Ownership of land by rich foreign whites was the headline lately in one of the English dailies that seem to awaken many out of their usual slumber that land in Namibia, the little that may be left, if there’s any left from colonial capitalist plunder and thievery, is anything to go by.
What is disturbing about this headline it is as if this is new phenomenon in Namibia, whether predating capitalist colonialism and even post capitalist neo-colonialism as pertaining today in an independent and free Namibia.
The colonial agenda has been and is still about the natural resources of the country. A grand scheme of capitalism.
That has at no point has stopped with the dawn of independence ad freedom. With the masterminds of capitalism, the capitalists themselves and their proxies, indigenous aspiring capitalists, the petit bourgeoisie, at the centre of the continued mechanisations of capitalism.
Which is what the initiative by the Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB) is all about. The essence thereof being the continuation and entrenchment of capitalism.
However, the NIPDB and their and their handlers, the capitalists and/or investors as it would wish to make us wise, ultimately has nothing to do with the development of Namibia, and/or in the least the beneficiation of Namibian people from the natural resources , which after all they have been aptly awakened to that I is not theirs ultimately but that of the investors. Which is essence of capitalism.
It is common knowledge that most of the land in Namibia is still in the hands of the privileged class, the whites.
What does this mean? Simple, that little if anything at all has been done since independence in 1990 to address the land ownership imbalance and ensure restorative justice in land aqcquisition and distribution, and eventually restore the equilibrium to its pre-colonial era if needs be.
If needs be because Yours Truly cannot agree more with the excuse oft offered by politicians and policy makers, especially apologists for lack of land reform, that land cannot be the solution to every socio-economic problem in the country.
Indeed it cannot be. But from a restorative point of view and restorative justice perspective, even from a purely political point of vie, there cannot be any other solution to the land question than an equilibrium in it reform and redistribution.
Given that many if not most Namibians, especially those with a historical affinity to land, by virtue of it being a means of production, and thus sustenance, nothing can be more meaningful than land.
For many indigenes in Namibia, and the continent at large, land has been and remains, and is much more and beyond civil and political rights, which has become the epitome of freedom and independence.
But , an economic right and freedom. Albeit subordinated and sub- and under- prioritised to civil and political rights than they deserve. To the effect that freedom and independence is and has been seen as having been achieved economic rights and freedom notwithstanding.
Meaning that all other rights and freedoms cannot be complete without economic freedom and the full realisation thereof.
The dictum seek ye political freedom and all other things shall be added, which was a popular rallying call in Africa to strive for political freedom, has indeed proven no more than just an illusion.
Africa, for most if not all African countries, have been politically free for more than sixty years. But materially and/ or practically Africa and/or Africans remains in economic bondage and thus not practically and realistically free.
Because Africans and/or the indigenes are not yet in charge of their own economic destinies, well in the behest, pleasure and comfort of capitalism. With the indigenes muted in their chagrin.
In Namibia it can be said as much that until many Africans are in charge of the land, from which they were banished, displaced, alienated and dispossessed of, they cannot be said to be truly free and independent.
It is not as if the integrality of land to the struggle for land is not and has not been known and recognised. At least by those dispossessed of it, and those currently illegally possessing it.
Because way back in 1990 with the country’s independence with the First National Land Conference, its reform, meaning its redistribution and restoration to its rightful owners, was the matter to address. But it was not till this day followed in 2018 with the Second National Land Conference.
Coupled with other halfhearted measures like National Land Policies and lately the National Resettlement Programme.
All of which has been exercised in public policy making as far as land reform and redistribution is concerned. To explicitly restore land ownership to the land dispossesd.
Simply because it has not been in the best interest of those in charge of the political reins to bring about meaningful change in landownership. Nor is it and has been in the political and economic interest of the ruling and reigning capitalist petit bourgeoisie.
Hence the prevailing stalemate in agrarian reform, including land reform in Namibia. Meaning, in the absence of a paradigm shift from the prevailing capitalist mode of production, to which even the latest national resettlement programme is tailored and attuned to, any talk of a meaningful land reform and agrarian reconstruction would and shall be only attuned to the capitalist status quo.
Thus meaningless to the masses of rural Namibia. This is exactly the context and meaning of land still being in the possession of not nessarily whites but the capitalist class. Because it does not matter whether the means of production are in the hands of whites and/ or blacks.
Exploitation of the masses and workers, whether black and/ or white workers, remains what it is, capitalist exploitation and is and cannot represent progressiveness for the workers and their allies. But the entrenchment of capitalism and the continued hegemony of capitalism and its allies.
