Posted on 04/02/2004 4:50:56 AM PST by Ironfocus
Namibia calls in Zim land pros 02/04/2004 14:06 - (SA) Harare - Namibia has invited six Zimbabwean land experts to evaluate expropriated land and assist in Windhoek's farmland reform programme, its envoy to Harare was quoted as saying Friday.
"We have started implementing our land reform and in that regard we have a lot to learn from the Zimbabwean experience," Ndali-Che Kemati, Namibia's ambassador to Zimbabwe told the state-owned Herald.
The six experts are due to leave for Namibia on Sunday, the paper said.
Namibia's Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba announced last month that officials had started identifying land suitable for resettlement, adding that the envisaged land reforms would be completed in five years.
Absentee landlords
Land targeted for acquisition includes areas owned by absentee landlords and multiple farm owners.
"We need expertise to help us determine the level of compensation we will pay for the farms that we have acquired. We believe Zimbabwean professionals can really help us in this regard," ambassador Kemati said.
Zimbabwe's critics have condemned Harare's controversial fast-track land reform programme as chaotic and riddled with violence and corruption.
Jump-started by veterans of the country's liberation war, the land resettlement programme was characterised by series of invasions of white-owned commercial farms during its initial stages.
The land resettlement programme, coupled with droughts, was widely blamed for the severe food shortages that Zimbabwe in 2002 and part of 2003.
Of the 4 500 white commercial farmers operating in Zimbabwe four years ago, less than 400 remain in business.
Namibia has an estimated 3 800 commercial farms in the country, of which about 700 have changed hands and have black owners since Namibia's independence in 1990.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
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| 8 | Colorado | 195.00 |
4 |
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Meanwhile, there is no mention of the atrocities in Zimbabwe. And Namibia starts down the same path, and the media's response is: "Shame about Rwanda. Wish we could have stopped it ... but, you know... (sniff)... these things are complicated."
I think so.
White commercial farmers in Africa make excellent scapegoats.
Tyrants need scapegoats, witness Hitler and Stalin.
Start with the whites. When their numbers decline to the point wher they cease to be credible scapegoats, move on to the Indians and Asians.
Of course, there is always the prospect of scapegoating indigenous minority tribes as well (Tutsis in Rwanda, Ndebele in Zimbabwe, possily Zulu in South Africa).
The world will always be willing to wait until well after the fact before calling it genocide.
But then a US President can make an speech in apology at an airport on his way through to somewhere else.
PBS' Frontline ahd ona documentary Ghosts of Rwanda last night.
Were you able to see it ?
Gen Dellaire was impressive. There were good people there, but they were failed by Clinton, Albright and the UN.
The Namibian (Windhoek)
April 1, 2004
Posted to the web April 1, 2004
Petros Kateeue
Windhoek
NAMIBIA's approach to the land issue has received backing from neighbouring Zimbabwe whose own land reform process degenerated into lawlessness.
Deputy Speaker of Zimbabwe's parliament, Edna Madzongwe, commended Namibia for addressing the land issue early enough - "before the landless citizens' patience ran out".
"You are doing it [land reform] while there is time. It will be much smoother," Madzongwe told her counterpart Willem Konjore when they met in Windhoek yesterday.
In the case of Zimbabwe, according to her, the land reform process was delayed because during the first 10 years of independence the country had to follow the willing-seller, willing-buyer concept and thereafter Britain had to provide funds for the exercise.
But the former colonial master - Britain - apparently reneged on the promise.
"Because we are a poor country, we don't have money. When the British failed to honour the promise we were left with no choice but to take what is ours... which is land," the Zimbabwean legislator said in an apparent reference to her government's chaotic land expropriation.
Madzongwe, who is leading a three-member parliamentary delegation to Namibia, said land reform was but one of the key issues on which her team was exchanging experiences with their Namibian counterparts "to help improve our own system".
Namibia recently announced its own plans to expropriate farms in order to expedite the land reform process, which many critics feel has been frustratingly slow.
Deputy Speaker Konjore cautioned that the issue was very sensitive - hence it needed a sober-minded approach "so that, at the end of the day, all Namibians are winners".
DTA-UDF coalition MP Johan de Waal said Namibia's land reform programme was generally progressing well but a lot of uncertainty - particularly on the part of commercial farmers - about what would happen still needed to be addressed.
Konjore assured the Zimbabwean delegation of Namibia's continued support amid the current economic and political crisis gripping their country.
"We don't laugh at your problems," he told the Zimbabwean lawmakers.
"We only hope all your [Zimbabwe's] citizens will their put heads together and rectify whatever needs to be rectified."
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