Labour federation welcomes farm expropriation policy

Namibia's labour federation has called for farms with poor labour relations to be targeted for expropriation.

Welcoming the government's announcement this week that it intended expropriating land to accelerate the land reform process, the National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW) said on Friday that the land issue "continues to be a source of social tensions".

Peter Naholo, NUNW's acting general secretary, urged the government to include retrenched farm workers among the beneficiaries of the land resettlement policy, and to incorporate tenure rights for farm workers in the new Labour Amendment Bill.

"Stop the widespread retrenchments of farm workers and other workers by introducing a permanent mechanism of approval for retrenchments. Employers who want to retrench should be forced to prove that they have exhausted all other options before embarking on retrenchments," said Naholo.

NUNW has also called for heavy levies to be imposed on farm owners using productive agricultural land for game farming and lodges.

The labour federation called on the government to introduce training programmes for resettled small-scale farmers to enable them to put the land to good use.

Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab announced the new expropriation policy on state television and radio on Wednesday, but assured the country that acquisition would take place in "accordance with the Namibian constitution and the relevant legislation".

He also underlined that the government was not doing away with the "willing buyer, willing seller" approach, but the new policy, contained in an amendment to the existing Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act passed last year, would allow expropriation against "just payment".

The main farmers' body, the Namibia Agricultural Union, has reacted cautiously to the announcement.