Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa: Namibia Country Case Study.

Abstract

This case study looks at the land tenure in Namibia, where for a century of colonial rule indigenous Namibians were dispossessed from rights to both land and resources – by German and then white South African settlers establishing commercial farms and related businesses. Access to freehold tenure was reserved for white settlers and tenure security for indigenous Namibians largely disappeared. In non-white areas, rights were provided under indigenous tenure systems whose legal status was somewhat murky. Urban tenure was denied as blacks were not allowed ownership of residential land. While the acquisition and redistribution of freehold farmland has garnered the headlines since independence in 1990, many issues, problems and solutions to the restoration of rights in other areas have emerged. Land and rights reform for Namibia is not the simple task of obtaining from those who have much and redistributing to those who have little. Redistribution, in this classic sense, would apply to o nly half of the country’s land. The story of the other half is often neglected. Namibia has a web of social, historical, environmental and legal parameters that have required a complex approach to both the recognition and restoration of property rights.