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Enigma of Namibia's 'fairy-circles' - Namibia's "fairy circles" are a popular tourist attraction South African botanists say they have failed to explain the mysterious round patches of bare sandy soil found in grassland on Namibia's coastal fringe. They looked into possible causes of the "fairy circles" - radioactive soil, toxic proteins left by poisonous plants, and termites eating the seeds. But tests do not support any of these theories for the rings which are 2-10m across, New Scientist magazine reports. For now, the botanists are left with "fairies" to explain the phenomenon. Termite trenches Lead scientist Gretel van Rooyen is...

NAMIBIAN commercial farmers fear that Government's programme on land expropriation will go the Zimbabwean way. Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) President Jan de Wet says farmers are full of anxiety, desperation, helplessness and fear about the right to possess land in the country. In a statement issued after a special NAU Executive Council meeting on Friday, De Wet says NAU members fear a loss of income, labour unrest and job losses, while others feel Government is looking for someone to blame. He says farmers have decided to change the way they handle labour disputes and will try to avoid going to...

GOVERNMENT'S announcement that it plans to expropriate farms has drawn mixed reactions. While the Namibia National Farmers' Union (NNFU) and the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) said the move was long overdue, the South West Africa People's Democratic United Front (Swapduf) said it feared that it would widen the gap between the rich and poor through corrupt resettlement programmes. NNFU Executive Director Paul Vleermuis said in a statement that the willing-seller, willing-buyer principle had failed and it was time for Government to expropriate. Without elaborating, Vleermuis said expropriation would benefit the small-scale farmer. Swapduf Secretary General Edward !Aoxamub differed...

March 05 2004 at 05:18PM By Manoah Esipisu Namibia has begun a fast-track expropriation of land from white farmers but will not follow neighbouring Zimbabwe's policy of seizing farms by force, Agriculture Minister Helmut Angula said on Friday. Minority whites own 75 percent of arable land in the southern African country, but a land redistribution policy that tries to match willing buyers with willing sellers is not moving fast enough, Angula said. "We just announced the first act in the expropriation. I can say it is about nine farms," Angula said in an interview in South Africa. 'We just announced...

LAST week's announcement by Namibian Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab has sent a further chill through the farming community of southern Africa as a whole. Gurirab said the government of the ruling Swapo had lost patience with the slow pace of land reform, and would take powers of compulsory expropriation to speed up the process. Thes announcement came only weeks after SA's government took similar powers. Appealing to his members to be "cool, calm and collected", Jan de Wet, president of the Namibian Agricultural Union, said that "at all costs we have to avoid a Zimbabwean situation here". De Wet pointed...

GOVERNMENT yesterday announced for the first time that all Namibian landholders, regardless of skin colour, could be subject to expropriation under a policy change announced last week. Lands Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba told a media briefing in Windhoek that no one - black or white, Namibian or foreigner - would be spared as the State prepared to expropriate any farm it identified as suitable for the resettlement of the needy. "We go for absentee landlords but that does not prevent us from taking land from others. We are not going to be confined to absentee landlords. It can be from Namibians,...

Pretoria - The Namibian government's decision to expropriate land was "foolish and concerning", said South African agricultural organisations on Wednesday. Lourie Bosman, deputy president of AgriSA, said the decision of South Africa's neighbour did not send a positive message to the international community. "Such a step can easily harm investor confidence and negatively influence the economy of the country (Namibia)," he said. Namibian Premier Theo-Ben Gurirab announced last week that expropriation will be used to speed up land reform. He said the country's willing-buyer, willing-seller policy was too cumbersome and did not provide for the public demand for agricultural land....

The Namibia Agricultural Union, says the announcement that farm expropriations will take place in the country has sent shockwaves through its agricultural community. "It is shocking. It causes sorrow and disturbances in the farming community," said the union's president, Jan de Wet. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab said on state television that a number of white-owned farms would be expropriated to accelerate land reform. This was because the existing policy of "willing seller, willing buyer" was not delivering results. "The process has become too slow because of arbitrarily inflated land prices and unavailability of productive land," observed Gurirab. Like...

The Namibian government announced on Wednesday that it will expropriate a select number of white-owned farms to accelerate its efforts at redistributing property to landless blacks. "The land possession pattern in our country has been designed by colonialism to benefit a small group of minority settlers, at the expense of the majority," Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab said in an address to the nation aired on state television. "Our young nation still struggles to bring about balance and undo the effects of the unjust land redistribution." Most of the wealth in this southern African country remains in the hands of whites...

Namibia plans to take over white farms By Tim Butcher, in Maseru (Filed: 27/02/2004) Namibia is to start taking land from white farmers, the president said yesterday. President Sam Nujoma's government has hinted at expropriation several times over the past two years. His commitment to keep any expropriation fully legal offers little solace to those who heard Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe make similar promises. The prime minister, Theo-Ben Gurirab, said the willing seller, willing buyer approach was cumbersome. "The expropriation of land is being introduced to accelerate the land reform process," he said. Whites make up only five per...

Link post: please direct any discussion of this image in the thread below. This link is posted in News/Activism to alert FReepers with a possible interest in the subject. Geology Picture of the Week, February 1-7, 2004

This one was sure easy. The Brandberg is another one of those African features that stands out from space, and a unique hospitable environment in the hostile deserts of Namibia. Click on the picture below will provide the big image (~3.5 MB); in the big image, the striations in the metamorphosed gneiss are pretty remarkable. I sure wouldn't want to get lost there. Brandberg Massif

Germany has expressed its "regret" for the killing of thousands of Namibia's ethnic Hereros during the colonial era. Between 35,000 and 105,000 people were killed after the Hereros rebelled against German rule in 1904. But Germany's ambassador to Namibia ruled out paying compensation, as the Hereros have demanded in a law suit. Correspondents say Wolfgang Massing's statement, at a ceremony to commemorate the massacres is the closest Germany has come to an apology. History could not be undone, he said but "we can give back to the victims and their descendants the dignity and honour of which they were robbed"....

Berlin - A high-ranking representative of the Herero tribe in Namibia said there could be a Zimbabwe-style backlash against ethnic German whites if Berlin refuses to pay reparations. "Don't forget, our young generation does not have the angelic patience of the elders," Mburumba Kernina, an advisor to Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako, told Berlin daily, Der Tagesspiegel. "If there is not agreement (on reparations), they will probably take matters into their own hands. What happened in Zimbabwe can easily repeat itself here," referring to the eviction of white farmers - sometimes violently - orchestrated by President Robert Mugabe in the...

WINDHOEK, Namibia (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's efforts to befriend Africa hit a jarring note when he praised Namibia's capital city as being so clean it didn't seem African. Lula, who presents himself as a champion of the world's poor, was speaking Friday in Windhoek on the fourth leg of an African tour. "I'm surprised because if you arrive in Windhoek, it doesn't seem like you're in an African country. Few cities of the world are so clean and beautiful as Windhoek," said Lula, flanked by Namibian President, Sam Nujoma, as he said farewell to the...

Namibians plan white farm grabs Some 4,000 whites own much of Nambia's best land A group of black farmers in Namibia says it will occupy 15 white-owned farms next week. It says the government's policy of purchasing white-owned farms is moving too slowly in correcting unequal patterns of landownership. A government spokesman said it would not tolerate any land invasions and urged landless people to be patient. About 4,000, mostly white, commercial farmers own almost half of Namibia's arable land. Agriculture, mostly beef exports, is Namibia's second-highest export earner after mining. Let us be patient and follow the adopted policy...

Windhoek PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma has threatened to take action against some states in the United States which he says mistreat Americans of African origin. "We know that some ... African brothers were taken as slaves and are still being mistreated. We are telling [them] ... to treat the African-Americans equally or we will wage a struggle against them," Nujoma said, without elaborating on the course of action to taken. The President, who was addressing a joint gathering of University of Namibia and Polytechnic students, also used the occasion to yet again take aim at some whites, homosexuals and journalists. Nujoma...

N!xau WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) - N!xau, the diminutive bushman catapulted from the remote sandswept reaches of the Kalahari Desert to international stardom in the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy" has died, police officials said Saturday. He was estimated to have been about 59, although he himself said he did not know his exact age. Police in the remote area of Tsumkwe in the Namibian part of the Kalahari where N!xau lived confirmed his recent death, but did not have any details of how or when he died. His name is a usual transliteration of his tribal language, which uses...

Namibia's white farmers say they have become more uncertain and insecure about their future as the Namibian government introduces more measures to promote its land reform programme. Although Namibian president Sam Nujoma has not implemented his threats to adopt Zimbabwe-style farm seizures, the Namibian Agricultural Union (NAU) says the insecurity created by some "vague laws" on land acquisition had discouraged the more than 4000 farmers from making any new investments in agriculture. "This insecurity has had a bearing on development of new infrastructure and maintenance of existing properties," NAU executive manager Sakkie Coetzee said. Nujoma is the staunchest ally of...

Namibia targets land owned by white farmers By Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent 24 February 2003 The Government of Namibia has taken the first step towards a Mugabe-style seizure of land owned by white farmers. Farmers who fail to disclose details of the number of farms they own by Friday have been warned that they face five-year jail sentences. Data verification forms were distributed as the government, under President Sam Nujoma, prepares to introduce a land tax in April aimed at farmers owning "excessive" land. But farmers' representatives say Mr Nujoma, who has threatened to seize white farms in the...