Ovaherero want forensic audit on land
Paramount Chief Vekuii Rukoro says the ancestral land question, if not handled properly, could be a deal breaker for national unity.
After having boycotted the second land conference and deeply agitated over the lease of farms to Russian oligarch Rashid Sardarov, the Ovaherero Traditional Authority (OTA) has called on the government to institute an independent judicial forensic audit into the operations of the resettlement programme since its inception.
The audit should investigate issues such as the original mandate, goals and objectives, and the implementation to date.
The paramount chief of the Ovaherero, Vekuii Rukoro, said unlike other forensic audits and commissions of inquiry, the OTA insists that the findings and recommendations of this investigation be immediately released to the Namibian public and not be “confined to the vaults of permanent state secrets”.
Rukoro said there was sufficient evidence that the resettlement programme had “gone astray” and had instead become a “wholesale settlement of the rich, famous and powerful”.
This, he said, was without due regard of ancestral land right claims by those communities who had been dispossessed of their land.
The OTA is not convinced of the authenticity of the list of resettled beneficiaries that emerged after the second land conference, saying there are glaring omissions of names of well-known people believed and known to have been resettled.
The list also does not indicate farms bought by the government that have been “locked up” for years, while others have yet to be advertised as resettlement farms.
Rukoro charged that some of these farms are being occupied by “individuals and families selected by officials charged with land reform”.
He said the Namibian experience gave literal meaning to a statement made by the American author John Updike, who wrote: “The world itself is stolen goods. All property is theft and those who have stolen most of it make the laws for the rest of us.”
Rukoro said the struggle for Namibia was about land stolen at gunpoint from indigenous people “south of Oshivelo” – like the San, Khoekhoegowab, Nama and Ovaherero.
Rukoro said these indigenous communities therefore felt betrayed by former heads of state Sam Nujoma and Hifikepunye Pohamba, who had said at the second land conference that there was no need to talk about ancestral land rights and that all land should belong to the state.
“Which state?” questioned Rukoro, adding “the very state which, as we have witnessed repeatedly, has an unchecked licence to arrogantly allocate pieces of our ancestral land to its foreign benefactors and local cronies in an elaborate corrupt scheme of patronage” while those who have lost land “languish” in homelands created by the apartheid state.
'N$43 million Russian scandal'
Rukoro criticised the second land conference as having “contributed absolutely nothing significant nor fundamental” to the political economics of land dispossession.
He said there was no resolve to address fundamental structural issues within the state system, a system which he said was “tailor-made to profit the elites of Namibian society” – the ministers, unelected governors and top civil servants and business moguls who could afford to get loans from commercial banks to buy their own farms.
“They get jobs for life and they get resettlement farms for life, alongside their Russian friends and benefactors,” he said.
He said the government had bought farms “to resettle Sardarov”.
The OTA appealed to President Hage Geingob to “develop more interest” in the management of land, saying it if was not handled with care it could provoke an “uncontrollable situation”.
Rukoro said the manner in which the land question and in particular ancestral land claims were being dealt with could prove to be “the deal breaker” to Namibia's much-vaunted national unity.
CATHERINE SASMAN
The audit should investigate issues such as the original mandate, goals and objectives, and the implementation to date.
The paramount chief of the Ovaherero, Vekuii Rukoro, said unlike other forensic audits and commissions of inquiry, the OTA insists that the findings and recommendations of this investigation be immediately released to the Namibian public and not be “confined to the vaults of permanent state secrets”.
Rukoro said there was sufficient evidence that the resettlement programme had “gone astray” and had instead become a “wholesale settlement of the rich, famous and powerful”.
This, he said, was without due regard of ancestral land right claims by those communities who had been dispossessed of their land.
The OTA is not convinced of the authenticity of the list of resettled beneficiaries that emerged after the second land conference, saying there are glaring omissions of names of well-known people believed and known to have been resettled.
The list also does not indicate farms bought by the government that have been “locked up” for years, while others have yet to be advertised as resettlement farms.
Rukoro charged that some of these farms are being occupied by “individuals and families selected by officials charged with land reform”.
He said the Namibian experience gave literal meaning to a statement made by the American author John Updike, who wrote: “The world itself is stolen goods. All property is theft and those who have stolen most of it make the laws for the rest of us.”
Rukoro said the struggle for Namibia was about land stolen at gunpoint from indigenous people “south of Oshivelo” – like the San, Khoekhoegowab, Nama and Ovaherero.
Rukoro said these indigenous communities therefore felt betrayed by former heads of state Sam Nujoma and Hifikepunye Pohamba, who had said at the second land conference that there was no need to talk about ancestral land rights and that all land should belong to the state.
“Which state?” questioned Rukoro, adding “the very state which, as we have witnessed repeatedly, has an unchecked licence to arrogantly allocate pieces of our ancestral land to its foreign benefactors and local cronies in an elaborate corrupt scheme of patronage” while those who have lost land “languish” in homelands created by the apartheid state.
'N$43 million Russian scandal'
Rukoro criticised the second land conference as having “contributed absolutely nothing significant nor fundamental” to the political economics of land dispossession.
He said there was no resolve to address fundamental structural issues within the state system, a system which he said was “tailor-made to profit the elites of Namibian society” – the ministers, unelected governors and top civil servants and business moguls who could afford to get loans from commercial banks to buy their own farms.
“They get jobs for life and they get resettlement farms for life, alongside their Russian friends and benefactors,” he said.
He said the government had bought farms “to resettle Sardarov”.
The OTA appealed to President Hage Geingob to “develop more interest” in the management of land, saying it if was not handled with care it could provoke an “uncontrollable situation”.
Rukoro said the manner in which the land question and in particular ancestral land claims were being dealt with could prove to be “the deal breaker” to Namibia's much-vaunted national unity.
CATHERINE SASMAN
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