By: Dwight Links
Francisco Neshila from Eagle FM’s Ulwazi program stated that not enough awareness is raised on the goals and impacts of some national urban policies in Namibia.
Neshila made reference to the second national land conference held in Windhoek, also touching on the urban land policy, which he said “a lot of people are not pretty much aware of.”
The conference was a week-long national interest engagement for various public stakeholders to contribute to the national land discussions.
Neshila notes that one of the goals stemming from this platform was the role of urban centres.
“One of the preambles or the extractions of the second national land conference was that Namibia needs an urban land policy to be able to address certain aspects of land-related issues, and we extract the relevant data from the guidelines of the national land conference,” he said.
Neshila added that understanding the land policy comes with considering pre-colonial aspects such as land dispossessions.
“When you look at land dispossessions, it happened around 1884 to 1890 and then in 1920, when we experienced the German settler programs during the war. During this period, they came in and obviously a lot of land aspects happened there,” he said.
A contrast also appears between the two periods of colonialism.
“The Germans were the first to establish town lands, which is something that continues until today and part of our title deeds and land conversations. They created urban centres because they knew that farmers, for instance, needed a concentrated area to sell goods,” he added.
The South African dimension of influence on Namibian urban planning was that they inherited what the Germans had laid down, and built their political, economic and developmental programs from this.
“Obviously South Africa started encroaching into our territory and that’s where they started the apartheid era. Segregation aspects came into the town lands, but then there was too much proximity between the affluent and the non-affluent people,” Neshila continued.
According to him, this is where the land commotion rooted from, until 1992 when the first national land conference was held.
Current Picture
Bridging from Namibia’s independence, Neshila noted that new policies and plans had to be implemented to address the issues which arose with the country’s independence.
“In 1991, the local authorities act was established, then the redressing of the land issues, and that led to the 1992 land conference,” stated Neshila.
Following this, he shared that the Agricultural Land Reforms Act was the next instalment, followed by the Communal Lands Reform Act.
“This was to reintegrate the affected communities into the farming and agriculture framework of the country. This then led to the National Resettlement Policy that was drafted in 2001, while in 2012 the government – now under urban pressure – started coming up with ways to address this pressure,” Neshila explained.
As land was very expensive, according to him, there were discussions around the value and availability thereof.
“This is when the flexible land tenure act came about. The discussions started around this idea,” he added.
The second land conference held in 2018 led to targeted approaches, with the main being the establishment of the Presidential commission on the claims to ancestral lands.
From the conference’s report, current urban and some key settlements and centres featured in this exploratory research conducted by the commission.
Another dimension that also comes about is the 2025 National Development Plan document, which outlines the role of urban planning in providing housing and serviced urban land to the market.
With clear goals set in the document, it only indicates that the targets aim to be met by 2030, not mentioning the strategies that would be implemented to achieve these goals for urban land needs.
