Farm resettlement frowned upon

Yanna Smith
Residents of Maltahöhe have expressed anger at their systematic exclusion from land allocation, claiming that marginalisation is institutionalised.

In a petition handed over to the Daweb Constituency Councillor, Hercules Jantze, residents of Maltahöhe and the Uibes communal area last week argued that rising poverty in the South is linked to increased landlessness.

They argued in the petition that the massive loss of land of their forefathers today resulted in loss of the productive systems of the Nama people, reducing them to cheap labourers.

The residents further accused government of having failed to implement a key resolution of the first national land conference in 1991, which is to use legal means to expropriate farms of absentee landlords.

“The government has not displayed political will to act on this resolution,” Maltahöhe residents claim.

According to them the resettlement programme has created a pool of apartheid-like reserves, which are overcrowded, overgrazed and lack basic infrastructure required for productive farming.

“When considering the number of people resettled against the carrying capacity of land the units allocated are economically unproductive.”

They further criticised the land reform programme, which they say was not pro-poor as it does not address poverty.

They maintained that pastoral communities within the former police zones were most affected by the colonial land dispossession and lost almost their entire land during the German and South African colonial era.

“Government is resettling people who were never unsettled at the expense of those of us who lost land through war and genocide. We do not understand how government understands the word resettlement.”

The petitioners further maintained that resettlement programmes show no meaningful respect for the traditional political, socio-economic and cultural role of chiefs and traditional authorities. “Rather it dictates to the chiefs.”











FRED GOEIEMAN

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Namibian Sun 2024-03-29

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