In the twelve years since Namibia became independent, the land issue has been prominent in discussions of post-colonial reconciliation. Many Namibians point to the fact that the war for national liberation was fought because of land. They also remember the very recent (throughout much of the last 100 years) process of colonial dispossession which removed indigenous peoples from their lands to create farms for successive waves of first German and later South African settlers. This situation has been succinctly captured by Mbaya:
"(Colonial) Resettlement often equated to dispossession, ultimately resulting in present day skewed distribution of land between indigenous communities and white settler holdings. It was primarily this skewed nature of ownership of, control over, and access to natural resources, together with accompanying injustices and legislative oppressions that, in most countries, led to political insurgence, sometimes accompanied by armed struggle.
The impact of colonialism in ESA2 countries went beyond causing inequity with respect to the distribution of land. In addition to retarding indigenous agricultural systems and technologies of production, social organisations that were always based and dependent upon the control of land were severely weakened and in some cases extinguished. This had the effect of plunging African agrarian systems into perpetual crisis around the issue of land, its distribution, control use and transmissibility over the last century."
As such land, particularly the redistribution of land to those who were prevented from owning or occupying land in the colonial past, has simmered through political debates since 1990. As a backdrop to this in-country discourse, events in Zimbabwe, and closer to home in post-apartheid South Africa, have sharpened the urgency for Namibians to see progress. Since 1990 land acquisition and redistribution has rested on the foundation of willing seller-willing buyer. This base has been continually reinforced both in a series of speeches by high-ranking state leaders and in numerous policy documents. While willing seller-willing buyer has created a sense of stability in the land markets, and earned a few kudos from the international community, it places a great faith in the land market to supply enough land to meet the demands of Namibia's newly enfranchised post-independence majority.
Whether or not that faith is redeemed could depend on three factors. The first is impatience. Impatience over the slow pace of land redistribution over the past twenty years has contributed to the situation in Zimbabwe. Recently, there have been calls in South Africa to follow the Zimbabwe lead with regard to farm invasions and forced acquisition of commercial farms, as the perception in certain segments of the South African polity is that land reform is going too slowly.3
At home in Namibia during the past year the main opposition political coalition (DTA/UDF) has criticized the slow pace of land reform. More recently, the ruling party SWAPO at its Congress in 2002 also decried the slow pace of land redistribution. These criticisms have reached even into the Parliament. A second factor is that much of the land dispossession in Namibia took place within the past century. The subsequent indignity of dispossession coupled with the destruction of indigenous agriculture is very much alive in popular memory. Aside from the strength of these recent emotions, some would also argue that if was legitimate to take land away from certain classes of Namibians in the not so distant past, why then is it not legitimate to do so again today? Third is the fact that those who were dispossessed are now the enfranchised majority, and they are just beginning to experience the strength of their political power. Under the right circumstances, these three factors could combine into a force too strong for any sitting government to challenge.
With these factors and pressures in mind, the Land Programme at the University of Namibia has undertaken a census of commercial farmland transactions. This project was carried out in conjunction with the Land Tenure Centre of the University of Wisconsin. In this project, national teams from the University of Natal, the University of Zimbabwe, and the University of Namibia conducted censuses on different aspects of the land market in each of their respective countries.4 The results of that census for Namibia are presented here. These results will include:
- an overall picture of the land market;
- the rates at which blacks5 have been able to participate in the land market;
- the question of gender and commercial farmland;
- the transfer of farms to corporate ownership.
Footnotes:
- Eastern and Southern African (ESA) countries.
- See Secombe, 2001. Various news reports have also indicated the beginning of land invasions in South Africa, though on a limited scale.
- The title of this project was "Broadening Access to Land Markets in Southern Africa." Funds between 1997 and 2001 were provided by USAID through the Basis Initiative and the Land tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin. All opinions expresses here are those of the authors and not USAID, the Basis Project, nor the University of Wisconsin. We accept any responsibility for errors and omissions.
- In this paper, whites will refer to those classified as such during the apartheid era. Black will refer to the other two apartheid era categories of "Coloured and Black." In some reports these categories are also referred to as "formerly advantaged" and "formerly dis-advantaged" respectively.
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