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Pohamba to discuss land reform
18/11/2005 13:04 - (SA)
Berlin - Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba will make a state visit to Germany later this month, the government said on Friday.
Pohamba will have talks with Federal President Horst Koehler and other leaders during his trip from November 28 to December 2.
Namibia was taken over as a German colony in 1890. South Africa seized the territory, known as German South West Africa, in 1915 during World War I. The country gained independence and majority black rule in 1990.
Germany maintains close ties to Namibia, which still has an ethnic German population, and supplies the country with considerable amounts of foreign aid.
Top issues for the visit are expected to be Namibian land reform which aimed at transferring white-owned land to landless black farmers.
Germany has always underlined that it backs the principle of "willing seller, willing buyer".
But the land reform programme, as implemented by the Namibian government, has frequently been criticised in the German media.
A lengthy report in the influential Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper on Friday was titled: "Willing buyer, unwilling seller."
The newspaper spoke of arbitrary land seizures and described how farms handed over to black farmers were literally falling to pieces and needed constant government subsidies to stay afloat.
President Pohamba is expected to raise the issue of mass killing of ethnic Hereros during the colonial era.
Germany has expressed its "regret" and taken responsibility for the killing of between 35 000 and 105 000 people after a Herero rebellion against German rule in 1904.
But Berlin has firmly ruled out paying any compensation. - Sapa-dpa
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