One of the causes of the current debacle about land is the failure of the Government over the last 25 years to (a) develop an ideology that would inform the land reform process; (b) the neglect to develop and service rural Namibia, which led to the influx of citizens to urban centres in the hope of finding better jobs only to find that there was no provision for them there; and (c) the greed that has gripped the political and financial elites to amass land and wealth for themselves at the expense of the majority, the poor and the youth. This disastrous development planning extended to institutions of higher learning in that most students of Unam, Polytechnic, IUM and their teaching and administrative staff are in Windhoek. Added to that the number of civil servants, embassy personnel and the majority of private sector workers that live in Windhoek, thus making the prices of houses in the capital go up uncontrollably, and the government did nothing to control the situation.
City and country development planners ought to have taken a leaf from how the South African economy was planned. When South Africa became a Union in 1910, the first thing the political leaders did was to stimulate economic development in all four of its republics at the time, so that each of them got a development responsibility.
Natal was to run postal and harbour services; the Orange Free State to administer judicial services; the Transvaal became the capital centre of the state; the Cape Province the seat of the legislature. That is how the South African economy was developed and decentralized. Hence all these centres developed major airports, schools and even universities where people were employed and made a living socio-politically and culturally. If we thought through seriously what we can do to combat poverty, we would have developed some ideas about how to allow people to come and settle in Namibia to increase the size of the population by adding more citizens through a deliberate programme that would allow certain categories of immigrants to come and increase the economy, given our space and size and low population. For instance, by now Namibia would have a deliberate policy on immigration for three special categories of applicants: Afrikans, African-Americans and Germans who wish to make Namibia their home and grow the economy through carefully designed immigration initiatives with incentives for economic growth and expansion.
In the main, the current debate led ostensibly by the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) youth is not about farm land, but about urban space for human settlement. It is a fact that the state in Namibia has been too shy or slow to regulate house prices in the country generally and in Windhoek specifically. The reality that prices of houses in Windhoek compare only to Dubai in the oil-rich Saudi Arabia is an indictment of a government elected by the people. Houses in Windhoek cost more than in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Developers and real estate entrepreneurs charge poor Namibians an arm and a leg for just basic houses. The background to this unfair state of affairs is understandable but could have been corrected for the sake of peace and stability. The greed amongst house owners started with UNTAG in 1989, when the United Nations came to supervise the first democratic elections here. Understandably, prices for accommodation went up uncontrollably as foreign missions had to pay these prices for the months they were in the country. House owners made a killing with rent and house sales. That situation was never corrected after independence. The state failed to intervene and normalize the property market, and the situation went from being abnormal to ridiculous! Greed overtook the passion for development and the common good. Municipal controllers began to sell plots and encouraged the buyers to build upon these plots properties that became four times the value of the plots. Human greed escalated even further as more people bought plots for unscrupulous rent.
Banks joined in to make huge profits through property bonds and borrowings. Capitalism such as it is co-opted members of the top political elite by giving farms for free or at disgraceful discount for political gain. The black political elites became part of the plot and sold their newly acquired land for a kill and got into bed with classic exploiters.
It is no coincidence that there is hardly a state minister without at least one farm! Most of these are unproductive farms! The new owners can obviously not regulate in the furtherance of the common good as they stand to gain from the ongoing exploitation of the masses! ‘Greed is good! Greed works’, said Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street. And greed has no colour.
Foreign Ownership of Land: Ownership of land by non-citizens is an international reality. There will always be some land owned by foreign nationals. What is needed is proper regulation so that it is not at the expense of the voting citizens, the youth and the poor. This picture has been complicated by Angolans who moved in to buy houses with cash in US Dollars. House owners smelled blood and went for the jugular, all this at the expense of poor Namibians who could not compete with the Angolans who came, bought, rented, and vandalized and continued to live in two places. Once again, the issue here is not about everybody wanting to own a farm. It is about curbing the greed of the political elites to have and own everything and eat on behalf of others. The issue is about human dignity, affordability and the right to have a say in the spaces where they dwell and survive as human beings
The Tipping Point: Like in all situations of real change, something must have happened to spark the fire. Let us trace this story a bit further: First, in the course of 2012, there was great consternation and repositioning within Swapo in respect of the leadership succession, and land reform was one of the matters under discussion at the time. In this intra-party democratic process, casualties occurred along the road to November 2012. Attitudes hardened inside and outside. The results of these campaigns and ‘decampaigns’, which led to the Safari Hotel in November 2012, produced the ascendancy of Hage Geingob as next Head of State of the Republic. Voices in the Swapo Part Youth League and the Women’s Council did not coincide with the side that triumphed, and as the saying goes, the rest is history! In Afrika, unfortunately, memories from these sorts of bruises live long, very long, too long for a meaningful democracy. One can argue that the story would NOT BE the same if the outcome of the fierce succession battle in 2012 was different.
Second, in May 2012 the Swapo Party Youth League held a very significant Policy Conference at which the vexing issue of land was deliberated. Resolutions on this matter were given to the mother party, Swapo, which held its own Policy Conference in September 2012. This conference had a land committee that discussed the land issue generally and the views from the youth league. Understandably, the succession battle took up more of the mother party’s time, so that the land issue was not tackled to the satisfaction of many and the Young Turks.
Following the Elective Congress in November 2012, members of the youth league took to social media to question the pace of land reform and expressed critical views on the access of the financial elite to State House.
Thirdly, these developments coincided with the widely reported matter of the ‘struggle kids’, which depicted the country’s leadership as indifferent, or even divided. This particular debate assumed a generational dimension, and this irked the old guard who felt disrespected. It is understandable that the old guard in the party and outside either cannot appreciate the language of the youth which is discovering its own mission, or feels irritated at the slightest provocation such that they would rather risk to banish the youth and in so doing forfeit the lever to discipline and mould the young to bring them into line. The higher risk for the leadership here is by chasing the Young Turks away, they set them free to regroup. The youth have nothing to lose, and they have the energy and time to become even more cantankerous. This is the phenomenon that led to the circus in South African politics now when the ruling ANC had a knee jerk reaction to expel its radical youth under Julius Malema.
Fourth, the Namibian urban youth’s frustration that led to the temporary ‘occupation’ of plots in Kleine Kuppe in 2014 was what appeared to be the hubris on the part of the political leadership to a number of issues important to the youth. Importantly, the political leadership ran the risk of either appearing to condone or tacitly approve the distribution of land amongst the so-called special people in the high echelons of the ruling party itself. Prior to the announcement that the mayor of Windhoek had acquired land, there were several reports of ministerial personages in the party and connected tenderpreneurs acquiring land and wealth throughout the country, without regard to the poor and the unemployed youth.
To all intents and purposes, the tipping point was the management of the politics of succession in the ruling party, which has a generational character, thus manifesting itself in the cracks that are likely to widen following the expulsion of the Young Turks who now have more time and space on their hands. Let us hope that their frustration will not push them over the edge to galvanize a following that can easily go beyond the current ’land debacle’. If this happens, then the politics, unfortunately, of US versus THEM which acquired a land flavour for now, is likely to assume generational appetites in the new battle for the soul of Swapo.
The recent celebration of a land deal reached between the President and ‘Affirmative Repositioners’ is premature. In the first instance it cannot be a good tale that the Government ignored the intercessions of the AR till one week before the deadline of 31 July 2015, set by the youth as the Day of Reckoning. It matters not where one sits. The truth is that AR won this round squarely by forcing the Government to be flatfooted. AR then began to set the agenda as we see things unfolding. This is dangerous for a stable state of affairs. Secondly, one would have liked to see the Government take the lead by managing emotions with constitutional and state power, and not react to the youth who threatened to cause moeilikheid. Thirdly, one get weary to notice that the Presidency and the party are in not acting in unison on this matter, which can only spell gloom for the future.
The deal was in all fairness a pyrrhic victory for both the President and the AR. Where the President has to be commended is that he stepped forward and prevented what would have been a Marikana in Namibia on 31 July 2015. Our law enforcement formations do not have the mindset, the readiness and the wherewithal for what was going to happen without brute force. We certainly have not heard the last word on this matter.
(In the next Dictum, I shall expand on the way forward and delineate the responsibilities of the State on the one hand, and AR on the other, to prevent disaster and protect Namibia’s sacred peace and stability.)