This sheds some light on the "Aid not working" thread.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4508078.stm

Zimbabwe is in "meltdown" says United Nations humanitarian chief Jan Egeland following a visit to the country.

He also said President Robert Mugabe's rejection of tents for hundreds of thousands of people evicted and made homeless this year is "puzzling".

Some 700,000 people lost their jobs or homes in a government demolition programme, an earlier UN report says.

"This disastrous eviction campaign was the worst possible thing, at the worst possible time," Mr Egeland said.

The government disputes the 700,000 UN figure and says it carried out slum clearances to reduce crime and overcrowding.

"The situation is very serious in Zimbabwe when life expectancy goes from more than 60 years to just over 30 years in a 15-year span - it's a meltdown, it's not just a crisis, it's a meltdown," Mr Egeland told the BBC in Johannesburg, immediately after his four-day trip to Zimbabwe.

He pointed to "the Aids pandemic, the food insecurity, the total collapse in social services".

Tents

Mr Egeland, the UN under secretary for humanitarian affairs, said donors had an obligation to help despite disagreements with the government - of which the offer of tents was the most notable.

"If they [tents] are good enough for people in Europe and the United States who have lost their houses, why are they not good enough for Zimbabwe?" he said.

Mr Mugabe's spokesman said Zimbabweans were "not tent people" and they wanted the UN to build permanent homes.

Mr Egeland said the government's rationale for the eviction campaign was deeply flawed.

"The eviction campaign seems to me wholly irrational in all of its aspects - you lowered the standard of living rather than increasing it."

'Extremely serious'

Mr Mugabe last week agreed to let the UN provide food aid to some three million people over the next year.

"The humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is extremely serious and it is deteriorating," Mr Egeland said.

After "frank" talks with Mr Mugabe on Tuesday, Mr Egeland said they had agreed that the international community should do more to meet humanitarian needs in Zimbabwe.

"Our message to the government was to help us, to help you, to help your people."

And when asked why donors should fund the $276m being requested to save lives in Zimbabwe, Mr Egeland said "it is in no way punishing the government, to not help women and children in great need".

Mr Egeland spent Monday meeting people living in camps and said some of them were living in inadequate conditions - much worse than before.

When questioned on whether UN staff on the ground were negligent by failing to help Zimbabweans by seeking to avoid confrontation, he said he had raised the issue of criminal behaviour with Mr Mugabe.

"It's a criminal act to bulldoze someone's home who owned their land - there should be prosecutions."


ZIMBABWE CRISIS
Life expectancy 30 years
3m expecting food aid
20% adult HIV prevalence
3,000 Aids deaths each week
500,000 left homeless this year
200,000 lost livelihoods
Inflation has reached 400%
Crisis compounded by drought

Namibia Not Far Behind

State Takes Over Two More Farms - Lands Tribunal Dispute Launched


The Namibian (Windhoek)
December 8, 2005
Windhoek

THE first Lands Tribunal claim has been filed to question Government's valuation of farms that are targeted for expropriation.

The State officially took possession of two expropriated farms in the Otjiwarongo district, Okorusu and Marburg, on Monday.

The owner of the farms, Heide-Marie Lacheiner-Kuhn, whose family has owned one of the farms for the past 91 years, the other for the past 78 years, received notices that the two farms were to be expropriated in late August.

She did not resist the expropriation - but on the matter of the price to be paid for the two farms about 40 kilometres north of Otjiwarongo, she is now set to challenge Government.

NO ABSENTEE LANDLORDS

As with the first farm that Government expropriated and took possession of on December 1, Ongombo West in the Windhoek district, neither Okorusu nor Marburg is owned by an absentee landlord - Lacheiner-Kuhn was living at Marburg, which is adjacent to Okorusu.

Nor are the farms owned by foreigners - Lacheiner-Kuhn is a born Namibian - or unproductive land - they were used for cattle farming, and Marburg was also the base of a successful community-based needlework project that has been providing an income to over 400 women from farms and settlements in that area.

Ten farmworkers were employed at Marburg, and two at Okorusu.

Six pensioners are also living at Marburg.

The !IKhoba Textiles needlework project that Lacheiner-Kuhn and her sister had set up at Marburg 22 years ago was employing a further seven people.

With their former employers now off the farms, and with the !IKhoba Textiles project having lost its base at Marburg, all of these people are now facing an uncertain future.

In terms of the expropriation notices from the Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Jerry Ekandjo, the expropriation took effect on September 5.

Lacheiner-Kuhn was also informed that the State was to take possession of the farms on December 5.

TALKING MILLIONS

The title deeds of the two farms were delivered to the Ministry of Lands on Tuesday afternoon - together with a letter from Lacheiner-Kuhn's lawyer, Charles Bodenstein, informing the Minister that Lacheiner-Kuhn had, "in accordance with your commands", vacated the two properties on Monday, but was not accepting the prices that Ekandjo had offered for the two farms in his expropriation notice.

At the same time, a claim was filed with the Lands Tribunal, which in terms of the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act would have to determine what amount the State has to pay for the land that it is expropriating from Lacheiner-Kuhn.

In its nine-year existence to date, disputes between Government and the sellers of farmland over the price to be paid for land bought by the State have never progressed to such a stage that the Lands Tribunal has had to make a ruling to settle the dispute, the Tribunal's Chairperson, lawyer Dirk Conradie, said yesterday.

According to documentation on the expropriation in The Namibian's possession, Ekandjo informed Lacheiner-Kuhn that she was being offered N$750 155,20 as compensation for the expropriation of Okorusu, which is 3 409 hectares in size.

Ekandjo further offered her N$2 581 321,08 for Marburg, which is 5 111 hectares in size, but has substantially more improvements on it than the neighbouring farm.

Having sent those expropriation notices to Lacheiner-Kuhn, Ekandjo also addressed a letter to her 85-year-old mother, Sophie Lacheiner, on September 2, to inform her that he, as Lands Minister "and the owner of the property" Marburg over which Lacheiner holds a usufruct (legal right of use and enjoyment), had decided to expropriate her rights over the land.

Ekandjo offered her N$375 800 as compensation for the loss of her usufruct.

However, according to a professional valuation of the two farms that was done for Lacheiner-Kuhn, the market value of the farm Marburg was determined as N$2,94 million, while the market value of Okorusu was set at N$1,7 million.

In addition to that, valuers determined that Lacheiner-Kuhn would be suffering financial losses amounting to N$4,891 million through the expropriation.

In the claim to be heard by the Lands Tribunal - if the dispute over the financial side of the expropriation continues to a hearing - Lacheiner-Kuhn would also be asking to be compensated in that amount, in addition to her N$4,64 million asking price for the two farms.

MINING TROUBLES

The bulk of Lacheiner-Kuhn's claim for financial losses is a claim in the amount of N$3,85 million for lost income from mining activities at the farms.

The Okorusu Fluorspar mine has mining and exploration rights over the two farms - and it may be that fact that led to the end of the Lacheiner family's almost century-long ownership of the two farms.

In June last year, Lacheiner-Kuhn filed a case with the High Court in which she asked the court to order the Land Minister to issue a certificate of waiver - a document certifying that Government was not interested in buying commercial agricultural land that was being offered for sale - to her for the two farms.

In a statement in which she set out her case to the court, she related that ongoing conflicts had arisen between herself and Okorusu Fluorspar, and that it was decided that the only sensible and durable solution to that problem would be for the mining company to buy the farms.

As required by the Agricultural (Commercial) Land Reform Act, she first offered the two farms for sale to the State, but after receiving no answer for four months, she decided to approach the court for an order that a certificate of waiver be issued to her.

The court indeed made such an order on July 12 last year - but then the Lands Minister appears to have decided that Government should buy Okorusu and Marburg after all.

On August 4, Ekandjo announced to a meeting of Namibian diplomats in Windhoek that Government was set to intensify efforts to expropriate up to 18 farms in the following months.

Okorusu was set to be among the first, he was quoted as saying.

The Lands Ministry has not yet made any public announcements about its plans for the two farms.

Efforts to get comment from either Ekandjo or his deputy or the Ministry's Permanent Secretary yesterday afternoon were unsuccessful, with all of them said to have been engaged in meetings.

In her initial offer of the farms to the State, Lacheiner-Kuhn stated her asking price for Marburg to be N$3,89 million, while she asked N$2,6 million for Okorusu.

Those prices were based on what the Okorusu Fluorspar mining company had offered to pay at that stage.

Documents that Lacheiner-Kuhn filed with the High Court in June last year indicate that Marburg was first registered in the name of a member of the Lacheiner family, Gustav Lacheiner, who was born in 1878, in May 1914.

Okorusu was registered in his name in May 1927.

Lacheiner-Kuhn became the owner of the farms in 1989.

The food will get nowhere near the people
unless they buy it."White minority rule was a
bad thing...nobody Starved"

God Bless Rhodesia
God Bless Ian Smith

It seems they are picking on women farmers! The first lady got thrown off her farm against her will because she had labor problems and had "treated her staff badly". They paid her about 50c on the $. This new lady has a very strong case if in fact she was offered those sums by the mining company. I wonder why the govt would do something so stupid...take the farms and pay way less than a hard offer from a qualified buyer, knowing the law. This is one deal they should have stayed away from, because these valuations will set a precedent and make it harder for them to underpay others.

In SA, there is now a move in the Cape to squash game farming because it is "elitist" and uses up too much land, leaving nothing for the locals. One has to wonder at the logic. These game farms provide more and better jobs than cattle farming. And there is no law that says a black man cannot operate a game farm. It appears to be the best and highest use of land in many areas.

If SA and Namibia go the way of Zim, that will be the end of African hunting for the average guy. Only very high priced hunts will remain in a few countries. Some say even Botswana wants to end trophy hunting.

It will be very interesting to see how the court rules in this case in Namibia. If they require a buyout at full market value, that will be a big burr under the govt's saddle and it will limit their ability to buy additional farms for "redistribution".

I was just in France and the irony is nobody wants farm land there now...without subsidies, it's worthless. Fruit is left on the trees, too expensive to pick. Cheap grain and fruit are imported.

Of course if the bird flu hits, there will be plenty of land to go round (as was the case in Europe after the bubonic plague...the laborers that survived became landowners as they took possession of ownerless farms and the former gentry that made it couldn't get people to work for them any longer so, god forbid, they had to get their hands dirty.)