The first compulsory sale of a white-owned farm concluded in Namibia this week, bringing fresh impetus to the government’s land-reform programme and raising concerns among white farmers of Zimbabwean-style land seizures.
”Yes, our lawyer received a cheque for N$3,7-million, which will be paid to us as soon as the transfer is finalised,” Hilde Renate Wiese, the owner of Ongombo West, a 4 006ha farm 50km east of Windhoek, said on Friday.
The Wiese family, of German descent, have farmed Ongombo since 1904. They have requested three months to gather their belongings and move to the city.
”We have cried far too long now. We are embittered, but we have no choice and we have to make the best of it,” said Wiese.
What will become of the 12 farm workers and their 60-odd dependants, she does not know.
”We have to pay them for the years they worked for us, that is law. But where they will go, I don’t know,” she said.
”It is ironic that the people who are supposed to benefit from land reform now sit on the street as well,” she said.
In May last year, the Namibian government served the first letters requesting farmers to offer their farms for sale. So far, only two have offered to sell. Namibia is home to an estimated 4 500 mostly white commercial farmers.
The first compulsory sale has raised concerns among farmers that Namibia is facing Zimbabwe-style farm invasions. But the Namibian government has repeatedly emphasised that it will conduct land reform within the parameters of the law.
Namibia’s Constitution provides for an equitable distribution of land, but rules that such deals must involve a willing buyer and a willing seller as well as payment of fair compensation for the land.
The president of the Namibia Agricultural Union representing about half of all commercial farmers, Raimar von Hase, also believes comparisons to Zimbabwe are ill-founded.
”There is absolutely no indication that there are developments here which can remotely be compared to what happened in Zimbabwe,” he said in an interview.
He is, however, worried about labour disputes becoming the basis for compulsory sales.
”Ongombo West came into the public limelight due to a labour dispute and now it is the first farm to be forcibly purchased,” he said. ”This could look like revenge.”
The Namibian government intends purchasing 4,8-million hectares of land in the next five years to resettle 240 000 previously disadvantaged citizens.
Since independence in 1990, the former German colony and South African-administered territory has registered the resettlement of 37 000 people. — Sapa-DPA