Elite stranglehold on land

The ancestral land commission has revealed that 6 000 whites own 70% of the country's commercial land, while 97.4% of black people only have access to 30% of these lucrative tracts.According to commission chairman Judge Shafimana Ueitele, people who had occupied the central and southern parts of the country, in particular the San, the Damara, ?Nukhoen, Nama and Ovaherero, were the most affected by colonial land dispossession, and lost most if not all their ancestral land. He added that ancestral land claims and restitution is provided for in the Namibian constitution, if broadly interpreted along with international law. The commission found that the San had been the most affected by colonial dispossession and remain socially marginalised and economically excluded, even on resettlement farms acquired specifically for them.“We had a hearing in the Omaheke Region at the Skoonheid farm, which is 7 000 hectares. But the San community that are resettled on that farm are confined on 2 500 hectares and the rest of the 5 000 hectares are occupied by other people,” Ueitele said. He added that some resettled San communities have also fallen victim to powerful individuals who encroach onto resettlement farms. The commission also recommended that a clear policy of national reconciliation, which narrates the true history of Namibia, written by communities themselves, be made a priority. “In the process we engaged historical experts and what we discovered is the most historical narratives are written from the mouths of white persons, and most of these narratives were either very disrespectful to the majority of blacks, and there were a lot of inconsistencies and disparities of historical events,” he said. The ancestral land commission was appointed by President Hage Geingob in February this year, following a resolution take by the country's second land conference in October last year. Ueitele presented the commission's draft report to Geingob yesterday.“The Namibian constitution does not explicitly make provisions for claims of ancestral land rights and restitution, but from legal studies commissioned by the commission, we established if the constitutional provisions are interpreted broadly, and in a purposive manner, claims of ancestral land rights and restitution can be founded on our constitutional values. “We also found that colonialism stripped people of their dignity and cultural rights and other fundamental rights, and cannot be ignored, and requires urgent systematic redress that involves the affected communities and those previously disadvantaged,” Ueitele said, reading from the report.“In the context of international law, the term reparation is used in a wide sense to refer to all those measures, which include restitution, compensation and satisfaction, which may be employed to redress the various types of harms victims may have suffered as consequence of certain crimes.”Ueitele said there were also claims of land losses in the period after independence, which came about through the proclamation of towns.He said the biggest cry over ancestral is about the nature of compensation, as well as a lack of a study about consequences of urbanisation.The commission recommended that ancestral land be defined as land occupied and utilised by a given community, and lost by that community through colonial land dispossession and other forms of alienation in both the pre- and post-colonial eras. It also recommend that ancestral land right in the Namibian context be defined as rights claimed by the descendants to the land that was occupied and utilised by their forebears.The commission also proposed that ancestral restitution be defined as actions or means to restore, directly or indirectly, rights to ancestral land. It also recommended that restitution, redistribution and security of land tenure be recognised as key principles of land reform. “On the issue of land tenure, we recommend that legislation that is intended to restore and secure tenure rights of dispossessed indigenous Namibians, particularly farm labourers and generational farmworkers, be introduced,” Ueitele said. Skewed land reformUeitele pointed out that despite land reform policies adopted by government, land distribution in the country has remained skewed largely in favour of the white minority, which largely benefited from the racially based policies of the apartheid era.The commission further pointed out that given the finite nature of land and limited water resources in the light of climate change, technology and access markets are seen as limitation to land access, in general. “We say these limitations should not be used as a pretext to deny the majority of communities, who continue to face systematic economic exclusion, the available opportunity for land ownership access and utilisation.The commission also recommended that the land resettlement programme be reviewed, so it can lean towards community resettlement, as opposed to individual resettlement.The other members of the commission are Fanuel Kaapama, Neels Kooper, Anna Fredericks, Willem Konjore, Ryno van der Merwe, Inge Murangi, Jeaneth Kuhanga, Uhuru Dempers, Helmke von Bach, Nadia le Hane, Joseph van der Westhuizen, Professor Lazarus Hangula, Marius Kudumo and Chief Immanuel /Gaseb.jemima@namibiansun.comJEMIMA BEUKES

Elite stranglehold on land

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-14

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Elite stranglehold on land

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-14

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