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Home / Land – it all started in 1991… Calls intensify for second land conference
Land – it all started in 1991… Calls intensify for second land conference
2014-11-14Mathias Haufiku WINDHOEK – The decision to not deliberate on the issue of residential land at the landmark 1991 Namibian land conference has seemingly come back to haunt the country, amidst threats of national protests by young people over the issue of urban land. Tension around urban land has already claimed its first victims this week, when the ruling party, Swapo, suspended three land activists from its youth wing on Wednesday night. The three – Job Amupanda, Dimbulukweni Nauyoma and George Kambala - had illegally demarcated pieces of land in the upmarket suburb of Klein Kuppe last Sunday. They are suspended from the activities of the ruling party, pending a disciplinary hearing. Policy analysts this week said one of the sources of the current discontent over land was failure by the 1991 land conference to discuss urban land. The conference only dealt with issues of farmland. Documents from that conference, re-visited by New Era this week, have no traces of any discussion on urban land. All 24 recommendations of that conference focused on farmland related matters only, such as foreign ownership of land in Namibia, ancestral land rights, absentee landlords, farm sizes and numbers, land tenure and grazing rights, amongst others. Incumbent Press Secretary at State House, Mukwaita Shanyengana, who was at the time of the conference the director of the resettlement and rehabilitation in the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, said deliberations on urban land and regulation of housing prices did not take place due to ‘ignorance’ on the part of the delegates. “I guess the issue of urban land was not discussed because of ignorance on our part, or maybe the whites were just smart enough to avoid the topic,” the presidency’s pressman said. “Today we have a problem because we have no guidelines on the administration of urban land, therefore everyone does as they please.” There have been calls for a second land conference, an idea that Shanyengana concurs with. Government has been working hard when it comes to its land acquisition programme, having spent N$853 million since independence to acquire 2.5 million hectares of land. Figures from the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement indicate that from now to 2020 government still needs to acquire another 2.5 million hectares to meet its target of 5 million hectares. So far 5008 families have been resettled onto the acquired farm land. Although the conference resolved that foreigners should not be allowed to buy land in Namibia, there were instances of foreign billionaires buying huge tracts of land in the country. “The conference resolves that foreigners should not be allowed to own farmland, but should be given the right to use and develop it on a leasehold basis in accordance with Namibia’s open door policy towards foreign investment,” reads a resolution from the 1991 conference. Amidst this resolution, foreigners continue to bombard Namibia on a land shopping spree. Just recently local media reported that a Russian businessman bought farms in Namibia amounting to 28 000 hectares. It was also recently reported how the Windhoek municipality has given the green light to a Switzerland-based company owned by Italians to buy prime land in the city for over N$60 million. Meanwhile, media commentator, Professor Nico Horn, like many others, spoke of the need of a second land conference because land reform is not working. “I am in favour of a new land conference for several reasons: Land reform is not working. Not only is it very slow, but most of the expropriated farms are in a mess and it is not only the fault of the farmers. They do not get ownership - which means they cannot use the land as security; many of the new farmers are career civil servants who visit the farm once a month; government does not have a support programme for the new farmers,” said Horn, a professor of law at the University of Namibia. He also feels that not much could have been done to push for the return of land stolen from Namibians during colonial occupation. “Two important decisions were made [at the land conference]. First, Namibia was not going to allow land claims. But think of all the land lost during apartheid and colonialism, think of the genocide of 1904, the consolidation programme of the Odendaal Plan, land sold or exchanged by traditional leaders and apartheid expropriations,” Horn remarked. In a 2012 interview with international television network, Al Jazeera, President Hifikepunye Pohamba warned of a potential land revolution if the current status quo persists. “Since people have no land they have no means of production. We need to amend the constitution otherwise we will face a revolution, and if it happens land will be taken over by the revolutionaries,” the President warned at the time. By Mathias Haufiku 2014-11-14Mathias Haufiku
