The sumptuous villas of Windhoek’s white suburbs
and fenced, and it is held by individuals with large residual communal rights.” Incidentally, in Namibia commercial
agriculture does not employ much labour. It employed just 36,000 people or about 8% of the labour force by 2005. And though commercial agriculture is very extensive, the average commercial farm employed only 6 people by 2005, on an average area of 8,620 hectares. Tat explains the high unemployment
quite disturbing that the land has been monopolised by a few thousand whites, while the black majority have no land at all.”
Namibia’s diamonds were exported raw by the multinational companies mining them. Colonial treaties signed with the West-
ern multinationals ensured (and still ensure) that the companies and their shareholders in the West enjoy the fruits of Namibia’s resources (or the bulk of them) while native Namibians suffer want. Te portion of the revenue from diamonds and uranium that comes to the country is very minimal. Te bulk goes to the foreigners who hold shares in the multinational companies.
The land issue From whatever angle one looks at it, it is quite disturbing that one of the major eco- nomic factors in Namibia that can alleviate poverty – land – has been monopolised by just a few thousand white Namibians who still cling jealously to it while the black majority have no land at all. Tis sad situ- ation has its roots in the colonial era, and has not changed one bit in 21 years of in- dependence. Between 1844 and 1915 when the Germans ruled the country, they used
racist laws and sometimes sheer brutality and genocidal methods to deprive the na- tives of their land and all its contents. “Early on,” says the Dutch UNDP study
of 2005, “the Germans established a survey department and gave out massive tracts of land, expropriated mainly from the Herero population, to white settlers in the centre and south of the country.” When the South Africans took over after
1915, they continued from where the Ger- mans had left. As a result, today “land is a central issue in Namibian politics and, in order to grasp this,” says the Dutch UNDP study, “two basic facts need to be explained: the first is that about 40% of land in Na- mibia is commercial, surveyed and fenced land and is overwhelmingly in the hands of a white minority [including absentee Euro- pean landowners who live permanently in Italy, Germany and elsewhere!]. “Secondly, 45% of the Namibian popu-
lation lives on about 7% of the territory’s surface, situated mostly in the north of the country. Most land there is not surveyed
“Whatever way one looks at it, it is
rate in the country, because without any land of their own, the majority black popu- lation cannot be self-employed farmers (or even sustenance farmers as happens else- where in Africa). Tey have necessarily to be employed, either in commercial agriculture or in the formal sector, or stay unemployed and add to the unemployment statistics. In contrast, according to the Dutch
UNDP study, though “the contribution of the communal farming sector to GDP [7.5%] is much lower than the commercial sub-sector, it yet employs about 20% of the work force as compared to 8% in the com- mercial sector”. It follows that if more land is released
from the grasp of the white minority and given to “communal farmers” (read black small-time farmers) in rural areas where nearly 70% of the people lives, the coun- try’s harrowing unemployment rate will be drastically reduced and more people will be brought into the wealth-creation process. But this does not come into the calcula-
tion of the “owners” of the country at all. As the Dutch UNDP study put it: “Te changeover of commercial land from white into African hands is a slow process. In 1991, there were about 6,000 commercial farms covering 36 million hectares. About one-seventh (5 million hectares) had passed into Africans hands by 2005.” Only about one per cent of commercial
land was redistributed to black farmers yearly in the period 1990-2002, mostly via the government-sponsored Affirma- tive Action Loans Scheme (AALS) which came into effect in 1992. Even with the AALS, the process of land transfer is still frustratingly slow because if a farm is put on the market, it has first to be offered to the government on a ‘willing seller, willing
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