Free Republic

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...

Windhoek - Namibian President Sam Nujoma Wednesday slammed "racist" white farmers who have claimed the government's land reform programme lacks transparency and threatened to punish anyone who evicted black workers. In a televised speech, Nujoma took a swipe at a farmers' support group which recently said the farm expropriation process was not transparent because the lands ministry did not define the criteria. "I want to make it categorically clear to... minority racist commercial farmers whose objective it is to distort the facts concerning the government's land reform and expropriation policy, that the land question in Namibia is a sensitive issue....

WHITE farmers in Namibia are increasingly divided over how to respond to the government's plans to expropriate some of their land, with a splinter group urging members to fight to stop the process. A group of 30 farmers met at the eastern town of Gobabis this week under the banner of the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative and agreed to pool resources to prevent the state from dealing with individuals. They expressed fear that if they ignored the plight of individuals, the Namibian government would deal with all of them singly, as had happened in Zimbabwe. While the main farmers' body...

Windhoek - A black farm workers' union in Namibia threatened on Friday to seize white-owned farms by force in an angry response to a new farmers' organisation which has vowed to fight land expropriations in the southern African country. President Sam Nujoma's government last month told 15 white farm owners to make an offer to sell their property to the state, the first move by the authorities to force the white farmers off their land. "If the white colleagues do not want expropriation of land, we can always introduce a new method - which is taking the land without compensation...

A DEFIANT group of commercial farmers whose land Government has identified for expropriation claim they are victims of immoral politicking and will fight it tooth and nail. Government served some 15 white farmers with expropriation notices and gave them 14 days to respond. Sigi Eimbeck from the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative (NFSI) told the media yesterday that the planned expropriation had nothing to do with land reform but was a campaign strategy by Lands Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba. The Minister, who is also Swapo Vice President, was elected as the party's candidate for the November presidential elections over the weekend. "We...

May 23 2004 at 01:51PM By Brigitte Wieldich Ongombo West - Four generations of farming in Hilde Wiese's family are about to come to an end in Namibia following a government order to sell their farm. Wiese is among 15 white farm owners who were told by Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba to "make an offer" within 14 days to sell their property and enter into negotiations on the expropriation. The deadline expires on Monday. Wiese, 68, owns Ongombo West, a farm located 50km from Windhoek, where she and her son Andreas raise cattle, grow vegetables and for the past five...

Windhoek - President Sam Nujoma has made good on his promise - made barely two weeks ago - to drive "minority, racist farmers" off the land to make way for blacks. The Namibian government has started taking commercial land for resettlement, following its announcement in February of a change in its willing-seller, willing-buyer policy. This week the first notice of expropriation was issued to the white owner of a "trouble" farm, from where six black employees had been illegally dismissed and evicted last year. It was issued on Monday by Hifikepunye Pohamba, Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation. The owner...

Dozens More Farms Face Expropriation AT least a dozen more farms, including one where President Sam Nujoma undertook a hunting expedition last year, have been served with expropriation notices. Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Hifikepunye Pohamba, yesterday confirmed that "many" farms had been targeted, but was unable to give the exact figure. "Yes, indeed we have started implementing the law," Pohamba said at a press conference in Windhoek. "We have issued many [notices]. I cannot remember how many... but I can tell you they are many." The move has drawn sharp criticism from some quarters, and a cautious reception...

Namibia moves ahead with land reform - May 14 2004 at 12:48PM Windhoek - The Namibian government has told the first group of farmers that they must sell their property under land reforms that some fear could wreak as much havoc with agriculture as a similar programme did in Zimbabwe. Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba this week sent letters to 10 white farm-owners. The letters were hand-delivered by ministry officials accompanied by police, The Namibian newspaper reported on Friday. In the letters, Pohamba told the farmers they were "cordially invited to make an offer to sell their property to the state...

WINDHOEK - Namibia has increased the pace of expropriating land from white farmers by asking many to name prices for their plots and enter into negotiations to agree a settlement, a minister said on Thursday. Land, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba told a news briefing: "We have targeted many farms and the owners have already been notified." Land pressure has been mounting in Namibia in recent months, raising fears President Sam Nujoma might be tempted to emulate his Zimbabwean counterpart and fellow independence guerrilla leader Robert Mugabe. The issue has become more urgent because the country will hold presidential...

AS a landless pensioner born in this country, I am concerned about the propaganda, polemic and economic folly perpetrated in the guise of land expropriation or worse: 'land reform'. I am particularly struck by the fact that many of the most prominent advocates are those whose ancestors have never had any land taken away from them. Reform implies reorganisation, a new order of improvement of what is in existence. How dare Government representatives use this word while the "Odendaal farms" are disintegrating and even the farms bought by the independent State of Namibia are going to wreck and ruin? More...

HARARE - Namibian President Sam Nujoma has urged African leaders not to give in to pressure from the West on plans to take away land from whites and farm them out to landless blacks. "As African leaders we were entrusted with the mandate to promote the welfare of all our people," he said in a speech to officially open Zimbabwe's annual international trade exhibition in the second city of Bulawayo. "In carrying out these duties, we must not shy away from taking the bold decisions that can empower our people by providing them with resources which will enable them to...

PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma told over 400 delegates at the Namibia Public Workers Union (Napwu) Congress on Friday to unite and support Zimbabwe. "Today it is Zimbabwe, tomorrow it is Namibia or any other country. We must unite and support Zimbabwe. We cannot allow imperialism to take over our continent again. We must defend ourselves," Nujoma told delegates gathered at the Namib High School. He said he had not heard any union member in Namibia protesting the recent action of the British government when they stopped a Zimbabwean deputy minister from passing through Britain on his way to a conference for...

EXPROPRIATION will be used to punish farmers who evict and dump workers even though poor labour relations are not official criteria for the latest move in Namibia's land reform, says Government. In its most definitive declaration yet, the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation yesterday issued a statement confirming that expropriation could also serve as a penalty to temper what many consider as an apartheid attitude on the part of some farm owners towards their workers. "Abandoned land:this therefore means that aspects of eviction and dumping of labourers - though not a criterion to expropriate a farm - can be...

Zimbabwe has sent six land "experts" to Namibia in a move that could accelerate a planned expropriation of white-owned farms. The Zimbabwean land evaluators arrived in Windhoek this week to advise officials on how to carry out land redistribution, the newspaper The Namibian, reported yesterday. Ndali-Che Kamati, the Namibian ambassador to Harare, said it was hoped that President Robert Mugabe's regime would be able to help the government of Sam Nujoma. "We just started implementing our land reform and in that regard we have a lot to learn from the Zimbabwean experience," Mr Kamati told Zimbabwe's government-controlled daily The Herald....

Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance said on Sunday it noted with concern the news that Namibia had invited Zimbabwean land reform experts to assist in its own programme. DA chair Joe Seremane said in a statement there was nothing that Namibia could learn from Zimbabwe about land reform other than how to ensure that a country descended into economic and political chaos. "Zimbabwe's land reform programme has been characterised by a complete disregard for the rule of law, large-scale violence and corruption," Seremane said. "The only real beneficiaries have been President Mugabe's Zanu-PF cronies. Ordinary Zimbabweans, in contrast, have...

Mugabe land-grab advice - By Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg (Filed: 05/04/2004) President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has begun to export his government's expertise on the most effective methods of seizing farms from white landowners. A team of Zimbabwean "land redistribution experts" arrived in Namibia yesterday to advise the government of President Sam Nujoma. Namibia, a sprawling mineral-rich state in south-western Africa, has announced that it will soon start the forcible expropriation of white-owned land for "redistribution to the landless masses". The government claims that about 4,000 white farmers, most of them of German and Afrikaner descent, own nearly half the...

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...