, an imbalance that the government has vowed to redress. Debate over land reform has intensified in the run-up to the November 15-16 elections. – Sapa-AFP