Workers to take white farm
2004-09-24 17:32
Windhoek - Workers at a white-owned farm in Namibia have decided to take over the property in three weeks' time to protest the government's failure to implement a decision to expropriate land owners, a union official said on Friday.
At a meeting on Thursday at Otjiwarongo, 250km north of Windhoek, farm workers and officials of the Namibian Farm Workers' Union (Nafwu) set the date of October 16 to seize the farm at Okosongomingo.
"The workers themselves decided to occupy the farms and chose the date of October 16 for the one farm, not Nafwu," said Alfred Angula, the secretary general of Nafwu.
The Namibian newspaper separately said that the workers were also planning to seize several other farms from owners that they say are exploiting them.
The newspaper said the farm workers agreed that the owner of Okosongomingo had a "long track record of mistreating and exploiting workers."
"We were told about expropriations at the beginning of the year but up to now not one single farm has been taken," the newspaper quoted a farm worker as saying at the meeting.
Namibian Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba, who is hoping to succeed veteran President Sam Nujoma in November elections, sent out letters in May and June to about 15 white farmers asking them to make an offer to sell their properties to the government.
The letters marked the first time the government in Namibia led by the South West People's Organisation (Swapo) party has moved to expropriate farmers under its land reform program, but no actual expropriations have happened yet.
Namibia's 3 800 white farmers own most of the arable land, an imbalance that the government has vowed to redress.
Land reform is shaping up as a hot issue in the run-up to the November 15-16 elections.
Fomenting violence
Okosongomingo farm owner Harry Schneider-Waterberg accused the farmers' union of fomenting violence and said he had good working relations with his workers.
"There is a Nafwu activist in the area, who has been coming over a dozen times to my farm over the past 18 months, holding union meetings with my farm workers, without informing me of these meetings," said Schneider-Waterberg.
"I called the police the last time he was here and he is now officially prohibited to come to the farm," he said.
The farmer, who is fluent in Herero, the language of his workers, said he had given land to his 24 farm labourers and 13 retired workers where their families can live and raise livestock.
"We built new houses for them last year. We provide fencing, water points and vaccination for their livestock for free," said Schneider-Waterberg.
Labour inspector Noku Kariko said her office had not received complaints from the workers.
"There was one about witchcraft early this year. Workers complained to us of another labourer who practised witchcraft and they wanted him to be removed from the farm", Kariko told AFP from Otjiwarongo.