Honesty is best for Swapo
As in South Africa, where the ruling ANC has been called out on its land reform failures, Swapo potentially faces a similar grilling at the upcoming second national land conference.
It is therefore understandable why the Swapo-led government would be reluctant to release a master list of resettlement beneficiaries, and why it is withholding other documentation being clamoured for by civil society.
Having a scenario where Swapo failures - real or fashioned by its opponents - are put into the public glare is not the political mileage it would have been seeking from central government championing a second national land conference. This is especially true given that election 2019 looms large.
Be that as it may, Swapo cannot escape what has happened over the past 28 years since independence.
It has battled to properly drive the equitable redistribution land to the black majority, while the urban land crises, driven by narrow capitalist interests with regard to the obsession with having developers build at a profit, must be put glaringly under the microscope.
So too must the perception that connected individuals were favoured in the resettlement process be dealt with decisively.
As much as land is not a political football, and should not be reduced to that, the Swapo-led government should be willing to admit its cock-ups, oversights and favouritism, when it comes to enriching its elite.
Glaringly, it was revealed by the Namibia Statistics Agency revealed recently that over the past 25 years the government declined to purchase five million hectares of agricultural land offered to it by the private sector.
During that time it acquired only three million hectares of land for resettlement purposes.
The urban land crisis has been raised ad infinitum by pressure groups, whom Swapo have branded as failed politicians and the like. Also, the clamour for restitution in terms of ancestral land grows daily.
These are the realities and Swapo cannot shy away from its contribution to the state of our nation.
It is therefore understandable why the Swapo-led government would be reluctant to release a master list of resettlement beneficiaries, and why it is withholding other documentation being clamoured for by civil society.
Having a scenario where Swapo failures - real or fashioned by its opponents - are put into the public glare is not the political mileage it would have been seeking from central government championing a second national land conference. This is especially true given that election 2019 looms large.
Be that as it may, Swapo cannot escape what has happened over the past 28 years since independence.
It has battled to properly drive the equitable redistribution land to the black majority, while the urban land crises, driven by narrow capitalist interests with regard to the obsession with having developers build at a profit, must be put glaringly under the microscope.
So too must the perception that connected individuals were favoured in the resettlement process be dealt with decisively.
As much as land is not a political football, and should not be reduced to that, the Swapo-led government should be willing to admit its cock-ups, oversights and favouritism, when it comes to enriching its elite.
Glaringly, it was revealed by the Namibia Statistics Agency revealed recently that over the past 25 years the government declined to purchase five million hectares of agricultural land offered to it by the private sector.
During that time it acquired only three million hectares of land for resettlement purposes.
The urban land crisis has been raised ad infinitum by pressure groups, whom Swapo have branded as failed politicians and the like. Also, the clamour for restitution in terms of ancestral land grows daily.
These are the realities and Swapo cannot shy away from its contribution to the state of our nation.
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Namibian Sun
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