By Barnaby Phillips
BBC correspondent in Namibia

Hilde Wiese’s farmhouse is cluttered with antiques and memories. The heavy wooden furniture and old stove belonged to her grandfather, Theodore, who came out to Namibia from Germany more than 100 years ago.

Hilde Wiese holds up the letter evicting her from her
home

He built the farmhouse, and on the walls there are black-and-white photographs of him and his wife, Berta.

This is where Hilde has lived and worked for 68 years;
raising cattle, growing vegetables and flowers for
export to Europe.

But Hilde’s world is falling apart – she has received
a letter from the Namibian government, telling her she
must sell the farm and leave.

The letter, from the ministry of land, says that in
line with the government’s policy of giving land to
the previously disadvantaged black majority, the farm
is going to be expropriated.

Worry

Hilde cannot bear to describe all the things she will
miss.

“Everything… the nature, my garden,” Hilde breaks
down in tears.

If we were given this land by the government… we
would work hard to succeed

Farm labourer Cornelia Rooinise
“We love this place”.

Three generations of her family are buried beneath
simple stone graves behind the farmhouse.

“What will happen to these when we leave?” she asks.

“That is my greatest worry.”

But for a group of black labourers living on the edge
of the farm, Hilde’s departure might be an
opportunity.

They used to live on the property, but were evicted
after a dispute last year.

When I ask them whether they would be happy if the
Wiese family left, they were uncomfortable and
evasive.

Cornelia Rooinise, in her 30s, has worked as a
labourer on the farm all her life.

“We were born here, and our families are buried here,”
she says.

“So if we were given this land by the government we
would know what to do with it. We would work hard to
succeed.”

Too slow

The Namibian government says that more than 200,000
poor black people need land.

It says the willing-seller, willing-buyer policy of
the past 14 years has moved too slowly, and that it
will now press ahead with the compulsory purchase of
white farms.

A revolution by the landless… might come up

Hifikepunye Pohamba
Namibia’s Land Minister
Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba is likely to become
Namibia’s president later this year, following his
nomination by the ruling Swapo party to take over from
Sam Nujoma, who has ruled Namibia ever since
independence in 1990.

In fact, Mr Pohamba and President Nujoma have an
uncanny physical resemblance.

They are both from a generation of freedom fighters
who are still passionate about the injustices of the
colonial era, and who have allied themselves closely
with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

The Namibian commercial farmers’ union, the Namibia Agricultural Union, says that about 600 white-owned farms have been acquired by black people since independence, and it says that more than 50% of arable land now either belongs to, or is being utilised by, the black majority.

Scare-mongering

But Mr Pohamba says he intends to acquire some 9m
hectares of commercial farmland, equivalent to
hundreds of individual farms, either by accelerating
the willing-seller, willing-buyer process, or by
expropriating farms where necessary.

At the moment white farmers are not investing on
their land, they are waiting to see how this goes

Siggi Eimbeck
White farmer
He says the government will not break Namibia’s laws,
and it will give white farmers fair compensation for
their land.

But he says there is no time to waste.

“Otherwise the peace and stability that we enjoy in
this country can easily be disturbed, and a revolution
by the landless – that I don’t want to see – might
come up, and when this happens it will affect
everybody,” he warns.

Some white farmers believe this kind of language from
Mr Pohamba amounts to nothing more than
scare-mongering and veiled threats.

Zimbabwe parallels

Siggi Eimbeck raises livestock and wild game in the
beautiful Khomshochland hills, west of the capital,
Windhoek.

An unusually outspoken figure in Namibia’s small
political circles, Mr Eimbeck says he supports the
principle of land reform, but believes the way the
government is now pursuing it is “immoral”.

He says land is being used as a political issue, and
the white farmers are being turned into scapegoats, to
obscure the government’s failure to bring jobs and
better healthcare to ordinary Namibians.

Zimbabwe’s land battle
Mr Eimbeck argues that in Namibia’s arid and harsh
environment, it makes no sense to carve up huge cattle
ranches, and parcel out land to poor black people, who
do not have capital and technical know-how.

“At the moment white farmers are not investing on
their land, they are waiting to see how this goes,”
says Mr Eimbeck.

The parallels with Zimbabwe are obvious.

The emotions around land, and the arguments put
forward by the government and the white farmers, are
often strikingly similar to those in the neighbouring
Southern African country.

But at least Namibia still has a chance to solve its
land dispute peacefully, and without destroying its
economy.

Source: BBC
URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/39183…/p>