Beyond ‘willing seller, willing buyer’: A path to address pre- and post-independence colonial land dispossession in Namibia
For more than three decades, land has been the loudest issue in Namibian politics and the quietest in terms of results. At every election, at every rally, and at two National Land Conferences, we have been told that the government has a solution to colonial land dispossession.
Lazarus Kwedhi
For more than three decades, land has been the loudest issue in Namibian politics and the quietest in terms of results.
At every election, at every rally, and at two National Land Conferences, we have been told that the government has a solution to colonial land dispossession.
Yet drive through communal areas, urban peripheries, and even past vacant commercial farms, and the same question haunts us: where is the land promised to the people?
The answer we were given in 1991 was “willing seller, willing buyer.” It was repeated in 2018. But “willing seller, willing buyer” is not a policy of restitution.
It is a remix of the land economic market forces of supply and demand. And when you use market forces to correct a historical injustice, the market will always protect those who already hold the asset.
If we are honest, the problem is not only who owns the land. The problem is what the land is doing. A new path is possible. It is constitutional, it is fair, and it is urgent: make land productive, reward those who make it productive, and tax those who do not.
