Namibia’s Land Redistribution Programme: A Case Study of Steinhausen (Okarukambe) Constituency in Omaheke Region
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Date
2020
Authors
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Publisher
University of the Western Cape
Abstract
As a means to assuage historical land inequities, resultant socio-economic disparities and
poverty alleviation, the Namibian Government undertook to reform the land sector. Guided by
the Constitution and the Resolutions of the 1991 Land Conference policy and legal framework,
a fractured consensus is built on the rationale to redistribute land to a targeted group. Parallel
to the reform agenda, systemic challenges to the resettlement process are growing amid
questions on Government’s ability to respond to sustainable programme objectives embedded
within land reforms. Literature coalesces on the issues of land-reform programmes having lost
direction, being skewed in favour of a few, being biased towards commercial agriculture, and
requiring review and re-configuration to be inclusive and to satisfy equity and povertyalleviation
concerns. This study seeks to understand who has been benefitting from land reform
by analysing the processes and procedures of identifying beneficiaries prioritised for land
allocation, and institutional structures for implementation, while analysing how they produce
and reproduce class differentiation and the attendent livelihood trajectories. Using qualitative
research conducted in one case study site (Okarukambe constituency) the views of the smallscale
farmers who benefitted were solicited. Additionally, the experiences and views of
institutions and officials involved in land allocation at regional and national levels are taken
into account. Theoretically the study draws from the livelihoods approach to find out the
different categories of the small-scale farmers who have benefitted.
Description
Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS)
Keywords
Beneficiary selection, Resettlement, Selection criteria, Small-scale farmers