Ancestral land claims: the hot potato of land relocation

A national consultation on the land issue, culminating in the National Conference on Agrarian Reform held in June 1991. A significant development of this conference is the decision that the restoration of ancestral land rights does not affect the land tenure. is not an option. The conference highlighted the complex and competing claims for land ownership that could not be harmonized, hence the decision that land would not be specifically surrendered or distributed to people directly affected by land grabbing colonial lands

. There have been murmurs in some communities, calling for some form of restitution and calling for a second national conference to decide on this. With the approach of the Second National Conference on the Earth, the murmur turns into cries and even threats

We intend to approach our contribution to this discourse by being as impartial as possible and limiting ourselves to breaking down opposing points of view. with different promoters and literature. The idea is to highlight information that could help deal with the sensitive issue in a way that is based on fairness, fairness and equity.

The concept of ancestral land rights is itself controversial, especially in Namibia, where there are overlapping land claims and it may be difficult to establish the first legitimate occupants of a community going back at least to a century

. This may explain President Hage Geingob's concern when he asked the question to the effect that we may need to point out where we are ready to go to establish ancestral land rights. Take the example of South Africa, symbolic date of 1913, year of the Land Act.
To give an overview of a possible gap with ancestral land claims, let's use an example, the changing demographics of the current region of Omaheke.

We will use an excerpt from a paper titled "Poverty, Land and Power in the Omaheke Region" written in 1995 by James Suzman for this illustration. According to this author, ovakheruwa, which means pretty much the first people, is one of the labels used to address Ju people / hoansi who were the first residents of the region. Omaheke, before the great migrations of pastoralists in the region. [19659003] Ju / hoansi were declared to have traded in themselves and sometimes with strangers for about two thousand years, and were until the eighteenth century, the only permanent residents of the region d & # 39; Omaheke. The demography of the region was to change following the migration of Tswanas, Oorlam and Ovaherero
This historic short of the present region of Omaheke illustrates some of the difficulties inherent in the deconstruction of the concept of ancestral land rights. For example, by restoring the ancestral lands to Omaheke, are we ignoring the current reality and restoring the land to the ovakheruwa (Ju people / hoansi)?
To simplify, we are therefore forced to introduce a terminology that we think We have the general feeling that when people talk about ancestral land rights, they mean mostly the land rights of those who have been dispossessed of their land in the colonial era, including the German occupation and that of the South African apartheid regime. If this is the case, we can change focus and focus on the victims of land dispossession by colonial regimes that we will later refer to as colonized colonies (CDC).
These groups are easy to identify and we can put a stamp date to it. After this detour from ancestral land rights, everything we discuss below will be based on the concept of CDC.

After outlining the premise of this article, we will now focus on the different nuances of opinion studied by the CDC. different stakeholders. In doing so, we will confine ourselves to the opinions examined, without any value judgment, in one way or another.

Supporters of restitution are generally of the opinion that the resolution to dismiss claims of aboriginal land rights during the first National Land Conference should have been supplemented by the creation of the CDC, l & # 39; one of the priority categories of the National Resettlement Program (NRP).

Those who support this view have argued that for national reconciliation to work, it is not enough to transfer white ownership to blacks but also to address the historical differences formed by differential land dispossession.
There is also a more radical view that only those who have suffered the dispossession should be considered beneficiaries of the NRP

is thwarted by those who claim that the liberation war concerns the land and was opposed by all Namibians, because struggles have also affected all colonized communities. They further argue that not all groups have suffered the same thing in terms of the sacrifices of their lives.

There are also those who believe that building an integrated Namibian nation from a system characterized by spatially and politically divided ethnic homelands should take precedence over specific restitution demands. For proponents of this view, access to historical facts and contradictions could perpetuate past divisions. They will therefore prefer that agrarian reform and the NRP be used as tools for national reconciliation, building national unity and integrated nation.

In reflecting on the question of restitution, it will be useful to draw lessons from experience. our neighbors, South Africa. By doing this, we will avoid traps and repeat the same error. To do this, we would like to draw on a well-researched article by Bertus De Villiers (Konrad Adenauer Foundation • Occasional Papers • Johannesburg • April 2003) in which he compares experiences of agrarian reform in Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa and South Africa. in Australia. the frustrations expressed with regard to the restitution process in South Africa. His studies have shown that ancestral land rights require rigorous excavation and that they are contradictory in nature.

Before concluding this section, we wish to urge all stakeholders to address this potentially conflictual issue with cool heads and a feeling of patriotism devoid of anger and hatred.

As the October conference begins with the singing of the national anthem, we can honestly claim to give together our love and loyalty in unity, if we sacrifice the interest to advance our parish program.