President Hage Geingob says that if wholesale poverty is addressed, many Namibians would not be demanding to own agricultural land.
The Namibian head of state made these remarks this weekend during an interview with Qatari-based media network Al Jazeera, which covered many issues, including land and the recent oil discoveries in Namibia.
At the heart of the interview was the land question. At present, about 90% of the productive land is in the hands of previously advantaged Namibians.
“Land doesn’t immediately solve problems. President [Robert] Mugabe grabbed the land. Was it the solution? Today, land is being returned to some of the whites,” Geingob said.
According to him, the clause which protects property [including land] has hamstrung government’s efforts to redistribute land.
“It becomes very difficult under our Constitution just to grab the land [because of the property right clause],” Geingob lamented.
When asked why the clause has not been repealed, he said: “Spare us. You have to go with time. It’s true, land per se does not make you rich.”
He conceded that the government’s resettlement programme has not yielded the desired outcomes.
He continued, painting a narrative where “if everybody is in towns, they have jobs, are they going to ask for land? If they are properly employed and they have income. It’s a question of income. Poverty. If you address poverty wholesale, maybe it will help.”
All hope is not lost, he added.
“We are addressing it in a proper way, where it is also fair to those whites whom we are reconciling with,” he assured.
However, Geingob made it clear that those with the economic muscle and those owning large tracts of land must meet the government halfway.
“They must also reconcile with us at the economic level,” he stated.
Geingob further downplayed the hype around oil discoveries in Namibia that are projected to bring in billions in investments, saying “the oil is not ours”
Asked how the discovery of oil would help transform Namibia’s teetering economy, he took a wait-and-see approach.
“Firstly, it’s not our oil. Money is going to go out to those who discovered it. [But] we’ve got our royalties and so on. So, it will not be a big thing. We have gold, as you are saying. We don’t see [a] big difference. It just goes out in raw form.
Its value is added outside. Jobs are created outside and technology transfer,” he said.
Last month, the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia announced that it has discovered light oil at the Graff-1 deep-water exploration well located in the Orange Basin, some 270 kilometres away from the diamond mining town of Oranjemund, along with its partners Shell Namibia Upstream BV and Qatar
Energy. “Oil has been a curse in many countries. And since we are the last ones to get it, since we are talking with those that are involved as I have done, as equals, we hope that we are going to have a win-win situation,” the president said, adding that transparency and accountability will be key ingredients in Namibia’s oil journey. -Nampa