Government resettles landless

The Namibian government has resettled more than 34,000 landless people over the past 10 years through its resettlement programme, news reports said on Monday.

The reports said 27,200 people have been resettled on commercial farming land and 7,200 were resettled on communal land since Namibia gained independence from South African in 1990. About 243,000 people, however, still need to be resettled, for which the government requires 686 million hectares, added the reports.

The government of Sam Nujoma plans to start expropriating land from white farmers to redistribute to landless Namibians, said the reports. The majority of white farmers, who own about 44 percent of land in Namibia, have held on to the land by not offering the farms for sale to the government or have inflated the prices, added the reports.