From Michael Dynes in Windhoek
World News - The Times, 18th June 2004

After enduring months of government bullying and intimidation, Andreas Wiese, a white farmer in Namibia, has decided that it is time to throw in the towel.

Convinced that the days of the white farmer in Namibia are numbered, Mr Wiese, whose family have been working the land in the former German Colony since the late 18th century, is the first to give in after being ordered to sell his property to the Government.

“After what has happened to us, there is no choice but to leave,” Mr Wiese said. “There is no point buying a farm, doing it up, for it to be taken.”

His decision has shocked Namibia’s 4,000 mostly white commercial farmers who fear a rerun of President Mugabe’s “land reform” programme in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

It has also reverberated across the border to South Africa, and sent a chill down the spines of 50,000 (editor: erroneous, as there are approx. 35,000 farmers left) white farmers who also fear for their land.

“There is something coming in Namibia,” Mr Wiese said. “If what happened in Zimbabwe happens here, then South Africa is next (editor: it has already started). I never thought I would say that. But now there is a big question mark hanging over the future of all of us.”

Mr Wiese, 32, and his mother, Hilde, 68, raise cattle, grow vegetables and export arum lilies to Germany and the Netherlands from their 9,000-acre Ongombo West farm, carved out of the arid scrubland near Windhoek by their ancestors.

But a labour dispute in September resulted in their farm being compulsorily purchased, and left the Wieses feeling that they have been made scapegoats in a political campaign which is gathering momentum before the presidential election in November.

Six black farm workers, one of whom threatened Mr Wiese with a knife, were sacked in September. But the routine labour dispute rapidly took on a political and racial overtones as the militant Namibian Farm Worker’s Union accused Mr Wiese of racism. Since then, the union has organised mass demonstrations, written threatening letters, and given warning that the Wieses would be driven from their farm if they did not go voluntarily.

Mr Wiese is convinced that the union trigger red the incident with the backing of the Government. “I am still completely in the dark over why this happened. I have known these workers all their lives. They must have been put up to it.”

President Nujoma, 75, is one of the most vocal supporters of Mr Mugabe’s land seizures. He singled out Mr Wiese’s farm in his May Speech in which he warned “colonialist, Boers and racist farmers” that their properties would be seized if they sacked their black workers. Fifteen farmers, including Mr Wiese’s were then ordered to sell their land to the state.

The move alarmed the Namibian Agricultural Union, which represents most farmers. It has expressed fears that the Government is using such labour disputes as a pretext to expropriate farms, which could undermine the country’s fragile agricultural sector.

White people make up less than 5 per cent of Namibia’s 1.8 million population. But they own more that 80 per cent of the 90 million acres of farmland. The Government has done little to alter ownership of land. During the past four years almost 600 farms were offered to the Government but it bought only 69 on which to resettle landless black peasants.

A small group of white farmers, the National Farmers Support Initiative, is resisting the Government’s policy.