Landless demand justice

One of the largest gatherings in decades at the J. Stefanus Stadium in Keetmanshoop's Tseiblaagte suburb on Saturday was said to be the beginning of a new trajectory in the land-reform debate.The public meeting was to be the first in a planned countrywide campaign leading up to the promised second land conference and was spearheaded by an array of people from all walks of life, irrespective of political party allegiance or ethnic origin.The group calling itself the Landless People's Movement plans to expand the campaign across the nation to demand ancestral land rights for those who had to endure land dispossession and a new approach to the government's resettlement programme, and for an enlargement of communal lands devastated by years of overgrazing and drought.A key figure in the movement is the former deputy minister of land reform, Bernadus Swartbooi, who called the government's land programme a “broken land reform system” that needed serious overhaul.“The rich and the powerful are grabbing land from weaker citizens, selling the people's land to themselves and to their business partners, even business partners from abroad,” Swartbooi told a cheering crowd.Swartbooi, who said he was fired because he refused to apologise to lands minister Utoni Nujoma, whom he had criticised of executing resettlement unfairly, defiantly declared that he was not going to apologise “for speaking the truth”.He said the Namibian government cannot deny the truth of historic land dispossession of Damara, Nama, OvaHerero, the San and other communities.“Government pretends that when people ask for land, that tribalism and greed and hate drive this request. No! We lost land and we want land back! We know where the land is. We know what to do with the land.“Government cannot insult us by calling us unpatriotic when we raise our land dispossession. Only an unpatriotic and docile undertone can utter such irresponsible statements,” Swartbooi said.Swartbooi rubbished Nujoma's interpretation that the demand for ancestral land was a call for a return of Bantustans.“The cause of ancestral [land] among the Damara, Nama, Ovaherero, San and other communities is not an anti-Ovambo or anti-Kavango or anti-peace movement. It is a just cause out of historic truth. We are one people: Namibians. We love peace and we work for peace as one,” said Swartbooi.Notwithstanding the constitutional provision that every Namibian has the right to reside and settle in any part of the country, Chief Petrus Kooper of the Kai-/Khaun //Aes, said it did not take into consideration the different impact land dispossession had on particular indigenous communities.He said the Hardap and //Karas regions were the ones where most resettlement farms were being bought without the regions' residents benefiting from it.Kooper said the resolution that no ancestral claims to land would be made at the first land conference of 1991 was accepted “because we trusted the government to resettle those who directly lost land” during German colonialism and the apartheid regime.“Instead, people from other regions who did not lose land are resettled at the expense of those whose land was literally confiscated by those oppressive regimes,” Kooper said.He proposed that the 1991 resolution be replaced by the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights which stipulates that indigenous people have a right to the lands, territories and resources which they originally owned.A Swapo member of parliament and chairperson of the Nama Technical Committee, Ida Hoffmann, said the 1904 to 1908 genocide reparation negotiations could not be justifiably be addressed if the “lost land question” was not dealt with.“These demands cannot be swept under the carpet under the guise of tribalism and a united nation,” Hoffmann said.The president of Swanu, Usutuaije Maamberua, said hoped the outcome of the landless movement's countrywide meetings was a call for the second land conference to be brought forward from November, and that the resettlement programme be put on hold in the meantime.Maamberua also called for the removal of Minister Nujoma from his portfolio for his alleged “disrespect and insensitivity and insult he has meted out against the descendants of the victims of the genocide”.CATHERINE SASMAN

Landless demand justice

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Namibian Sun 2025-09-16

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Landless demand justice

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Namibian Sun 2025-09-16

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