Windhoek

Namibians began a second and final day of voting on Tuesday to elect a new president and Parliament in a poll widely expected to return the country’s ruling Swapo party to power. More than 1 160 polling stations across the country opened for about 950 000 registered voters on Monday.

Tucked between Fidel Castro Street and Robert Mugabe Avenue in Namibia’s capital of Windhoek lies Sam Nujoma Drive, named after the southern African country’s outgoing president and independence hero. He may be stepping down in four months after a third term as Namibia’s founding president, but there is little doubt that Sam Nujoma will continue to wield power in the arid southern African country.

A senior government official offered Germany’s first apology on Saturday for a colonial-era crackdown that killed 65 000 ethnic Hereros — a slaughter she acknowledged amounted to genocide. ”The atrocities committed at that time would have been termed genocide,” said Germany’s development aid minister.

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.

Namibia is fine-tuning a policy to empower blacks which will benefit the middle class and not ”a few black fat cats”, Prime Minister Theo Ben Gurirab said on Wednesday. Speaking at a meeting organised by the mainly black Namibia Economic Society, Gurirab said his office was holding consultations on a proposed black economic empowerment (BEE) programme.

Namibia is bringing in new regulations to force supermarket chains and other importers, most of which are South African-owned, to buy local fruit and vegetables, the government said on Tuesday. From October 1, wholesalers and importers of fruit and vegetables will have to buy three percent of their supplies from Namibian farmers, said the Namibia Agronomic Board.

Namibia’s white farmers are increasingly concerned about their future after President Sam Nujoma’s government began targeting a second group of farms for expropriation under its land reform programme. A second batch of letters was sent to white farmers last week, on the heels of a first bunch in early May, notifying farm owners to set a price for the sale of their land to the State.

Namibian President Sam Nujoma on Wednesday slammed ”racist” white farmers who have claimed the government’s land reform programme lacks transparency and threatened to punish anyone who evicted black workers. Nujoma took a swipe at a farmers’ support group which recently said the farm expropriation process was not transparent because the lands ministry did not define the criteria.

Hifikepunye Pohamba, the candidate favoured by President Sam Nujoma as his successor, was chosen by the country’s ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) party to be its candidate in elections later this year, party officials said on Sunday.

Namibia’s ruling party Swapo began the most important meetings in its history to pick a successor to President Sam Nujoma, who has been the dominant political figure in the southern African country for five decades. The candidate chosen by the congress will most likely become the country’s next president.

Namibian President Sam Nujoma fired his foreign minister and deputy foreign minister late on Monday ahead of a ruling party congress where Nujoma’s successor will be elected, the state broadcaster reported. No reasons were given. Hamutenya was given the foreign affairs portfolio during a surprise cabinet reshuffle in August 2002.

Leaders of a commercial farmers’ organisation in Namibia were meeting on Tuesday to discuss a response after the government last week handed out its first expropriation notices to white farmers. The letters urged farmers to ”make an offer to sell their property to the state and to enter into further negotiations in that regard”. The farmers were given 14 days to respond.

Brushing off fears of Zimbabwe-style farm invasions, President Sam Nujoma assured Namibians on Wednesday that the government’s land expropriation programme would be conducted in a legal manner. ”Any concerns about land reform should be laid to rest,” Nujoma said in his last state of the nation address before retiring.

Namibian government officials were surprised to learn that American pop star Michael Jackson would not be arriving on Friday as they had thought. An American organisation claiming to represent Jackson, St Louis-based Adventure in Africa Tours, had sent a letter to President Sam Nujoma saying the singer planned to visit Namibia as part of a 12-day African cultural tour.

Namibian President Sam Nujoma says he might run for a fourth term in office, but only ”if requested by the people”. Namibia’s Constitution was amended to allow Nujoma to serve a third term in 1999, but the veteran politician has repeatedly insisted he does not want a fourth.

The Namibian government announced on Wednesday that it will expropriate a select number of white-owned farms to accelerate its efforts at redistributing property to landless blacks. ”Our young nation still struggles to bring about balance and undo the effects of the unjust land redistribution,” said Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab.