A PROPOSAL to introduce a policy to prevent Namibians from owning more than one farm is unlawful and will not be implemented.

This is according to an update report on the implementation of the second national land conference issued by the office of prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila at the end of last year.

The land conference held in 2018 was tasked with reviewing the resolutions of the first national land conference held in 1991 to try and find lasting solutions to Namibia's agricultural and urban land problems.

WHILE the principle of land reform in Zimbabwe was primarily to address the skewed legacy of colonial land ownership imbalances, the late former president Robert Mugabe and his family engaged in greedy accumulation of farms establishing themselves as the new landed aristocracy.

Owen Gagare

By the time of his death on 6 September 2019, Mugabe had became a top land baron with 24
farms in violation of his regime’s one-man-one-farm policy.

A Lao woman held since March for protesting the government seizure of village land for a medical college and hospital was released after her family accepted compensation for their property loss, RFA has learned.

Keo, a resident of Xiengda village in the Saysettha district of the Lao capital Vientiane, was detained on March 16 after arguing with police in a dispute that was later shown in a video published on Facebook, local sources told RFA in an earlier report.

She has now been freed from detention, a family member told RFA’s Lao Service on June 8.

On January 9, 2020, thousands of police entered the Dong Tam commune in Hanoi. A clash erupted, leading to the killing of three policemen and a civilian later named as Le Dinh Kinh. Once a veteran soldier and chief of police, the 84-year-old Kinh had become a leader of the Dong Tam people in a longstanding land dispute with the government.

Villagers in Laos say a Chinese-owned banana plantation in has unfairly acquired the land of 46 families in the northern part of the country, many of whom were coerced by authorities into selling for a miniscule compensation package

The 46 families sold 60 hectares (148 acres) of their land in Houy Or Village, located in Bokeo province’s Meung district. They were offered what some say is a paltry 11 million kip ($1,200) per family.

“If you are stealing something it’s better if it’s small and hideable or something you can eat quickly and be done with, like guavas. That way, people can’t see you, be reminded that you are a shameless thief. It is still debatable as to why the white people were trying to do in the first place, stealing not just a tiny piece but a whole country. Who can ever forget you stole something like that?” We need new Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Government vows to speed up return of confiscated farmland

The  Myanmar government has almost finished a review of farmland confiscated during military rule and will hasten its return this year, an official of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation said.

Have Your Say: The Draft Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill [B – 2019]

The ad hoc Committee to initiate and introduce legislation amending section 25 of the Constitution invites stakeholders and interested persons to submit written submissions on the Draft Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill [B – 2019]

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, indigenous pygmy communities displaced from their lands for “conservation” and a community leader imprisoned for defending their rights

The Land Portal Foundation is recruiting up to two new board members to complement its existing board.

The Land Portal was set up in 2009 as a partnership project dedicated to supporting the efforts of the rural poor to gain equitable access to land by addressing a fragmentation of information resources on land, which makes it difficult and often prohibitively expensive to draw together reliable evidence in support of programs, advocacy campaigns or policy formulation, especially for grassroots organisations.