Turning Landscapes into ‘Nothing’: A Narrative on Land Reform in Namibia

Abstract

The article is based on interviews with white commercial farmers in the upper Kuiseb catchment area in Namibia. Through narrative analysis and a political ecology approach, these farmers' attitudes to, and perceptions of, landscapes and land reform are explored. The main narrative of the commercial farmers portrays communal farmers as villains who will turn well-managed settler landscapes into ‘nothing’ if they are allocated land through redistribution. The commercial farmers see themselves as the heroes on whose knowledge and expertise both the ecology and economy of Namibia depend. It is the thesis of the article that this narrative is produced and reproduced not only by commercial farmers in Namibia but by a wide network of actors in southern Africa. Communal farmers, for their part, relate landscapes of ‘nothing’ to drought, which is more in line with the current wave of non-equilibrium ecosystem theory.

Keywords:

• desertification
• narratives
• Namibia
• land reform
• landscapes