WINDHOEK – National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) MP and president, Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako, says the government has failed to prioritise and to address and resolve the land question satisfactorily.
Riruako said this last week during his contribution to the national budget debate in parliament. “The land question is one issue which defined the urge for resistance to foreign invasion and settlement from the early days of colonisation, and consequently spurred the burning desire for decolonisation over a period of more than a hundred years,” he said.
Moreover, the paramount chief says the current resettlement programme of the government does not address the real issues facing those Namibians who physically lost their land. “In Namibia, we have two groups of landless people, one group is those who need land because of overcrowding in their respective ancestral lands, the group that has never lost land because of colonialism and the second group is the one consisting of those landless people who lost their land as a result of the brutal colonial and apartheid system of yesteryears,” chief Riruako said.
“To my understanding when implementing the resettlement programme priority should be given to the second group of landless,” he said. According to the chief the government has systematically marginalised the rural areas insofar as development is concerned.
“The disparities between the urban and rural areas continue to widen in terms of both economic and social indicators. The rural areas are characterized by high levels of poverty, unemployment and poor quality services,” he charged. Riruako further proposed that communal lands should resort under what he termed common property ownership, such as land user associations, trusts and/or traditional authorities. According to him the acquisition of land by the government should support a well defined objective otherwise it serves no purpose at all. “It is no longer a secret that with the current land prices and lending rates it is a question of time before Affirmative Action Loan Scheme beneficiaries’ farms are reposessed. Production from the land will by no means enable emerging farmers to service their loans and make a decent living,” he said. He further said he will continue to advocate for land prices to be based on the optimal production value of the land. Riruako say land has a variety of socio-economic political and cultural meanings for the people of Namibia, therefore, the land reform process should be specific in its intent and have differentiated purposes such as resettlement and others. He further condemned the division of communal land in portions of 20 hectares, saying it is not a answer to the outcry over land. He called on the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement to embark on serious consultations and to bring back the existing laws on the land to parliament for serious review.
By Kuzeeko Tjitemisa