President calls for more farm seizures

Namibia is set to accelerate land reforms that will seize farms from the white minority and give them to the black majority.

President Hage Geingob has called for a shift from ‘‘fair compensation’’ to ‘‘just compensation’’ to tackle the ‘‘burning land issue and a racialised distribution’’, echoing South Africa where the issue has become a political battleground.

‘‘The fundamental issue is the inequality,’’ Geingob told a national land conference in Windhoek, the capital of the former Germany colony. ‘‘This comes from a common history of colonial dispossession ... the status quo will not be allowed to continue.’’

His government has set an ambitious target of transferring 43 per cent, or 150,000 square kilometres, of arable farmland to black Namibians by 2020. Foreign ownership of land will also be reviewed, he said, adding: ‘‘If we don’t correct the wrongs of the past through appropriate policies and actions, our peace will not be sustainable.’’

A recent survey has shown that white Namibians, who make up just over 6 per cent of the 2.6 million population, own 70 per cent of agricultural land, compared with 16 per cent owned by black people. Namibia, which after colonial rule ended was governed by apartheid South Africa until 1990, also has large diamond and platinummining industries.

Geingob has urged a peaceful approach to land reform but faces frustration as inequality increases. The revolutionary Sam Nujoma, who was president from 1990 to 2005, used his own speech at the conference to call for all land to be returned to the state and for restrictions on foreign ownership.

Several political parties and civil society groups boycotted the event, complaining that their views were not being heard. Some traditional leaders have demanded that their people be resettled on land that belonged to their ancestors.

There are calls for Namibia to follow South Africa in adopting a policy of land expropriation without compensation, changing the constitution.