The Final Solution

Now, I don’t mean that our fiery Minister of Lands is about to chase all the San people from Bagani into the mighty Okavango River and let them drown there.

The phrase ‘final solution’ is simply being used in the context of the plans that are underway to address the land issue, rather selectively, in the communal areas of the Kavango and Caprivi regions. I would actually call these plans an expropriation of communal land by central Government.I have tried to hide the word ‘land’ from my title this time because I have dealt with this issue on a number of occasions and I thus didn’t want to bother the readers with this again.But unfortunately, it is an issue that is simply refusing to go away – or so we are made to believe by the Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Jerry Ekandjo.So, I’m thus unable to fool the readers.But I think it is important we interrogate this issue a little bit further.Two different, but inter-related recent stories have prompted this column.One is the planned parcelling of land presently used by the San for their conservancy project in West Caprivi into small blocks supposedly for agricultural purposes.The second also deals with the same issue.But this time it is the communal land in Kavango that will come under Minister Ekandjo’s capitalist hammer.The Ministry is actually auctioning off communal property.And this spells disaster.Sometimes I wonder whether some of our leaders actually understand most of the issues they keep talking about and if they do, whether they simply prefer to play spoiler politics.Or worse still, maybe they are not interested in development altogether.Or why should we always repeat the same mistakes over and over again or keep on pointing out the same problems year in and year out while we know what the solutions are? It defies logic.Take, as an example, the dispute surrounding grazing in the Kavango Region that has pitted Oshiwambo-speaking farmers against the Kavango residents.What is the cause? A good chunk of land in the former Owambo has been fenced off by a few individuals resulting in a number of people being forced off their common land.And in turn these people had to turn somewhere else to graze their animals.The solution, albeit temporarily, was the Kavango, where people are less capitalist-oriented and have thus not turned much of their land into individual holdings.But this is not a problem confined to Namibia only.It has a long genealogy and has been studied for centuries starting with, perhaps, the classic enclosure movement in England which the English then transplanted to Ireland – leading to what came to be known as the Irish Land Question.This is precisely the model that the colonisers transplanted to the colonies whether here in Africa or to the so-called new world – the Americas and Australia – leading to large-scale land alienation.And the indigenous communities are today struggling to regain their land after many years of dispossession.This is what is now called the land issue in the former settler societies in Southern Africa and partly East Africa as well.In the case of Namibia, the country has since Independence spent millions to buy back land from white farmers for the Government’s so-called resettlement programme.Although the proper phrase would be: to give land back to the blacks, considering that some of the people who have apparently been resettled on these farms don’t need Government assistance, let alone resettlement.Now while on the one hand Government is trying to socialise as much land as possible through its resettlement schemes on these former white-owned farms, some with disastrous consequences, of course, as we have seen with Ongombo West, Government is at the same time trying to privatise land in the communal areas by demarcating areas to be given to new entrepreneurs or small-scale farmers.Somehow, somewhere, someone is totally confused or ignorant of the broader issues.But this is now Minister Ekandjo’s plan for land in rural Namibia, especially in those two regions.And one cannot rule out political considerations in such a move.Because the catchphrase in Minister Ekandjo’s speeches is that once the land has been demarcated, every Namibian, even those from outside these areas, would be allowed to settle and own land there.So, don’t be surprised to see all those farmers who are now being expelled from Okavango streaming back there through Ekandjo’s creative but ultimately flawed land strategy.By subdividing land and giving it to farmers from outside these regions, the Government is in fact not only encouraging people to fence off the land but also rewarding groups who have failed in their own traditional areas.Because with most of the groups that come from outside, the first thing they think of is to fence off the land, which might be contrary to local practice – and could in turn lead to land conflict.When I was doing some work in the Caprivi and Kavango regions back in the 1990s, I was impressed by the size of the open tracts of land still available there.This was a far cry from other areas of Namibia where people were imitating what one scholar usually refers to as the ‘white model’.The point of the matter is that Government, especially the Ministry of Lands, has no model for land reform to speak of.The individual minister simply follows political considerations and interests.These are contrary to all the talk about Government consulting the public on land reform or the now fashionable phrase of participatory planning and development that is being bandied around these days.I think it is now time people stand up and confront some of these politicians who think they have become so strong that nothing can happen to them – the illusion of power.For me, there is only one solution to the land issue in Namibia: disband the Ministry of Lands.I would actually call these plans an expropriation of communal land by central Government.I have tried to hide the word ‘land’ from my title this time because I have dealt with this issue on a number of occasions and I thus didn’t want to bother the readers with this again.But unfortunately, it is an issue that is simply refusing to go away – or so we are made to believe by the Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Jerry Ekandjo.So, I’m thus unable to fool the readers.But I think it is important we interrogate this issue a little bit further.Two different, but inter-related recent stories have prompted this column.One is the planned parcelling of land presently used by the San for their conservancy project in West Caprivi into small blocks supposedly for agricultural purposes.The second also deals with the same issue.But this time it is the communal land in Kavango that will come under Minister Ekandjo’s capitalist hammer.The Ministry is actually auctioning off communal property.And this spells disaster.Sometimes I wonder whether some of our leaders actually understand most of the issues they keep talking about and if they do, whether they simply prefer to play spoiler politics.Or worse still, maybe they are not interested in development altogether.Or why should we always repeat the same mistakes over and over again or keep on pointing out the same problems year in and year out while we know what the solutions are? It defies logic.Take, as an example, the dispute surrounding grazing in the Kavango Region that has pitted Oshiwambo-speaking farmers against the Kavango residents.What is the cause? A good chunk of land in the former Owambo has been fenced off by a few individuals resulting in a number of people being forced off their common land.And in turn these people had to turn somewhere else to graze their animals.The solution, albeit temporarily, was the Kavango, where people are less capitalist-oriented and have thus not turned much of their land into individual holdings.But this is not a problem confined to Namibia only.It has a long genealogy and has been studied for centuries starting with, perhaps, the classic enclosure movement in England which the English then transplanted to Ireland – leading to what came to be known as the Irish Land Question.This is precisely the model that the colonisers transplanted to the colonies whether here in Africa or to the so-called new world – the Americas and Australia – leading to large-scale land alienation.And the indigenous communities are today struggling to regain their land after many years of dispossession.This is what is now called the land issue in the former settler societies in Southern Africa and partly East Africa as well.In the case of Namibia, the country has since Independence spent millions to buy back land from white farmers for the Government’s so-called resettlement programme.Although the proper phrase would be: to give land back to the blacks, considering that some of the people who have apparently been resettled on these farms don’t need Government assistance, let alone resettlement.Now while on the one hand Government is trying to socialise as much land as possible through its resettlement schemes on these former white-owned farms, some with disastrous consequences, of course, as we have seen with Ongombo West, Government is at the same time trying to privatise land in the communal areas by demarcating areas to be given to new entrepreneurs or small-scale farmers.Somehow, somewhere, someone is totally confused or ignorant of the broader issues.But this is now Minister Ekandjo’s plan for land in rural Namibia, especially in those two regions.And one cannot rule out political considerations in such a move.Because the catchphrase in Minister Ekandjo’s speeches is that once the land has been demarcated, every Namibian, even those from outside these areas, would be allowed to settle and own land there.So, don’t be surprised to see all those farmers who are now being expelled from Okavango streaming back there through Ekandjo’s creative but ultimately flawed land strategy.By subdividing land and giving it to farmers from outside these regions, the Government is in fact not only encouraging people to fence off the land but also rewarding groups who have failed in their own traditional areas.Because with most of the groups that come from outside, the first thing they think of is to fence off the land, which might be contrary to local practice – and could in turn lead to land conflict.When I was doing some work in the Caprivi and Kavango regions back in the 1990s, I was impressed by the size of the open tracts of land still available there.This was a far cry from other areas of Namibia where people were imitating what one scholar usually refers to as the ‘white model’.The point of the matter is that Government, especially the Ministry of Lands, has no model for land reform to speak of.The individual minister simply follows political considerations and interests.These are contrary to all the talk about Government consulting the public on land reform or the now fashionable phrase of participatory planning and development that is being bandied around these days.I think it is now time people stand up and confront some of these politicians who think they have become so strong that nothing can happen to them – the illusion of power.For me, there is only one solution to the land issue in Namibia: disband the Ministry of Lands.