Govt says commercial farmers delaying land reform

The Namibian government has reportedly blamed the country's commercial farmers for the slow pace of land reform. The newspaper Republikein said on Monday that a report on land reform, presented by a government delegation visiting Germany, accused commercial farmers of offering the government small, uneconomical plots for resettlement under the willing-buyer, willing-seller policy. The report was presented by a team from the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation as part of negotiations over a new development aid package, under which Namibia has requested German financial assistance for land reform, the newspaper said. According to the ministry's report, the government has set aside N$50 million (US $6.5 million) over the next five years for the purchase of farms, and so far has resettled 30,720 people in communal and commercial farming areas, out of an estimated 243,000 landless Namibians. "Although this money is available at the moment, the trend proves that farms are being offered at a very slow pace," the newspaper quoted the report as saying. But land consultant Wolfgang Werner told IRIN the overwhelming impression was that more land was available for purchase than the government could buy. "The land reform act describes a cumbersome procedure in acquiring and allocating land. I think this slows things down, particularly as the ministry [of lands] has human resource capacity problems. Some of this talk is about deflecting those criticisms," Werner said. A total of 1,184 commercial farms have been offered by their owners to the government as first option buyer, Republikein reported. The government, however, only bought 120 farms last year, covering a total of 710,000 hectares. The target set eight years ago was to buy and redistribute 9.5 million hectares in five years. Werner said commercial farmers were "not a homogeneous bunch". The Namibian Agricultural Union, which represents around half of the estimated 4,500 commercial farmers, backed land reform and poverty alleviation for the country's formerly disadvantaged. But, "too many in the white farming community conduct their business as they did 20 years ago (before independence) and don't support land reform." However, despite agitation by Namibia's trade union movement and the youth wing of the ruling party to change the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land, "I see no indication of the relationship [between farmers and the government] worsening," Werner said. For more details visit IRIN's Webspecial on land reform in Southern Africa