Namibia imports over 60% of required food items from South
Africa and this makes Namibia a net food importer. The local food supply/the
country's capacity to feed its population is deficient, because of inadequate investment
in agriculture and lack of land provided for agricultural production.
Namibia’s health minister Dr. Bernhard Haufiku criticized theplanned tobacco plantation in the Zambezi Region, in the process calling
on all health conscious Namibians to join the fight against it. The tobacco
plantation project is being fronted by Swapo Party big shot Armas Amukwiyu and
his Chinese partners through their company Namibia Oriental Tobacco cc. The
company applied for 10 000 hectares in the Zambezi Region to grow tobacco and
maize already. Amukwiyu is a close associate of President Dr. Hage Geingob, a
relationship which could further boost his chances to get the land.
Villagers in the area expressed concern over the tobacco
project saying the plantation will curtail the grazing land for their
livestock.
Suspended Swapo youth leader Job Amupanda, together with
George Kambala and Dimbulukeni Nauyoma, who started the Affirmative Repositioning
movement which seeks to help address the land issue in the country, objected to
the land being used for tobacco production.
In their objection, the trio said: “In 2005 the Namibian
National Assembly unanimously ratified the World Health Organisation Framework
Convention for tobacco control whose objectives include protecting present and
future generations from the devastating health, social, environmental and
economic consequences of tobacco consumption.”
They further said Namibia has a serious food problem. “It is our
submission that to allocate more land for tobacco than for food is a deviation
from the policy direction taken by the Namibian government through its ministry
of agriculture, which leans towards eradicating the country's capacity to
provide established food security and adequate levels of nutrition.”
The three also objected the allocation of land to
foreigners. Amupanda said: “It cannot be correct that our most fertile land is
used to produce drugs and not food.”
He said it is also alarming that government is distributing
land to foreigners even in villages, adding “that tobacco contains nicotine,
correlated with a dangerous condition called schizophrenia”. Amupanda said although government speaks of
banning foreign ownership, “politicians are awarding land to foreigners under
the table”. “We take this principled action on realising that our country is
speedily and scandalously being sold while the future generation is tricked
into singing songs and clapping hands, waiting for a fictional year called
'2030' where all our problems will apparently be solved; probably by ghosts
only known to the political elite,” he concluded.
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