WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) - Brushing off fears of Zimbabwe-style farm invasions, President Sam Nujoma assured Namibians on Wednesday that a land expropriation program would be conducted in a legal and orderly manner.
| "We'll say it's legal, and they'll stay calm -- or else!" |
Most of Namibia's productive farmland is owned by whites who make up less than 5 percent of the country's 1.8 million people. The government is in the process of identifying a number of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
The plan, combined with union threats to invade some farms, has raised fears of the kind of violent land seizures that have plunged neighboring Zimbabwe into political and economic turmoil.
| Now why would anyone think of Bob-land? |
But Nujoma insisted the owners of expropriated farms would be compensated and the country's constitution respected. "Any concerns about land reform should be laid to rest," he said Wednesday in his last state of the nation address.
Nujoma's close relationship with Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has stoked fears in Namibia that land expropriation might be equally violent and unjust. Nujoma has stood by Mugabe as Zimbabwe has grown increasingly isolated over the government's violent suppression of the opposition. Nujoma, who has led Namibia since independence from South Africa in 1990, plans to retire next year after presidential elections this coming November.
| Yeah, s-u-u-u-ure he does. |
|