African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
Africa InsidersEconomyNamibia
Home›African Arguments›Africa Insiders›Insiders Insight: Namibian land reform & the ongoing fight for freedom

Insiders Insight: Namibian land reform & the ongoing fight for freedom

By Africa Insiders
September 4, 2018
3315
0
Grape farms in Namibia. Credit: jbdodane.
Grape farms in Namibia. Credit: jbdodane.

Grape farms in Namibia. Credit: jbdodane.

To get the whole Insiders’ Newsletter, helping you keep track of and understand developments on the continent while supporting African Arguments, click HERE to subscribe and get your first month FREE.

You can also now give a lucky someone a subscription as a gift. Find out more here.

This week’s free preview section (scroll down) is about Namibia’s debates over land reform, but first here are all the sections non-subscribers are missing out on:


Follow up: Bobi Wine tells his story

Out of jail and out of Uganda to seek medical treatment in the…

[Subscribe now to read]


What everyone is talking about: Africa, the last frontier?

Some African governments had a few very busy weeks recently, with high-level delegations…

[Subscribe now to read]


Tweet of the week: President of Africa

It was a big week for Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. First, he travelled…

[Subscribe now to read]


ELECTION WATCH: Keep up to date with all Africa’s elections

This section is now sent out separately on Thursdays or Fridays to Insiders’ subscribers…

[Subscribe now to read]


End matter: What else you should be reading

The best articles from around the web…

[Subscribe now to read]


Namibia debates land reform

South Africa received a lot of unwanted – and unwarranted ­– attention last month after US President Donald Trump falsely accused the country of taking land from white farmers as part of a land reform agenda. The country is only debating potential land reform options.

A similar discussion is playing out in the north in Namibia, where President Hage Geingob has called a national land reform conference in October to discuss critical issues about land distribution in a country where the minority white population holds an outsized portion.

Germany colonised Namibia ­in the 1880s, brutally suppressing uprisings. The German government only last week returned skulls of Namibians killed in those uprisings and sent to Germany in a bid to “prove” European superiority. In the midst of World War I, South Africa seized the territory and the apartheid government administered it through 1990.

In the aftermath of colonisation, Namibia has wrestled with reallocating land to its disadvantaged black population. But Geingob acknowledged that the standing principle of willing seller, willing buyer has not worked. He is calling for a national discussion to expedite efforts to 43% of the country’s arable agricultural land in the hands of black farmers by 2020.

A variety of proposals are being floated, including expropriation with appropriate compensation, though Geingob appears intent on reaching some kind of resolution. “Government is opening up these difficult policy conversations,” he said, when announcing the national dialogue, “because no one should be under the illusion that our fight for freedom is complete.”

  • ‘It’s true whites stole the land, but they also have Namibian blood’: President Geingob (Sunday Times)
  • Namibia to hold land talks in October (Reuters)

Compiled by @_andrew_green

This week’s editorial team: @PeterDoerrie, @_andrew_green, @jamesjwan


To get the full newsletter every week, subscribe now: SUBSCRIBE NOW

Previous Article

“It’s everywhere”: Vote-buying gets more brazen in ...

Next Article

Kofi Annan’s quest for a better Africa

mm

Africa Insiders

The Africa Insiders Newsletter is a weekly newsletter brought to you by African Arguments. Written by leading journalists and analysts, it it made up of snappy, insightful updates on the major developments that have hit the week's headlines, and those that should've.

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • In small economies, could a national currency slowly be replaced with libra? Credit: UN Women/Ryan Brown.
    Economy

    The question no-one’s asking about Facebook’s big new idea

  • Politics

    Arms in Sudan

  • Politics

    Sudan: The Intifada Jubilee

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Back to the future in the Great Lakes: Who’s backing the M23?
  • Why we’re taking the UK’s asylum seekers: Rwanda’s explanation
  • President Tinubu: An Ambivalent Record?
  • Nigeria’s curious voter turnout problem
  • Cyclone Freddy dumped six months’ rain in six days in Malawi

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksPoliticsZambia

Why Zambia’s president is adored abroad but a disappointment at home

Since coming to power in 2021, Hichilema has enthusiastically courted the approval of the West, often at Zambia’s expense. Despite his lack of significant domestic achievements and rising discontentment with ...
  • How I fell in, out, and back in love with the leso

    By Idza Luhumyo
    October 14, 2019
  • President Emmanuel Macron of France during his three-country tour in Africa. Credit: Présidence de la République du Bénin.

    Liberté, Egalité, Impunité

    By Billy Burton
    August 16, 2022
  • Nigeria: The cautionary tale of the fateful 2020 strike that never was

    By Immaculata Abba
    February 22, 2022
  • Best African books of 2022.

    The best African books of 2022

    By Samira Sawlani
    December 14, 2022

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.