Legal loopholes make land too costly: Tjiriange

VETERANS’ Affairs Minister Ngarikutuke Tjiriange has called for a national commission to be set up to look at Article 100 of the Constitution and its practical effects.

The commission should review the existing land tenure systems and make recommendations for equitable commercial land purchases, land management and ownership and land occupation, Tjiriange said during the budget debate in Parliament on Thursday. ‘The future commission should also recommend terms and conditions for the sale of agricultural land – including price controls on these land sales.’Article 100 stipulates that ‘land, water and natural resources below and above the land surface and in the continental shelf (…) shall belong to the State if they are not otherwise lawfully owned.’Currently land ownership is regulated by the Agricultural Land Reform Act and the Communal Land Reform Act. Land can be owned by natural persons, companies or close corporations (CCs). This means non-Namibians can also own, buy or sell land, which Tjiriange sees as a loophole in the law. ‘This loophole is used by those who want to defeat the land policy of our Government, although the Constitution provides that non-Namibians should not own land,’ Tjiriange said. Tjiriange further argued that legal loopholes made it possible for previously advantaged Namibians to ‘incognito own several pieces of agricultural land’ and thus being able to demand high prices. In this way, they could thwart land expropriation by Government, making land owned by companies and CCs expensive and thus inaccessible for ordinary Namibians.’Agricultural land is transferred and ‘owned’ by companies and [close] corporations and it has become so extremely expensive that sooner or later there will be no agricultural land available which can be bought by either the State or individuals,’ Minister Tjiriange warned. A few days earlier, Health Minister Richard Kamwi also called on Government to revisit Article 100, saying he was struggling to buy land in his home region, Caprivi.Also last week, Lands Minister Alpheus Naruseb announced at a ministerial meeting at Swakopmund that the Communal and Agricultural Land Acts would be consolidated soon to bring the whole land administration under one law. Naruseb further said that land reform would be ‘accelerated’ and new selection criteria for resettlement based on a points system were introduced at the beginning of the month.Arnold Tjihuiko of the Nudo opposition party told Parliament last week that more Government effort should go into the irrigation scheme known as the Green Scheme.’Increased emphasis on agriculture would unlock a lot of economic potential. The Green Scheme would create many jobs and achieve food security for Namibia. Unfortunately Government’s strategy on the development of the Green Scheme is not clear at all,’ Tjihuiko criticised.Prime Minister Nahas Angula in his contribution called on the Trade and Land Ministries to stop what he called ‘a serious abuse of treating land like any other commodity, which is then traded by acquiring shares in a company’.