What is land reform all about, or what could it be?

Over the past few months, these essays in Market Watch have attempted to shed light on features of Namibian livelihoods and land that are not well understood or that are often disregarded.

Among other things, the articles described the poor soils and low potential for crop and other agriculture over much of the country; how most Namibians are moving from rural areas to urban lifestyles in search of cash security, not food security; how most livestock do not produce revenue, but are used as savings and capital; and the multiple values of property ownership denied to about two-thirds of all Namibian families. These are all big issues that affect much of our land. And they are important to most Namibian lives.

The essays have also sought to raise questions that require objective answers if all citizens are to have opportunities of a decent living. We need to be honest about why the majority of Namibians can’t own land where they now live, how so many First Nation Namibians (a.k.a. San or Bushmen) were dispossessed of their land rights since 1990; why most rural families in communal areas earn little or no income from their farming activities, or why we reward traditional authorities with exclusive, often tradable rights over communal land.

The essays have discussed important considerations surrounding land reform, but have said little about land reform itself … who counts and who doesn’t in the debate, what land matters and what doesn’t, who is accountable and who not, and who may win and who could lose.

Land reform is selective

Most discussions and arguments about land reform are narrow, focused largely on the so-called politics of land. This is an opaque, polite way of saying that land is about power and wealth. More specifically, land reform is largely about transferring farms from several thousand previously advantaged people to several thousand mostly presently advantaged people. That’s the main goal, and it affects less than 3% of all Namibian families.

The remaining 97% of households derive virtually no benefit from land reform. By contrast, the direct and indirect economic costs of land reform may bring them some hardship. Sadly, many recipients of resettlement farms are not farmers, and most farms are too small to function as economically productive farming units.

Two arguments justify the repossession of freehold land: to restore ancestral land rights and to achieve equality. It is important to note that it is the ancestral land rights of only some groups that matter. Those of marginalised San and other groups are unimportant. Their land rights were either lost in the distant past, or their recent losses after 1990 are deemed legitimate because they were approved by traditional authorities. No one seems to care! Some land rights are worth repossessing, others are not.

And two arguments are offered to stir up populist demand for land. One is the idea that every family can make a living from farming, despite the fact that most land can only be farmed profitably if the farms are big, the farmers are serious, and the farming methods used are appropriate. (This is even true for mahangu, where several hundred hectares are needed per farm if it is to be profitable and provide a decent income).

The second argument is that every family needs a piece of rural land, which it can call home. That ideal is harder to counter, but how much productive land would be left if the whole county was carved into plots? As impractical as both ideas are, politicians exploit them to raise disingenuous expectations.

An advantage of so much focus on freehold farms is that other pressing issues can be swept aside, excluded from the public eye and debate. Then, there is no need to be bothered by other land rights, land values and uses, recent expropriations, household poverty, or the massive growth of squatter settlements where hundreds of thousands of Namibians have no land or security, and few – if any – services. Politicians and populists can happily waddle forth, oblivious of the pain that affects the great majority of Namibians.

Land reform is not about equality

It is widely claimed that land reform is about equalising land ownership. We are told too that the liberation war was about land, and thus we expect much to have been done to increase equality since independence. True, black ownership of large freehold farms has increased proportionally, and so equality among the relatively few freehold farm owners has increased. But the exact opposite is true for class divisions among the great majority of Namibians.

First, land occupation in communal areas is now far more skewed than before. Vast areas previously open as safety nets for poorer local residents have been appropriated for the exclusive use of tens of thousands of cattle belonging to wealthy urban owners. Many other open areas have been expropriated into hundreds of individually fenced off farms that enclose commonage grazing and waterholes. For example, perhaps a quarter or more of communal Otjozondjupa, Oshikoto, and Omaheke are effectively owned by a several hundred families in each region. Worse still, over half of Kavango East and Kavango West is owned by about 400 hundred families, while close to 31 000 families in rural areas of these two regions are barred from even having customary land rights! What clearer signs do we need to show that the Namibian commons have failed – enslaved to a few.

Second and at the same time, property and housing in urban areas has become extremely unequal. In 1991, 88% of all urban homes were formal, brick houses while only 12% were shacks. That proportion of informal shacks rose to 32% in 2011, and now stands at about 41%. At current rates of increase, there will be more shacks than formal houses in urban areas by 2025.

Namibia’s policies on land and land reform hardly play to the needs of the majority. Indeed, much is to their detriment: no commercial or investment rights in communal land; almost no access to affordable urban land; and communal land a free for all and the rich! Looking forwards, will Namibia continue along an emotive, political path, or one endowed with practical considerations and ethical fortitude?

What for the future?

Let us imagine a land conference in Namibia where the deliberations are guided by human rights activists, compassionate leaders, and specialist scientists who understand agronomy, underground water, household economies, societies, climate, poverty, urbanisation, agricultural economics and pasture science. In attendance would be politicians who apply their minds to facts before making decisions that improve the livelihoods of the people they represent.

I suspect that delegates to this conference would make these sorts of decisions about land reform in Namibia:

· All Namibians and all land rights would be treated equally before the law. The continued dispossession of San and other poor people would be stopped immediately.

· All citizens may buy, sell and rent land anywhere in Namibia, and free from any barrier based on tribal, class or ethnic considerations.

· Those living on and using the land would enjoy full ownership rights, giving them incentives to develop and manage their properties in accordance with their wishes and the possibilities offered by their land.

· Property sizes in both rural and urban areas would be determined according to what is economically viable and productive according to the reasonable needs of their owners and the nation. The allocation of small farms which perpetuate poverty and dependency will be discontinued.

· Recognising the low productive potential of most Namibian land for agriculture and other rural economic activities, urban migration and economic growth and development in urban areas would be encouraged. A related goal is for greater numbers of Namibians to have access to improved services in urban centres.

· For those in need, plots of urban land would be provided for free as a matter of urgency. The plots would be fully owned by the recipients.

· All Namibian land is to be administered by accountable officials elected or appointed for their expertise in managing land in the public interest using the most reliable and modern methods to document land rights. Divisions between communal, customary land and modern land rights and management would be abolished, just as the Namibian state abolished apartheid in 1990.

· Measures would be pursued to convert dormant capital (in the form of livestock and land) into productive revenue - which would contribute to the economy and to the owners of the livestock and land.

· The economic value of all Namibian land would be developed sustainably for the benefit of the families who reside there and own the land, and also for all citizens to benefit from the use of public taxes derived from land production.

· All policies, programmes and legal provisions regarding land would be guided by the overall desire for Namibia to provide all its citizens with a decent living while using land sustainably. Barriers to that goal must be removed with immediate effect.

· Any policy guided by assumptions that rural and/or lower-class citizens have lesser needs for property, prosperity and prospects for the future would be declared null and void.

Their final statement might read: We, the delegates to this historic land conference, declare our wish for further provisions in the years to come that will continue to make Namibia better, and Namibians happier.