Without land, we are nothing

A pastors' conference of the western diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (ELCIN) has called for one land policy and says all discriminatory laws pertaining to land should be done away with.

The conference was convened in preparation for a position paper the church leaders wish to take to the second land conference in October.

ELCIN bishop Veikko Munyika said the struggle for liberation was not yet over because equitable land distribution had not yet been realised and black discontent over the land issue was growing while most arable land remained in the hands of a few rich commercial farmers.

“The land is the place where a nation would stay in peace and without hindrances from its enemies,” the bishop echoed the Bible, adding: “Without land, a person will always have a sense of being lost, displaced, homeless and rootless. Therefore, every person needs land and when it is taken away, one is denied one's home, bread, survival and even a place for burial.”

He said in Namibia many were left stranded, without even a piece of land to build a one-bedroom house.

He said the arbitrary buying and selling of land – or the commercialisation thereof – was a major cause of trouble in Africa, saying its effects in Namibia could be seen by large tracts of land being owned by a small elite or taken over by municipalities while the original owners were left landless.





Bishop Munyika said churches – particularly the Lutherans, Catholics and Anglicans – have in similar processes been stripped of land ownership, which they had previously acquired from traditional leaders.

He said the churches were now forced to buy back the same land from the government and municipalities at exorbitant prices.



Give land equally

Proposing a “biblical perspective” on land, Bishop Munyika said land in Namibia should benefit all Namibians equally.

“It is not only the obligation of the government to offer land to the landless citizens, but it is also the moral responsibility of those who are in possession to share it with those that do not have it,” he proposed.

In respect of ancestral land claims, the bishop asked: “Is it long enough for those who have lost their ancestral lands to get them back even if they do not have the means to redeem them?”

He said the proclamation and expansion of towns in particularly communal areas also infringed on the rights of people to own land.

In 1996, shortly after the first national land conference in 1991, ELCIN pastors proposed that the government should prevent grazing areas in communal areas being fenced off by the rich.

Then, the pastors proposed that overcrowded communal areas be expanded through the acquisition of commercial land.

They also proposed that no land be sold to foreigners.

It is not clear what has happened to these recommendations, but the pastors are now proposing alternative approaches to the land question.



Alternatives

The pastors echoed the sentiment that the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach had yielded disappointing results and that some form of expropriation without compensation might be justified where it could be proven that land was indeed stolen.

In this case, Munyika proposed “expropriation with limited compensation” to cover infrastructural developments that have been done on 'stolen land', but said that would require thorough research of each case.

The sentiment at the pastors' conference is that the Namibian constitution gives every citizen the right to own property, which includes land.

They said land should therefore be fairly and equitably divided and that no one should have too little or too much, and that land must be affordable to everyone.

Moreover, they said the Communal Land Act of 1995 must be amended to give people living in communal areas the opportunity to own the land they occupy.

They said the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach on commercial land had yielded disappointing results and should be done away with.

However, they felt the Commercial Land Act of 1995 should not make provision for the expropriation of land with compensation, saying they did not support expropriation without compensation because it would create long-term liabilities.

They went on to say those owning large tracts of land should be consulted and requested to give up some portions to the government.

The pastors said the government should make sure that all farmland owned by absentee landlords and underutilised land was expropriated “accordingly”.

They proposed that the “resettlement package” include funding and necessary training so that the purpose of this strategy be fully realised.

They further proposed that the Veterinary Cordon Fence be moved to the Namibian-Angolan border.

CATHERINE SASMAN