Former Speaker of the National Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab said despite the political will to solve the land crisis in Namibia the country is still without an obvious strategy on how to resolve it.
Pressure groups – including the Job Amupanda-led Affirmative Repositioning movement – have sprung up in recent times to advocate for better access to land.
Government, on the other hand, has shown commitment towards the land issue – but Gurirab believes there exists no clear-cut intervention strategy to resolve the perceived crisis.
President Hage Geingob has re-christened the Lands and Resettlement Ministry to Land Reform, a move seen by many as an attempt to address the land question in a more focused fashion. Amupanda and his Affirmative Repositioning co-leaders Dimbulukeni Nauyoma and George Kambala have set July 31 as the day they will mobilise the masses to occupy unoccupied land if their avalanche of demands are not met by then.
Gurirab, the country’s prime minister between 2002 and 2004, said land remains a “burning issue” which must be resolved as a matter of urgency.
“There is general consensus to revisit the land issue,” the former foreign affairs minister told New Era during an interview at his Windhoek home last week.
“But I am not quite clear on what we intend to do with this burning issue. Land is a policy issue – but are we going to buy or nationalise land? That’s what is not clear.”
“We have talked enough. Twenty-five years after independence, we must grab this animal by the horns. We’ve talked enough,” he said. It was reported last week that Amupanda is among the land applicants who received positive response from the coastal town of Henties Bay.
“Job didn’t impress me with his threats, but his pressure certainly brought some hope for the landless,” the veteran diplomat said.
“Of course we must ask some tough questions such as whether Job would really want to live in Henties Bay or if his application for land in that town was an unnecessary gimmick,” he concluded.