Resettled farmers ‘uncooperative’ during land audit

KENYA KAMBOWE

RUNDU

A study conducted to test allegations that certain ethic groups are favoured in the land resettlement programme was met with opposition, with some beneficiaries refusing to provide the required data.

Some of resettled farmers refused to indicate their ethnic group while others took the assessors as people who were sent for election campaign purposes.

This is contained in the ancestral land report presented to President Hage Geingob by the committee that was commissioned to look into claims of ancestral land rights and restitution.

In the report, allegations of some ethnic groups being favoured over others have been made by several persons interviewed by the commission, and it was on that basis that an ancestral land right study was undertaken by government.

The target population of the study was resettlement farms in the eight regions of Namibia.

The data collection of the study was undertaken between August 2019 and January 2020 by the ministry’s staff in collaboration with the ministry of agriculture, water and forestry.

The data capture and analysis was done by the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) where a total of 1251 questionnaires were received. Four of the questionnaires were excluded for various reasons.

Not cooperating

According to the report those who went to assess the farms, experienced a number of challenges including some farms which were not accessible as the gates were locked and the beneficiaries were not reachable.

“The assessors were unable to reschedule appointments due to tight deadlines. Hence, some questionnaires were submitted with missing information,” the report reads.

“Some of the targeted farms or farming units were not yet allocated to beneficiaries during the data collection period that contributed to under coverage in comparison to expected population coverage. Some beneficiaries refused to give information claiming that it was election time and assessor were sent for campaigning purposes.

“The exact number of beneficiaries per group could not be established by this study because some farms were overcrowded. Assessors could not meet and record each of the beneficiaries to complete the required information.

“Some respondents were reluctant to provide their ethnic group. Assessors opted to ask for main language spoken instead of leaving the field blank. This limitation led to the decision to only use major ethnic groups during data analysis, but not language spoken which was considered as a minor ethnic group in the preliminary report,” the report reads.

Namibian Sun on Friday reported that about 67% of the five million hectares of farmland targeted for redistribution by 2020 has been acquired.

A total of 556 farms at an overall cost of about N$2.23 billion were acquired through Land Reform Programme since its inception in 1990.

The collective size of these farms are more than 3.36 million hectares.

Matongela said a total of 5 373 previously disadvantaged beneficiaries have been resettled. This includes 2 134 men, 1 458 women and 26 juristic entities.