Raising awareness of land rights necessary for rural Namibians | Land Portal

To-date, Namibia is one of the few African countries with a progressive legal and institutional framework governing natural resources and land. The Communal Land Reform Act 5 of 2002 (CLRA) defines the roles and responsibilities of the actors involved, from a national level to the regional/local level. The functions and powers of the Communal Land Boards (CLBs) and the Traditional Authorities (TAs) follow a system of checks and balances: TAs still have the primary power to allocate customary land rights. The CLBs ratify the decision of the TA if they have followed the procedures of the Act. The CLB grants the right of leasehold, but needs to receive prior consent by the TA. TA shall theoretically consult their communities on applications for leaseholds.

While this is a good framework, on the ground however, members of the communities often lack basic understanding of what their user rights and responsibilities are. Nor are they aware of the opportunities to object to a proposed allocation or to appeal a decision once made.  They are also unaware of the responsibilities of the governing institutions and stipulated mechanisms to achieve such rights; and how to hold accountable the TAs and CLBs for following the Act.

In this blog, we interrogate the understanding of the grassroots communities about the Communal Land Reform Act. The overarching objective of this Act is to ensure “fair and reasonable administration of land” as stipulated in article 18 of the Namibian constitution. To prevent land grabbing, any allocation beyond 20ha for customary land rights and 50 ha for leaseholds need to be approved by the Minister prior to ratification of the CLB. However, the CLRA is not clear whether the parcels should add up to 20 ha or whether the parcels will be treated individually. So far the CLBs can handle these application on their own discretion. This is one aspect of the Act which could raise questions with regards to its consistency with article 18 of the Namibian constitution, which has been alluded to earlier. 

In Namibia, communal land reform is of utmost importance because the communal land constitutes about 40% of the total landmass in the country. Most Namibians on communal land. Also, while the land reform has concentrated for a long time on redistribution of freehold land, land-based developments have increased pressure on communal land, threatening to take away the very same remaining land for both individual and communal uses. Therefore, the tenure security of communal land inhabitants is crucial to protecting their land rights.

The implementation of the Act using only the minimal requirements leads to land allocations being made without the knowledge of the impacted communities or individuals. Practically, though, it appeared that in some instances only few people in the communities are consulted and thus allocating pieces of land without the knowledge of the majority of the communities. This trend seems to be fueling conflicts and resistance among the members of the community.

Indeed, from recent workshops organized by the Legal Assistant Center (LAC) in selected communities in Kavango east and Zambezi Regions, it was clear that community’ members were unaware of their rights over the communal land. Many did not know, whether the TA or Chief was the only one to decide or should he/her need to consult the communities before consenting to an allocation of a piece of communal land to an investor. They were wondering what procedures should they follow as members of the community if they were not happy with an investor who has been given part of their land for large-scale investment without their consent. Some did not even know that they had the right to appeal the decision of the TA or CLB with regards to an application for land based investment where no consultation was done or obtained through a back door negotiation.

Astonishingly, communities were raising these issues confidently in the presence of their headmen and headwomen:

“Please let me know if we can say no to an investor who got land without consulting us” – was an expectation of one participant to our workshop in Kavango Region.

In Kavango, some participants even wondered why there are different messages about land registration being brought forward to them, citing an advert on the national radio and television that informs people to register their existing and new customary land rights through their Traditional Authority (TA) leaders. But, whenever they tried to approach their TAs, they were told not to bother because there was no need to register something (land) that is theirs.

In some communities TAs are considered as the very source of land conflicts because they benefit monitarily from land allocation processes. Members of the communities cite this as one reason why TAs in some areas are not supporting the registration of land advocated by the Namibian government through the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement.  For Traditional Authorities land is also a sign of power that they have been maintaining for centuries inherently.

 

The Act contains several flaws, which have been acknowledged and discussed by the government and its partners. One being that it does not provide security for commonage areas. Communal areas have been faced with a high rate of fencing off commonage areas since Independence. It has further been acknowledged that the CLRA does not take the different land use practices found in Namibia into account, e.g. pastoralists, shifting agriculture, seasonal cropfields, shifting cattleposts who use grazing areas communally. MLR is currently busy looking into options of how groups could be enabled to register their land. The persistence of these challenges facing communities, which were supposed to be addressed by the 12 years old Land Reform Act of 2002 calls for urgent actions.

The two workshops have shown that educating communities on the content of the CLRA, and thereby on their rights, is urgently needed. They are practical because the local communities are not looking for sophisticated knowledge, rather, basic information regarding their rights and responsibilities, and legal remedies, as well as the roles and responsibilities of their governing bodies such as TAs, CLBs and Ministry of Land and Resettlement.

As such, it is possible that communities can receive more of these workshops if the government embraces the LAC initiative of offering such rich workshops at the grassroots levels. The existing high level of cooperation among the government officials and LAC staff, as it was shown during our recent workshops, need to be maintained for mutual benefit of the two institutions. As it been observed during the workshop, such cooperation helps to foster communities’ into registration and its associated processes. Peoples’ understanding of their rights will help them to put pressure on those TAs who so far have refrained from supporting the registration process, and have thereby violated the rights of their people.

This is thus a golden opportunity that both the state and NGOs need to seize in order for them to collaborate in disseminating knowledge to the needy communities. It is also an occasion that the communities need to harness to be able to gain a better understanding of land laws, regulations and land-based investment guidelines including the AU and FAO guidelines on responsible governance of land land, fisheries and forests.

 

- - -

Read the original article here

Copyright © Source (mentioned above). All rights reserved. The Land Portal distributes materials without the copyright owner’s permission based on the “fair use” doctrine of copyright, meaning that we post news articles for non-commercial, informative purposes. If you are the owner of the article or report and would like it to be removed, please contact us at hello@landportal.info and we will remove the posting immediately.

Various news items related to land governance are posted on the Land Portal every day by the Land Portal users, from various sources, such as news organizations and other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. The copyright lies with the source of the article; the Land Portal Foundation does not have the legal right to edit or correct the article, nor does the Foundation endorse its content. To make corrections or ask for permission to republish or other authorized use of this material, please contact the copyright holder.

Share this page