A Proposed Law aimed at speeding up land reform to reverse farm ownership patterns caused by colonial and apartheid practices is under discussion in Namibia's parliament.
This amounts to conceding that after 35 years of independence, the government has failed, dismally, to effect meaningful changes on the use of farms despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to buy and redistribute them to black Namibians.
Among major changes, the proposed law bans foreign nationals from owning farms and gives the government more leeway to expropriate land.
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The law is vague on how this time around the government will prevent elite capture of land reform which has been used for self-enrichment.
How will redistributing land to the needy be ensured rather than the perverted criterion of 'historically/previously disadvantaged'?
Have the lawmakers determined priorities and what problems need to be solved to help the majority and most needy Namibians?
Does it make sense to merely focus on replacing white with black ownership when the dynamics have changed and our contemporary problems are vastly different from the colonial and apartheid era?
Or is the bill merely to satisfy the political rhetoric of 'returning the land to the people'?
Over the past 35 years we have seen too many examples of productive farming land being bought from white owners and given to the ruling elite and their cronies.
Many of the beneficiaries have used the farms as hobbies, to party at or as 'weekend farms'.
Others were resettled for free and went on to lease the land to serious farmers in typical rent-seeking style.
Several bought farms with state subsidies for speculative profiteering.
Anecdotes abound.
One such anecdote is about then prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila (now speaker of the National Assembly) and her husband Tona Amadhila.
They bought farms for about N$5 million after the government declined an offer from a Namibian German farmer who wanted the land to be used to resettle the Hai||om community living at Etosha and along road corridors.
Instead, the Amadhilas bought the land from the farmer after the government said it was not suitable for resettlement.
They soon sold it to the state for about three times what they paid the farmer.
The government has never explained how the same land became useful for resettlement only when it was bought from the prime minister.
Now the government wants to get its hands on more farming land. For what purpose?
The issue not clearly addressed involves productivity aimed at solving problems like food security: currently, one out of two Namibians does not receive adequate nutrition, and about one-third of the country's three million people are categorised as food insecure.
Adding insult to injury, no information is provided on how productive land acquired since independence has been.
What we see are productive farms gone fallow or turned into party spots for the ruling elite and their friends.
The government says it will need more than N$4 billion to forcefully buy 243 farms from foreign absentee owners.
The priority should be to spend the N$4 billion on servicing urban and semi-urban land for housing.
After all, the urban population has grown rapidly and is bound to surpass the rural one, having already gone from 35% to half the country's population between 2011 to 2023.
Taking a generous figure of N$40 000 to peg and service land, that N$4 billion of public money could supply 100 000 desperately needed plots.
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That would amount to 100 000 plots on which the under-privileged could build their homes and would solve many more problems in Namibia than paying foreign nationals N$4 billion and giving the land to hobby or part(y)-time farmers.
The bill does not inspire confidence that needy Namibians will be supported. If anything, it will only discourage investors, both Namibian and foreign nationals.
The legislation is not all bad and contains some improvements.
But the gaping holes open to elite capture smell dodgy, like yet another scheme that will enable the looters to take yet more public resources. STOP IT.
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