Probe land resettlement Land reform remains a contentious issue in Namibia and it is a topic that has been hogging the headlines for the last couple of weeks, culminating with the firing of the youthful deputy minister of land reform Bernadus Swartbooi. The former //Karas regional governor got the boot after criticising his senior Utoni Nujoma over his handling of the land resettlement programme. Swartbooi has since been replaced by Priscilla Boois, formerly with the poverty eradication ministry.
There is no doubt that the land resettlement programme is mired in controversy.
In fact the resettlement policy has many loopholes and allows everyone – even the elite who can afford an Agribank loan to purchase a farm – to apply for resettlement under the guise of being previously disadvantaged.
Media revelations in the past few years have highlighted this issue, which has seen the well-off and well-connected benefiting enormously from government's resettlement programme.
The minister of land reform can deny as much as he likes that there is no favouritism when it comes to handling the resettlement programme, but how does one justify the fact that many high government and lands officials have benefited from and continue to receive land through this process by questionable means.
This seriously warrants a full-scale investigation as this corruption has been going on for long enough now. We can no longer endure sitting back with folded arms, watching the elite being “resettled” at the expense of thousands of needy and still currently disadvantaged Namibians.
It is a tragedy that after the 1991 land conference made 24 recommendations on – foreign ownership of land in Namibia, ancestral land rights and absentee landlords, among others – the authorities still find themselves struggling to implement some of these policies and recommendations.
Land reform is clearly not working.
Amidst the myriad of “challenges”, government must establish support programmes to assist emerging farmers so that they can become the owners of productive land. It is our sincere hope that the envisaged second land conference will sort out the nagging and long overdue implementation problems and other issues, and puts into practice a transparent, fair and equitable land reform process. It is way overdue!