The Sunday News
AFRICAN resources should belong to Africans and no one else. Except those we invite as friends, friends we shall have yes, but imperialists and colonialists, no. Africa is for Africans, let us sing.”
These were powerful words, as always, coming from an icon and one of the pioneers of the liberation of the African continent, President Mugabe when addressing the African Union in Ethiopia last year.
The President reminded delegates that the continent is blessed with vast natural resources and those natural resources should benefit the sons and daughters of the continent, which of course was one of the reasons why many took arms of war to drive away imperialists from the continent. The idea was not only to assume black majority rule, but also to make sure that Africans take charge of their natural resources and have a say on the economic front.
This was the reason why President Mugabe championed the Land Reform Programme which saw millions of families in Zimbabwe being resettled in land suitable for agriculture and many Zimbabweans making it into the lucrative farming business of all sorts. The success of the Land Reform Programme at the turn of the new millennium served as a torch bearer for many African nations who have followed suit, coming with laws to take land from the minority whites and give to blacks, who were displaced during the era of colonialism and placed in dry land unsuitable for crop and animal production.
The South African government is in the process of parceling land to its rightful owners. Parliament has since passed the law which will allow the ANC government to legally redistribute land. The new “Expropriation Act” does away with the previous “willing seller, willing buyer” arrangement which has proved to be ineffective, as white commercial farmers have held on to the land, despite numerous pleas from Government to sell part of the land to the majority.
Last week, the Namibian government also tabled a new land ownership bill that seeks to bar foreigners from owning agricultural, commercial and communal lands. The Land Bill of 2016, tabled in Parliament by lands minister Utoni Nujoma, proposed a raft of amendments to the Agricultural Commercial Land Reform Act of 1995 and the Communal Land Reform Act of 2002
Nujoma said if passed without amendment, the bill would complement the expropriation laws gazetted by his ministry on 1 September, 2016 to compliment the willing-buyer, willing-seller clause which requires farmers to offer their land to government before considering other potential buyers. According to figures from the Ministry of Agriculture in Namibia, 141 of the 281 foreigners who own prime land in Namibia are Germans. In addition, recently, Namibia started public consultations on the New Equitable Economic Empowerment Bill, which would also require all white-owned businesses to cede at least 50 percent of management positions to locals.
All these manoeuvres are meant to strike a balance between the distribution of resources and wealth, and also give the majority blacks, who for a long time under colonialism, were denied a chance to own land or businesses, and only being used as cheap labour to enrich their white masters. We note that our fellow neighbours are following in the footsteps of a great man, President Mugabe, who has never faltered on the pledge of liberation stalwarts of his generation to liberation Africa in all spheres of life.
