Beyond a recount of national struggles over land: “Securing land rights: Communal land reform in Namibia” by Romie Vonkie Nghitevelekwa

Abstract

The poor governance of land has long been identified as a significant setback to local development and the resilience of societies in Africa (Kuusaana et al., 2021). Land – including its associated natural resources, such as water, minerals, and forests – is central to local development activities in many natural resource dependent societies. It is a source of community heritage, group and individual livelihoods options, the basis for environmental health, and communal identities. Wherever they occurred, historical land dispossessions have desta-bilized societies’ resilience (Throne, 2021). This is the situation in Namibia – a country where the privileges earned from historical land dispossession coexists with the sufferings of the dispossessed. The scope of land reform needed to reduce the negative societal consequences of the historical injustices caused by colonial land injustices and neocolonial land governance laxities is ever increasing. Probing such historical dispossessions of land has always allowed scholars to understand the best possible ways to reform the experiences people have faced in the past to better the future. Hence, the search for multifaceted tools (or approaches or strategies or methods) to ensure that current and emerging land reforms address these challenges in ways that quickly respond to local realities through fit-for-purpose land administration (Chigbu, Bendzko, Mabakeng, Kuusaana, & Tutu, 2021). However, no scholar has painstakingly investigated the communal land reform (and its associated societal challenges) in Namibia more than Romie Vonkie Nghitevelekwa (hereafter called the author). In this book, the author provides excellent documentation of Namibia’s land reform beyond what has become the mere recount of the country’s national struggles over land access, land (re)distribution, and security of land tenure. Concerning its raison d’être