Communal land reform and tourism investment in Namibia's communal areas: a question of unfinished business?

Abstract

The policy and legislative environment affecting natural resource management in Namibia's communal areas has undergone significant reform since independence. This article traces the history of this process and illustrates some of the advances and difficulties that have emerged in post-independence attempts to create durable tenure security in communal areas. It does so by reviewing key pieces of legislation which devolve certain resource rights to local communities and renovate the administration of land in communal areas. It describes the gains but also notes the limits of these reforms: the restricted powers of conservancies impede their ability to offer investment partners basic security of tenure, and the tourism leases available under the new system of communal land administration are of questionable commercial value. It also touches on the complexity of a modernising reform process that proceeds alongside – and has to accommodate – long-established customary systems of land tenure and management.

Notes

¹Security of tenure is generally associated with four sets of rights, namely:

• Use rights: the right to grow crops, make permanent improvements, bury the dead, traverse for tourism purposes, collect firewood and wild fruit, cut trees, hunt, mine, etc;

• Transfer rights: the right to sell, mortgage, lease and bequeath;

• Exclusionary rights: the right exercised at individual or community level to exclude others from appropriating any such rights; and

• Enforcement rights: the right to make use of legal and administrative measures to guarantee any such rights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter John Massyn

1Director, Mafisa Planning & Research (Pty) Ltd, and PhD student, School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The author has extensive experience in tourism as a form of rural development. This article draws on a recent review of barriers to investment in Namibia's communal areas commissioned by the Namibian Ministry of Environment and Tourism and The ComMark Trust, WWF LIFE and the Namibia Tourism Development Programme.