With new land reform law, Namibia hopes to avoid Zimbabwe-style trouble

John Grobler

Sunday, May 21, 2000 | 11:01 a.m.

WINDHOEK, Namibia - Legislators here are debating a new land reform law that attempts to pre-empt calls for seizure of Namibia's 6,000 commercial farms by speeding up land redistribution.

The Commercial Land Reform Bill would give government first dibs on every farm offered for sale and tax private farmland that's not fully used.

The government hopes the new tax would convince absentee landowners, many of them foreigners who use their farms only for occasional hunting trips, to sell their land.

The bill is an attempt to appease hardline members of the ruling party, who in the wake of Zimbabwean black squatters' occupations of white-owned farms have argued that the Namibian government should grab land without paying compensation.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has called the occupations of more than 1,200 white-owned farms in his country a justified protest against unfair land ownership that resulted from colonialism.

Two-thirds of Namibia's population live on communal land, most of them eking out a living as subsistence farmers. The communal land comprises about two-fifths of Namibia's fertile land, with commercial farms occupying the same amount of space.

The Namibian Agricultural Union, which represents about 4,000 white commercial farmers, estimates that 70 percent of commercial farms are owned by whites. The government has no figures on racial ownership of land.

About 50,000 of Namibia's population of 1.7 million are white. Blacks have been allowed to buy commercial land only since independence from South Africa in 1979.

In his state-of-the-nation address last month, President Sam Nujoma dismissed fears that the Zimbabwe's land crisis could spread to Namibia.

Nujoma, a close political ally of Mugabe, stressed that Namibia's constitutionally enshrined bill of rights guarantees Namibians private ownership, regardless of ethnicity.

However, if the new land reform bill should not make enough farms available, the government could invoke a constitutional clause allowing the state to expropriate commercial land, said Hifekepunye Pohamba, secretary-general of the ruling South West African People's Organization party.

The government needs 170 million acres to resettle 243,000 landless Namibians, said Mukwaita Shanyengana, the government's director of resettlement and rehabilitation.

Gert Grobler, head of the Namibian Agricultural Union, says his group was generally happy with the bill, but that the process of selling a farm to the state would be too lengthy.

Selling a farm to the government took up to 18 months, making it hard for farmers wanting to retire to sell to the state, Grobler said Friday.

With the redistribution of commercial farms progressing slowly - the government at present only buys 40 to 60 farms a year - pressure has grown to also redistribute communal land to give its residents ownership if the land.

Last week, the lower house of parliament rejected proposed reform legislation because it fails to protect against corrupt distribution of the land. Top party and government officials have illegally fenced off choice parts of communal land, hoping to gain ownership rights under new laws.