VZCZCXRO9542
PP RUEHBZ RUEHDU RUEHJO RUEHMR RUEHRN
DE RUEHWD #0156/01 1281052
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 081052Z MAY 09
FM AMEMBASSY WINDHOEK
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0488
INFO RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 05 WINDHOEK 000156 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV ECON EAGR WA
SUBJECT: NAMIBIA: THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF COMMERCIAL 
LAND REFORM 
 
REF: A. WINDHOEK 69 
     ¶B. 08 WINDHOEK 254 
     ¶C. 08 WINDHOEK 249 
     ¶D. 07 WINDHOEK 587 
 
------- 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1. (SBU)  Nineteen years after independence from South 
Africa, white Namibians still own the vast majority of 
commercial farm land.  The Namibian government's (GRN) land 
reform efforts have helped resettle more than 3000 black 
Namibian families on previously white owned farms, but the 
program still is not considered a political success. 
Independent economists view land reform, to date, as an 
economic failure.  Few if any black Namibians have been 
lifted out of poverty through resettlement, but land reform 
remains popular with the majority of Namibians.  With a 
national election eight months away, politicians have started 
singing a more populist tune about land reform much  as they 
did during the last (2004) election.  Following the 2004 
election, the GRN maintained its "willing-buyer 
willing-seller" approach but dabbled for the first time with 
expropriation (eminent domain).  While some senior ruling 
SWAPO party officials have claimed admiration for Zimbabwe's 
land redistribution efforts, most prefer to argue that white 
farmers are unfairly inflating property prices.  Economists 
generally believe the rise in farm prices is due to high 
demand, but note that GRN policies have also inadvertently 
contributed to rapidly increasing property prices.  Despite 
some hot rhetoric on land reform, most analysts do not expect 
a radicalization of the Namibian program.  In fact, the view 
from the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement indicates that 
pragmatism is prevailing.  End Summary. 
 
--------------------------------- 
Commercial vs. Communal Farm Land 
--------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU)  At Namibia's independence in 1990, significantly 
less than five percent of the population (some 4200 white 
Namibian families) owned 95 percent of all commercial farms, 
which represented 52 percent of the total land available for 
agriculture.  Meanwhile, 70 percent of Namibians (mostly 
black) lived on communal farms on the remaining 48 percent of 
agricultural land.  Of the 6,292 commercial farms registered 
in 1990, black Namibians owned 181.  Commercial farm owners 
hold titles to their land; and they can use their land as 
collateral and sell their land for profit.  Most products 
from commercial farms are exported to South Africa and the 
EU.  On the other hand, communal farmers have rights to use 
land, but do not have title to their land, and cannot sell or 
use their land for collateral.  Products from these farms are 
mainly used for subsistence purposes, local markets, and 
South Africa. 
 
---------------------------------------- 
The Objectives of Commercial Land Reform 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶3.  (SBU)  The GRN's land reform program has both political 
and economic objectives.  Politically, land reform is viewed 
as a tool to bring about social justice, as a mechanism to 
reverse the colonial policies that allowed prior governments 
to seize land from black Namibians and distribute it to 
German settlers and later white South Africans. Access to 
"land" has always been a key issue in the ruling SWAPO 
party's platform since the liberation struggle against 
apartheid South Africa.  As an economic policy tool, the GRN 
has sought to use land reform as a means to raise poor 
(predominately black) Namibians out of poverty and reduce the 
nation's devastatingly high level of income disparity.  The 
GRN also asserts that land reform can boost agricultural 
output and help Namibia achieve sustainable 
economic growth. 
 
----------------------------- 
Willing-buyer Willing-seller 
----------------------------- 
 
¶4.  (SBU)  The GRN's commercial land redistribution program 
has followed a "willing-buyer willing-seller" model, using 
two different but complementary approaches.  Under its 
National Resettlement Policy (NRP) the state directly buys 
commercial land from interested sellers.  Under the 
GRN-sponsored Affirmative Action Loan Scheme (AALS), 
previously disadvantaged Namibians can purchase commercial 
land at subsidized interest rates through the Agricultural 
Bank of Namibia (AgriBank). 
 
 
WINDHOEK 00000156  002 OF 005 
 
 
-------------------------------------- 
The National Resettlement Policy (NRP) 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  (SBU)  The Agricultural (Commercial) Land Act of 1995 
codified the GRN's National Resettlement Policy (NRP).  Under 
the NRP, the GRN has the right of first refusal to purchase 
any commercial farm that comes on the market.  If the 
government refuses to purchase a commercial farm, the farm 
owner can sell his/her property to any buyer, except 
non-resident foreigners.  The GRN also waives its right of 
first refusal when an AALS buyer indicates intent to buy a 
commercial farm.  This allows AALS buyers the opportunity to 
buy the best land on the market, which leaves NRP farmers 
with more marginal commercial land.  After purchasing a 
commercial farm, the government redistributes the farm to 
multiple previously disadvantaged Namibian families.  The 
resettled families are generally given a 99-year lease to 
their parcel of land, but the government retains ownership. 
Usually, one large commercial farm is broken up into several 
parcels of 1,000 hectares for higher potential areas and 
3,000 hectares for lower potential areas, which the families 
are then allowed to farm individually.  Many of these parcels 
often are not economically viable because they lack water or 
other infrastructure, and/or are too small to sustain 
commercial numbers of livestock. 
 
¶6.  (SBU)  Local economist Robin Sherbourne, who often 
advises government on economic policy, has stated that the 
NRP has "utterly failed to reduce poverty and help create 
sustainable new farmers in a cost-effective manner."  The 
Legal Assistance Center's Willem Odendaal, a respected 
Namibian land reform expert, told econoff that there is not 
one example of a truly successful NRP resettled farmer. 
Government research has confirmed that NRP farms are not 
economically viable.  According to a November 2005 report 
issued by the GRN's sponsored Permanent Technical Team (PTT) 
on Land Reform, "the average (resettled farmer) beneficiary 
cannot survive on the income generated by his or her farm 
without supplementary income."  Over 70 percent of 
beneficiaries told the PTT that off-farm income provides the 
main source of their overall income.  The PTT report also 
revealed that government employees comprised one-third of all 
beneficiaries.  This contributes to the widely- held 
perception that the GRN lacks clear criteria for selecting 
resettlement beneficiaries as government workers are 
certainly not the most needy.  Resettled families also 
displace the farm hands that worked for the former white 
commercial farmer.  Economists argue this is "poverty 
transfer" rather than "poverty alleviation." 
 
¶7.  (SBU)  The GRN states NRP resettled farmers should be 
self-sufficient within five years of receiving land. 
However, GRN and donor assistance provided to resettled 
farmers in their first four years has not been enough to 
properly prepare them to operate and manage a commercial 
farm.  As resettled farmers cannot use their land as 
collateral, they often lack credit to purchase equipment and 
other farming necessities.  To address this issue, the GRN 
and AgriBank announced in February the establishment of a USD 
$6 million loan facility to help resettled farmers buy 
equipment and inputs at subsidized rates.  The Ministry of 
Agriculture, Water and Forestry (MAWF) also assists resettled 
farmers through its extension services and farming subsidies. 
 However, communal farmers, not resettled farmers, have been 
the primary target of these MAWF programs.  The PTT report 
noted that only 62 percent of resettlement beneficiaries had 
had some contact with agricultural extension officers.  The 
2009/2010 budgets indicates that there will be a significant 
increase in spending on extension services.  Included in the 
budget is an increase in the number of extension officers, 
from 44 to 56; and an increase in the number of extension 
technicians from 191 to 213.  However, the budget shows a 
substantial decrease in seed and plowing subsidies from 24.4 
million Namibian dollars (USD $ 2.92M) to 4.5 million 
Namibian dollars (USD $.53M). 
 
------------------------------------- 
Affirmative Action Loan Scheme (AALS) 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶8.  (SBU)  The Affirmative Action Loan Scheme (AALS), started 
in 1992, was designed to encourage communal farmers with 
sizeable herds to move to commercial land.  The AALS was also 
meant to create more space for small-scale farmers in 
communal areas.  Originally, AALS was designed to cater to 
full-time farmers, but by 1997 the program was expanded to 
part-time farmers.  Many full-time AALS farmers have 
struggled because they have been saddled with very high 
loans.  In December 2003, the Institute for Public Policy 
Research (IPPR) noted that prices for commercial farmland 
 
WINDHOEK 00000156  003 OF 005 
 
 
were unsustainable for people seeking to buy farmland solely 
for agricultural reasons.  IPPR noted that AALS buyers paid 
"much higher (prices) than other buyers of commercial 
farmland."  By March 2004, it was revealed that some 37 
percent of the AALS farmers had defaulted on loans.  The GRN 
briefly suspended its loan guarantees to the bank in 2004, 
and AgriBank temporarily stopped supporting the AALS. 
AgriBank, though, may have helped drive up farm prices by 
over-stimulating demand through poor lending practices.  A 
March 2005 AgriBank audit acknowledged that the bank had made 
imprudent loans -- loans that were "unsustainable" and 
exceeded the "fair agricultural value" of the properties it 
underwrote.  AgriBank is said to have offered larger loans to 
its AALS clients than it would have if the bank had not 
received the government's 35 percent loan guarantee. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Unhappy AALS farmers still occasionally argue they 
have been unfairly overcharged for land.  Nevertheless, there 
remains substantial demand for farm properties.  Commercial 
farm owners have several incentives to sell to AALS buyers 
rather than via the NRP.  AALS buyers can close a deal much 
faster than the GRN (NRP). Sellers have greater flexibility 
to negotiate price with AALS buyers. Finally, farmers can 
withdraw an offer to sell to an AALS buyer (which is 
forbidden under the NRP). 
 
-------------------------------- 
Public Perceptions of Land Reform 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU)  Despite the data that cast doubt on the economic 
effectiveness of the GRN's land reform initiatives, land 
redistribution still appears to enjoy broad support. 
Fifty-three percent of the 1200 Namibians asked about land 
reform in the most recent AfroBarometer survey (conducted in 
November 2008) stated that the policy has improved economic 
equality either somewhat (33 percent) or a lot (20 percent). 
Only eight percent said it had had no impact at all, while 29 
percent said land reform had helped a little bit.  (Comment: 
The survey did not investigate specific aspects of commercial 
land reform.  Given that land reform is both a political and 
economic issue, respondents may have been reacting to the 
political aspects of the program.  End Comment). 
 
---------------------------------- 
The Pace of Commercial Land Reform 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶11.  (SBU)  According to news reports some 1300 farms, 
approximately six million hectares (18 percent) of the nearly 
36 million hectares owned by white farmers in 1990 have been 
redistributed under the NRP and AALS programs.  According to 
the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement, the GRN has resettled 
some 3000 families on previously commercial lands.  According 
to the Ministry of Finance's 2007/2008 Government 
Accountability Report, in the last fiscal year the government 
only reached 41 percent (or 114,617 hectares) of its target 
to acquire 273,333 hectares under the NRP.  Only 125 families 
were resettled, as compared to the government's plan to 
resettle 136 families in fiscal year 2007/2008. 
----------------------------------- 
Frustration Leads to Expropriation? 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶12.  (SBU)  For years senior members of government and 
opposition party legislators have argued the pace of land 
redistribution is too slow.  In February 2004, then Prime 
Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab asserted on national TV that "The 
process has become too slow because of arbitrarily inflated 
land prices and the unavailability of productive land." 
Gurirab then said Cabinet had endorsed a proposal to begin 
expropriating land (roughly the equivalent of eminent domain 
in the U.S.).  Prior to 2005, the government had never 
exercised its constitutional right to expropriate commercial 
land.  Since 2005, the GRN has only expropriated four farms. 
Two expropriations were challenged in a landmark case 
(Kessl), which the government lost.  In March 2007, the 
Namibian High Court ruled that the GRN had violated its 
constitutional responsibility to carry out its work (the 
expropriations) through fair and equitable administrative 
processing. 
 
¶13.  (SBU)  Since the Kessl decision no expropriations have 
moved forward, but frustration over the pace of land reform 
has not subsided. In a March 10 parliamentary debate, Prime 
Minister Nahas Angula argued that many commercial farms are 
owned by absentee foreigners, that white farmers are 
"greedy," and many seek to artificially inflate farm prices. 
During the debate, a member of the opposition Congress of 
Democrats (CoD) called on the GRN to regulate farm prices to 
prevent continued price inflation.  Minister of Justice 
 
WINDHOEK 00000156  004 OF 005 
 
 
Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana offered the most heated rhetoric of 
the debate, arguing that when she was Minister of Lands and 
Resettlement, she had "read the minds" of white farmers and 
learned that many were "dishonest." Iivula-Ithana remarked 
that white farmers often quote higher prices to black buyers 
than they do to white buyers. She went on to praise 
Zimbabwe's land reform program stating "the people of 
Zimbabwe are well off today." 
 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
The View from the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement 
--------------------------------------------- ------- 
 
¶14. (SBU) Despite the heated political rhetoric, the Ministry 
of Lands and Resettlement appears to be taking a pragmatic 
approach, conducting a number of reviews of the government's 
land reform initiatives.  Dr. Nashilongo Shivute, 
Undersecretary for Land Management and Administration, 
acknowledged "failures" with the government's program and 
said the public has "a right to criticize."  Shivute noted 
that communal and resettled farmers lack access to capital 
because they cannot leverage their farms as collateral to 
purchase inputs, but stated the ministry was working on 
crafting policy to rectify this problem.  Shivute called the 
Kessl decision "a necessary test" to refine the government's 
approach to expropriation. 
 
¶15. (SBU) Shivute also accepted the criticism that resettled 
farmers often receive a parcel of land from government 
without the necessary resources to productively exploit their 
allotment.  The ministry, with assistance from Germany's GTZ, 
is conducting a full audit of all resettled farms to 
determine what new measures could help those farmers better 
utilize their land, Shivute told emboff.  At an April 23 
parliamentary debate, Alpheus !Naruseb, the Minister of Lands 
and Resettlement, noted that government would be providing 
new loan guarantees to the AgriBank to help resettled farmers 
purchase agricultural inputs (seed, fertilizer, farming 
implements, etc.). 
 
¶16.  (SBU)  According to Shivute, the ministry has contracted 
an external auditing firm to conduct an investigation into 
whether a parallel land market has emerged due to the 
government's programs.  The ministry is concerned that land 
owners attempt to sell their properties to government at 
higher prices than to commercial buyers. 
 
------------------------------------- 
Land Reform as Election Year Politics 
------------------------------------- 
 
¶17.  (SBU)  The longing for land by dispossessed black 
communities is deeply ingrained and reinforced by the 
political leadership.  Other than the statements by Minister 
Iivula-Ithana who may genuinely admire the Zimbabwean 
program, the recent rhetoric on land reform by other senior 
GRN officials is largely seen as election year posturing. 
Former Prime Minister Theo-Ben Gurirab's televised 
announcement on expropriation was made nine months prior to 
the 2004 national election.  Prime Minister Angula delivered 
his comments eight months before this year's planned national 
election.  The LAC's Odendaal told econoff that this year's 
rhetorical focus on land reform is "exactly like" that of 
¶2004.  It appears the pragmatists are in charge of the land 
reform process for now, and we expect that to continue. 
 
------- 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶18.  (SBU)  Having a house in a town or the city is not 
sufficient to achieve the Namibian dream; a farm in the 
country is the Namibian ideal.  Many middle-class urban 
Namibians, white and black alike, either own a farm or want 
to own a farm.  However, farming in Namibia is extremely 
difficult and in many cases a money losing proposition. 
During the apartheid regime, white farmers received 
considerable government subsidies.  Today many white farmers 
are struggling, even with their many economic advantages. 
Economist Sherbourne remarked that "profitability is only 
really possible if the farm is inherited and the land does 
not need to be purchased."  Ironically, government's land 
reform policies may stimulate demand for a product that makes 
poor black Namibians emotionally richer, but financially 
poorer. 
 
¶19.  (SBU)  While prices for commercial farm land are "hot" 
today, government's slow pace of land reform might in the end 
be a good solution.  Older white farmers acknowledge many of 
their children do not wish to continue as full-time 
commercial farmers.  In a generation's time, the supply of 
 
WINDHOEK 00000156  005 OF 005 
 
 
commercial farm land for sale will likely increase which 
should lead to a natural decline in prices.  Rather than 
promote land redistribution as a means of reducing poverty, 
land reform analysts argue that the GRN should simply ensure 
that buyers (AALS buyers especially) fully appreciate the 
full costs associated with land ownership.  This, however, 
would be a fairly radical shift in GRN policy.  It would 
require an acknowledgment that only middle class and wealthy 
blacks can really afford to make commercial farm land 
productive.  For a successful policy, the GRN needs to decide 
whether it wants to profit from commercial agricultural land 
in terms of tax revenues, or whether it simply wants to 
satisfy the desire of Namibians to own a parcel of land, 
regardless of lost economic benefits to the state. 
MATHIEU