'Land prices unacceptably high'

2005-07-28 23:33

Johannesburg - A top Namibian lands official on Thursday defended state moves to expropriate white-owned farms, saying the willing seller, willing buyer policy was hampering efforts to redress colonial-era land grabs.

"This willing seller, willing buyer principle has been very slow and has indeed been criticised by the majority of the landless," said Frans Tseehama, permanent secretary of lands in Namibia.

"The price of land has been unacceptably too high," he said, adding that the government had only been able to buy 145 farms since independence in 1990.

"We have so far been able to hand over land to only 1 538 households against an estimated waiting list of 243 000" people, he told a national lands conference in South Africa. <>Govermnet sending notices to white farmers

He said the government was targeting the acquisition of farms belonging to "foreign absentee landlords", adding: "The ministry is currently preparing to send notices to these farm owners."

Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba, who held the lands portfolio before taking charge from Nambia's founding president Sam Nujoma earlier this year, sent out letters last 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 had moved to expropriate farms under its land reform programme, but no actual expropriations have taken place yet.

Around 3 800 farmers, the majority of whom are white, own 44% of arable land, an imbalance Pohamba and the ruling South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo) have vowed to address.

But Namibia has taken pains to distance itself from Zimbabwe-style land grabs in which thousands of white-owned farms have been seized since 2000.

- AFP