Swartbooi and Vavi unite in land battle

Landless People's Movement (LPM) leader Bernadus Swartbooi, who will be one of the main speakers at a South African land expropriation rally tomorrow, says discussions have begun to form a leftist forum, encompassing Southern and East African countries, which will counter the “now corrupt former liberation movements”. In a clear signal to his former party, Swapo, Swartbooi is taking the land battle across Namibia's border on Independence Day, while saying it was appropriate for him to be in South Africa, which will be celebrating Human Rights Day, as land was a human right. Swartbooi, who was fired as deputy land reform minister following a heated public spat with his senior at the ministry, Utoni Nujoma, and was subsequently removed as an MP before resigning from Swapo, will share the stage in Johannesburg's Beyers Naudé Square with a fellow political prodigal son, Zwelinzima Vavi, who is the general secretary of the South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu). Vavi was purged from his general secretary post at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which together with the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the African National Congress (ANC) is known as the ruling tripartite alliance in the neighbouring country. Swartbooi described the former liberation movements, who are now ruling parties in their countries, as “neoliberal and corrupt entities that have joined the capture of the state to serve their own interests”. Asked what message the LPM, which aims to contest next year's general elections, has for South Africans, Swartbooi said the basic message is solidarity. “The land issue is the right issue that will bring about affirmative action in our communities. People like (British Prime Minister) Theresa May must just shut up - there is no space or place for her to try to condemn the people of South Africa that want to have a radical move away from the current land ownership structure. “She should have spoken to the president of South Africa before she made such ridiculous racist remarks while in London, while our people have no land… and land is the fundamental means of production that one needs to access, that people have been historically deprived of,” Swartbooi said. Front Nasionaal, a South African right-wing political party founded by Dan Roodt, reported that May had threatened sanctions against South Africa should land be expropriated without compensation, following the ANC's recent support of a National Assembly motion brought by Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema on the issue. No further confirmation of this report could be found on any British media house website. The South African parliament recently adopted the motion seeking to change the constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation. “So we are here to show solidarity and to say that if the international community cannot play a constructive role, they just shut up and stay outside of the issues that are important for Africans to reassert their rights, in part because the constitution allows it, but also because it is a human rights issue and that land dispossession cannot be tolerated even under the guise to protect the constitution,” said Swartbooi, who will also caucus with leaders of the Khoisan Movement in South Africa.This comes at a time when ancestral land claims in both Namibia and South Africa is taking centre stage, and as the Khoisan battle for their first nation status in the neighbouring country. “There are things that we can whisper to our communities, to be careful not to generalise land and to ensure there is a very fair, accountable and transparent procedure. We want to share how to look at internal problems in terms of land in order to ensure as little friction as possible is caused,” Swartbooi said. He said the LPM has already begun engaging the white farming community in Namibia. “We told them last Thursday that we want to share in the land not to grab land unnecessarily. But what we want to be done as soon as possible is that government expropriates absentee landlords' land and land that belongs to the government that is just laying idle. Communities that have lost their land must enter this land and take it over. There is so much drought in the Kunene Region and other areas and our people are struggling.” The LPM also aims to reach out to the rest of the African countries and most importantly to Tanzania, where some descendants of the Nama genocide perpetrated by Germany fled to. JEMIMA BEUKES

Swartbooi and Vavi unite in land battle

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-08

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Swartbooi and Vavi unite in land battle

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Namibian Sun 2025-04-08

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