The Red Line And The Goose

MY GOOD friend John Mutorwa, Minister of Agriculture, Water and Forestry, railed against the Red Line last week. His take was that the Red Line “appears to divide the country”.

In practice, of course, the Red Line (i.e. Oshivelo and Mururani) controls the movement of livestock southwards, to the rest of the country. But that has been the situation since this veterinary cordon fence (VCF) was put up by the German administration way back in 1911 as a pest exclusion fence separating central and southern Namibia from the erstwhile Ovambo, Kaoko, Kavango and Caprivi regions.

In its chequered history, the Red Line has several times been moved northwards and since the 1960’s it is also used as a disease control mechanism to isolate the spread of foot-and-mouth disease from the north of the country to the south. It is also true, that at the height of repression these veterinary control points were also used to control the movement of people.

It is an irony that after independence, this situation has worsened and that Namibians continue to be harangued and frisked at Divundu, Mururani, Oshivelo and at roadblocks outside Windhoek, etc, in a fashion which interferes with their right of movement and settlement – but this is an issue for another day.

The minister’s remarks were made last week in the context of announcing the establishment of a research team which is to advise on the continued relevance of this ‘hideous’ Red Line. The team is expected to report back to Mutorwa next month. We should hope that the short tenure of the committee is not an indication that it will simply go through the motions only to rubber stamp a decision already made?

The Minister, at the same time, assures us that but for the Zambezi region and Mukwe and Ndiyona constituencies the rest of the country has been free of FMD for over 30 years now. He further reports that government is seized with the matter of eradicating Trans-boundary Animal Diseases (TAD) with a view to improving market access for farmers from the northern communal areas.

And that market access is indeed the rub of the problem, if you will. To put it differently, it cannot be because of malice or deliberate exclusion that livestock from these regions are not marketed in lucrative foreign markets. But it has everything to do with the conditions imposed by the importers of our meat products. Clearly, we have a choice here, namely, to reject these conditions set by the importers and forfeit market access or work towards complying with their requirements.

Naturally, there always is the option to develop alternative markets. But it also takes time to develop new markets as we have by now learnt.

Whereas the South African market was always traditionally accessible, in the strict reading of the SACU [Southern African Customs Unions] Agreement, our agricultural exports may be subject to quantitative restrictions going forward. As regards the EU market, we are competing with large but nimble footed suppliers from other regions of the world who benefit from economies of scale.

Further, our imminent loss of duty free access in the EU market is bound to reduce margins for our exporters. It is, therefore, an economically sound approach to combine the relocation of our veterinary cordon fence northwards with an aggressive programme to eradicate trans-boundary animal diseases. It is self evident that doing one without any action on the other is self defeating.

Only a double edged approach to combat animal diseases will enable the northern communal farmers access to inaccessible markets. We can only hope that the minister’s research team will be mindful of this axiom. Despite the limited presence of FMD in the country for a long time now, the success in the translocation of the Red Line critically depends on our neighbours, particularly, Angola buying into this worthy initiative.

Despite its limited contribution to the GDP, agriculture remains the largest source of livelihood in our country. Improving returns from farming thus directly impacts the livelihood of many Namibians. In our efforts to address this regime which has been in place for over a century we should make sure not to kill the goose which lays the golden egg.

We need also to carry the importers of our meat products with us all the way. Polemics will not do. Addressing the issue of the translocation of the VCF constitutes striking at the heart of the political economy of colonialism in the same fashion of land reform, however, timid.

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