The resettlement farm has been uninhabited for many years

Investigations by the national commission found that many farms acquired through the government resettlement program lay idle for up to five years without being distributed to beneficiaries.

This was due to a lack of adequate monitoring and evaluation of the resettlement process, according to the report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources. The committee also found that many beneficiaries of the resettlement program did not receive adequate support to engage in productive agriculture due to a shortage of human resources.

A serious concern is the point-based system for placement criteria, which does not accurately identify the most suitable and skilled beneficiaries. This is mainly because the criteria can be easily manipulated, so an assessment must be made to ensure that the beneficiaries selected are those who are truly capable of carrying out productive farming, the report states.

This means that the ministry also has limited oversight over sub-leased resettlement farms and farms occupied by unauthorised persons.

The report states that the Ministry of Agriculture must find ways to locate and relocate collective farmers with large livestock populations and undertake other projects to ensure they continue to farm efficiently, increasing the productivity of the land and the agricultural market as a whole. This would improve the currently low agricultural output on the allocated land, the report says.

Category is too broad

During visits to resettlement farms in Hadap, Khomas, Karas, Oshana, Omusati, Ohangwena and Oshikoto districts, the committee stressed that land leases were for 99 years, limiting the “real ownership” of land by previously disadvantaged groups.

One of the main goals of the program is to address the landlessness of farm workers who have lived and worked on farms for generations and previously disadvantaged farm workers, the report said.

However, the committee found that generations of farm workers were still negatively impacted when the government purchased farms for resettlement.

“The presence of large numbers of previously disadvantaged people is likely to have a somewhat detrimental effect on the program by making competition for resettlement more intense for the most disadvantaged,” the report said.

It also highlighted the long time between the government recruiting residents and allocating farms to beneficiaries as a challenge, adding that this led to theft and infrastructure disrepair.

At the same time, a large number of resettlement farms visited by the committee found that productivity was not as high as it could be due to lack of water, lack of capacity and support, and illegal entry.

By 2002, the number of small livestock on the market was estimated at 2 million, but today that number has reportedly dropped to 740,000. Another obstacle is the lack of adequate earth dams, which particularly affects people living in flood-prone areas.

More than 5,000 people relocated

Since the Ministry began the resettlement programme in 1990, 590 farms have been acquired at a total cost of N$2.5 billion covering a total area of ​​3.5 million hectares.

In 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture has set a target of acquiring 5 million hectares of land. But so far, only 67% or 3.5 million hectares of land has been acquired. Due to insufficient funds, the Ministry of Agriculture still has to acquire 1.5 million hectares of farms to achieve the target.

A total of 5,490 previously vulnerable Namibians were resettled, of whom 2,146 were males, 1,468 were females and 31 were legal entities.

The remaining 1,845 previously vulnerable Namibians could not be recorded as the Group Resettlement and San Development Project fell under the responsibility of the Ministry of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare.

The largest number of residents (2,008) settled in Omaheko, followed by 1,306 in Oshikoto, and the smallest number of residents (551) settled in Ojozondjupa.

The ministry budgets N$40 million per year to develop infrastructure such as water conservancy and fencing, while resettled farmers also receive N$200,000 each from the Agricultural Bank. For group resettlement, the ministry allocates N$3 million per year to help farmers.