Posted on 06/18/2004 7:31:54 AM PDT by tdadams
Andreas Wiese, a fourth-generation Namibian of German descent, is preparing to quit farming. His family raise cattle, grow vegetables and cultivate calla lilies for export to Europe and South Africa on an arid 4,000-hectare ranch 50km north-east of the capital Windhoek.
Last month the government ordered the Wieses to sell their property to the state within two weeks. The family have since made an offer and the 32-year-old farmer, who also holds a German passport, says he may emigrate. "We are selling," he says, ending a day's work in the family's Windhoek flower shop. "I personally don't see a future in this sector."
Impatient with what it sees as the slow pace of its nine-year-old land reform programme, Namibia is following Zimbabwe down the path of expropriation. Land is among the country's most pressing public policy issues, as it is throughout southern Africa, the continent's last region to gain independence from white rule.
Under President Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwean authorities began seizing white-owned commercial farms in 2000, causing a collapse in food production and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.
Earlier this month government officials said title deeds to the expropriated land would be replaced with 99-year leases.
South Africa's government is pursuing its own land reform programme, albeit on a "willing seller-willing buyer" basis that respects property rights and the rule of law. But racially fraught rural violence is widespread, and some South Africans think the reform process is going too slowly.
Until recently Namibia's own land reform programme was also voluntary and the country, best known abroad as a luxury ecotourism destination, was considered one of Africa's most stable. Whites make up 6 per cent of the 1.9m population but own more than half of commercial farmland in the country, which was brutally colonised by Germany in the 19th century and ruled by apartheid-era South Africa until 1990.
But this year President Sam Nujoma has ratcheted up anti-farmer and anti-white rhetoric reminiscent of President Mugabe, a key regional ally and former comrade in the struggle for independence. In March, during an official visit by Zimbabwe's information minister Jonathan Moyo, the government announced plans to "implement the expropriation option" when dealing with recalcitrant farm-owners.
At a rally last month Mr Nujoma called some white people "snakes" who wanted to recolonise the country.
Government officials say that they are acting within the letter of Namibia's 1995 land reform act, and that owners of expropriated land will be entitled to just compensation and the right to legal appeal. Progress in transferring farms to non-white owners has indeed been deliberate to date, covering the transfer of about 10 per cent of Namibia's roughly 7,000 farms to non-white owners and the resettlement of 25,000 people.
But some farmers claim the government, which faces an election in November, is exploiting tensions over land and race for political reasons and lacks a strategy for farming the land. The expropriation drive is being led by Hifikepunye Pohamba, the land minister and the 75-year-old Mr Nujoma's likely successor as the presidential candidate of the ruling Swapo party.
"Everybody is contemplating a Zimbabwean scenario, and that's the government's fault," says Sigi Eimbeck of the Namibian Farmers' Support Initiative.
Last month at least six farmers, including the Wiese family, received letters from Mr Pohamba ordering them to sell within two weeks. "You are accordingly invited to make an offer to sell the property to the state and to enter into further negotiations in this regard," the letter read.
The letters targeted farmers involved in labour disputes with black workers, an emotive issue in Namibia as in South Africa. Mr Phamba has spoken of the "deplorable conditions" many farm workers face, including poor housing and scant access to social services.
The Wieses attracted official notice last year after they dismissed six employees when a minor disagreement over an accidentally crushed gosling escalated. A court later ordered the sacked workers be reinstated.
Mr Nujoma later called Mr Wiese a "criminal". In a May Day speech he seemed to single out the Wieses when he said: "Some of the whites are behaving as if they came from Holland or Germany with land."
Let none of us forget this little fact when Zimbabwe and Namibia come pleading to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund for help. It's their own violent, racist policies that are causing their problems. To assist them financially only gives them the imprimatur of the U.S. and other nations who might contribute.
Four generations in a country and you are still considered a foreigner with no rights of a citizen. Now when will the UN step in...
How long before the same thing happens in South Africa?
"South Africa's government is pursuing its own land reform programme, albeit on a "willing seller-willing buyer" basis that respects property rights and the rule of law. But racially fraught rural violence is widespread, and some South Africans think the reform process is going too slowly."
Apparently, not too long.
"Four generations in a country and you are still considered a foreigner with no rights of a citizen. Now when will the UN step in..."
Why? What's in it for them ...personnaly. Will they get a commission? Surely you don't think they have best interest at heart.[Disgust off/]
Sad. They're creating their own starvation.
"How long before the same thing happens in South Africa?"
Noon today!
In about 15 years, the new government in Namibia will decide that the only way to combat starvation and stagnation is to invite back the farmers they kicked out and whose land they stole. Already happened in Zambia and Mozabique, which are welcoming the farmers whose land was stolen by the wealthy thieves running the government in next-door Zimbabwe. The farmers learned their lesson, though; they are only taking long-term leases, no land purchases.
Namibia and Zimbabwe are competing to have the first Famine.
I believe these policies are the sort of thing the UN supports and promotes and thus the UN will reward those countries in Africa that follow those enlightened policies.
SA is a little more cautious and will prefer to wait and see how successful the others are in producing a proper famine before SA will implement the policy in there.
Atlas is shrugging in sub-Saharan Africa.
But if you control the army you won't starve. They prove that all the time.
Yup. North Koreans eat tree bark but the NK Army has enough to eat.
If the NK Army catches anybody eating tree bark, they will be shot. The bark belongs to the government. Where is ALCU (NK version) when you need them?
I think its time for people to rise up and say, "Screw this politically correct crap".
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