Namibia sings from SA sheet

Namibia’s president Hage Geingob called on Monday for a change to the constitution to allow the government to expropriate land and redistribute it to the majority black population.

“The willing buyer, willing seller principle has not delivered results,” Geingob said at the opening of the Second National Land Conference in the capital Windhoek. “Careful consideration should be given to expropriation,” he said.

The Namibian government wants to transfer 43%, or 15-million hectares, of its arable agricultural land to previously disadvantaged black people by 2020. According to the Namibia Agriculture Union, 27% had been redistributed by the end of 2015.

“We need to revisit constitutional provisions which allow for the expropriation of land with just compensation, as opposed to fair compensation, and look at foreign ownership of land, especially absentee land owners,” Geingob said.

“It is in all our interest, particularly the ‘haves’, to ensure a drastic reduction in inequality, by supporting the redistributive model required to alter our skewed economic structure. We should all be cognisant of the fact that this is ultimately an investment in peace,” he said.

SA’s ruling ANC has announced its intention to amend land-ownership law, a move that has shaken investors locally and abroad.

As in SA, thousands of black Namibians were driven off their land in the 19th and 20th centuries, banished to barren and often crowded homelands known as Bantustans while being denied official ownership or tenure rights.

In the second quarter, Namibia’s GDP contracted for the ninth quarter running, the longest such streak since at least 2008.