New land conference urged

The Congress of Democrats (CoD) is pushing for another land conference to assess progress made in Namibia's land redistribution exercise. CoD parliamentarian, Tsudao Gurirab, has brought a motion to this effect before parliament. The first and only land conference was held in 1991.

When Gurirab motivated the debate last week, he told the House that little was known about the extent to which the Resettlement Policy was being realised. He also raised concerns about the selection of beneficiaries as well as the pace of resettlement on the 123 farms totalling 750 411 hectares the Government had acquired by August this year. Gurirab charged that the size of settlement units was too small to make farming viable.

He requested that the motion be referred to the Standing Committee on Economics, Natural Resources and Public Administration to examine ways to speed-up the pace of resettlement, determine assistance for more successful ways of farming, to reconsider the size of farming units and ultimately determine whether resettlement is taking place in accordance with resolutions taken at the 1991 conference and the national resettlement policy. (The Namibian, Windhoek)