Hage plays ball
During his State of the Nation Address (SONA) on Wednesday, President Hage Geingob took the proverbial bull by the horns and upped the tempo on the unfolding land debate, by announcing that the country's second land conference will be taking place in the first week of October.
Geingob shelved the controversial Land Bill in February 2017 amid growing tensions over the ancestral land issue, while saying more consultation was needed, and that the tabling of the bill would take place after the second national land conference, which was initially slated for September that year.
The country's first land conference in 1991 had effectively dodged the ancestral land issue under the pretext that there were too many overlapping and counter-claims for ancestral land. But the scars and emotions around colonial land dispossession remain raw.
While addressing the “vexing, complex and emotive matter” of land, Geingob said during his SONA that the second land conference would discuss ancestral land restitution.
Also on the agenda would be the willing buyer, willing seller principle; expropriation in the public interest with just compensation, as provided for in the constitution; urban land reform and resettlement criteria; and the veterinary cordon fence.
Geingob's pronouncements around expropriation with compensation comes amid fears that Namibia would follow the Zimbabwean route, as well as a recent parliamentary motion in South Africa, which is expected to lead to expropriation without compensation in that country.
What the president has effectively done is to play the ball back into the court of those who would have used the ancestral land issue, as well as the unfolding debate around expropriation and other methods to speed up land distribution, including access to urban land, as political cannon fodder during next year's general elections.
It will now be up to the Landless People's Movement, the Affirmative Repositioning firebrands and others to come prepared in October to lay out their plans for scrutiny.
The land conference also promises a new dawn for consensus politics and solutions and blowhards and political posturers should beware.
The politicisation of the land issue is something that should never be welcomed and there should be no attempted political point-scoring.
Cool and calm heads need to confront and unpack this conundrum, in their interest of all.
Geingob shelved the controversial Land Bill in February 2017 amid growing tensions over the ancestral land issue, while saying more consultation was needed, and that the tabling of the bill would take place after the second national land conference, which was initially slated for September that year.
The country's first land conference in 1991 had effectively dodged the ancestral land issue under the pretext that there were too many overlapping and counter-claims for ancestral land. But the scars and emotions around colonial land dispossession remain raw.
While addressing the “vexing, complex and emotive matter” of land, Geingob said during his SONA that the second land conference would discuss ancestral land restitution.
Also on the agenda would be the willing buyer, willing seller principle; expropriation in the public interest with just compensation, as provided for in the constitution; urban land reform and resettlement criteria; and the veterinary cordon fence.
Geingob's pronouncements around expropriation with compensation comes amid fears that Namibia would follow the Zimbabwean route, as well as a recent parliamentary motion in South Africa, which is expected to lead to expropriation without compensation in that country.
What the president has effectively done is to play the ball back into the court of those who would have used the ancestral land issue, as well as the unfolding debate around expropriation and other methods to speed up land distribution, including access to urban land, as political cannon fodder during next year's general elections.
It will now be up to the Landless People's Movement, the Affirmative Repositioning firebrands and others to come prepared in October to lay out their plans for scrutiny.
The land conference also promises a new dawn for consensus politics and solutions and blowhards and political posturers should beware.
The politicisation of the land issue is something that should never be welcomed and there should be no attempted political point-scoring.
Cool and calm heads need to confront and unpack this conundrum, in their interest of all.
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