Africa-Press – Namibia. THE banning of foreign ownership of land regulation which is currently being considered before parliament is a double-edged sword for the Namibia Agricultural Union (NAU) who stated that the implementation of such a law would put Namibia’s international relations in jeopardy as well as chase away foreign investments, especially in the mining sector.
This is the opinion of Pieter Gouws, the president of the NAU which represents over 2 000 Namibian as well as non-Namibian commercial farmers in the country who carry out their agricultural activities on title deed land.
The NAU in conjunction with the Namibia National Farmers Union (NNFU) on Thursday met up with the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Natural Resources. At the meeting, the two unions who represent commercial and communal farmers respectively gave their views on the new draft land.
In his address, Gouws noted the peaceful transfer of over 10 million hectares of land to previously disadvantaged Namibians since the mid-1990’s is a model of transformation in Africa. Gouws stated that this constitutes about 30% of the title deed commercial land.
“Much still needs to be done, however, the responsible expropriation of land by the government gave confidence in farmers to continue investing in their farms and contribute towards food production” Gouws opined. If the draft land bill is passed in its current state, the NAU’s president said that this would have a devastating effect on Namibia.
“In international law, we are advised, the failure to comply with the minimum international standard relating to the expropriation of a foreign national’s property in Namibia may not only cause injury to the foreign individual concerned but is also directly regarded as injury to that individual’s State, which may justify a call for redress – either diplomatically or if agreed to by arbitration or judicial settlement between the two States,” Gouws stated.
He advised that instead of an outright ban, the government should allow non-Namibians to acquire and own land for a minimum of three years and invest in it. To date, approximately 17 000 Namibians are employed by commercial farmers.
Giving his views, the CEO of the Namibia National Farmers Union, Kuniberth Shamathe, stated that 70% of farmers in Namibia are communal farmers and that his union mostly represents this populous. Citing statistics released by the Namibia Statistics Agency in 2018, Martin noted that 1.2 million hectares of land are owned by non-Namibians.
He added that although foreign ownership of communal land is not a prominent occurrence in communal land, communal farmers continue to face hardship with growing populations and decreasing land share.
Shamathe said that communal land has decreased by 1% and is expected to decrease further. This, he said, frustrates communal farmers who wish to graduate their activities to commercial farming.
He concluded that even a 0.5% land allocation from land possibly expropriated in future from non-Namibians would contribute to the cause of communal farmers.
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