Free Republic

Eldest son of the Chinese president Hu Jintao faces questioning in connection with a multi-million pound corruption investigation in Namibia. Three people have been arrested in the country on charges of fraud, corruption and bribery involving a government contract with the state-owned Chinese company Nuctech, a world leader in scanning technology. Hu Haifeng, 38, was the president of the firm until last year, when he was promoted to being the party secretary of Tsinghua Holdings, the group which controls Nuctech and 30 other companies. The investigation centres on a £34 million deal Namibia signed with Nuctech to provide it with...

One more week for the "art" theme, this time the desert and coastal landscape of Namibia, again from Frantisek Staud.

A decision to allow the trophy-hunting of endangered elephants in Namibia has angered conservation groups. Trophy permits have been issued for the killing of six bull elephants by the government's Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET). Conservationists estimate there are about 400 elephants in the Kunene region It will allow any big game hunter willing to pay about $40,000 the right to hunt and shoot a bull elephant in Namibia's north-west desert region. But opponents say killing bull elephants in an already endangered population is unsustainable and risks pushing the desert elephant towards extinction. The elephants, who spend their lives...

Israeli diamond merchants active in West Africa, responding to the report in Haaretz on Monday that defense officials are worried Hezbollah terrorists will target Israeli communities there, said the Lebanese movement enjoyed the strong support of locals. "The big problem for Israelis in West Africa is that there are countries whose diamond industry is controled by Lebanese locals, a majority of whom openly support Hezbollah," a source in the Israeli diamond business said Monday. "In effect, these are countries which are known as Hezbollah states," he added. Israeli companies that deal in diamonds, agriculture, communications and security operate mainly in...

Remember Joe Wilson? He's the diplomat who went to Niger to investigate Bush administration claims that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium, a raw material used in building nuclear bombs, from Africa. He wrote in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed that he had spent the previous February in Niger, "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people ... associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." A story that has to be the most underplayed...

WINDHOEK (Reuters) - North Korea's number two leader ended a trip to Namibia, a leading uranium producer, on Sunday saying he would strengthen ties with the country. North Korea, under pressure to declare its nuclear programmes, and Namibia said they signed a memorandum of understanding on diplomatic consultations. Kim Yong-nam, president of the presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, started an African tour on Thursday in Namibia, the world's fifth-largest uranium miner. In a joint statement issued by Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba's office, the countries "expressed satisfaction" that their ties have grown. North Korea watchers said the search for business...

WINDHOEK –The Namibian High Court reserved judgment Wednesday in the first test to the southern African country’s land reform process brought by three German nationals who are opposing an order that their farms be expropriated to resettle landless black peasants. Adolf Herburger, Gunter Kessl and Martin Josef Riedmaier were three of 26 farmers served with notices in May 2004 to either sell their farms to the government or face expropriation. The case opened before a panel of two judges in the capital Windhoek on Tuesday with a lawyer for the three farmers, Adrian de Bourbon, arguing that the expropriation process...

Across the continent, liberation movements that fought against colonial rule proved unable to sustain democratic governance. We cannot keep blaming the past... In the inner sanctum of South Africa's ruling African National Congress they have coined a word for it: Z"anufication"... A senior national executive member of the ANC, Blade Nzim ande, warned recently: "We must study closely what is happening in Zimbabwe, because if we don't, we may find features in our situation pointing to a similar development." ...The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has complained to the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the public broadcaster, over its...

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe says he has no regrets about his controversial land reform programme, describing it as a success which made him more enemies than friends. Speaking at a State banquet in his honour in Windhoek on Tuesday night, Mugabe charged the United States and former colonial power Britain had wanted to punish Zimbabwe for daring to take "our destiny into our own hands". He claimed that both Britain and the US had promised to help his country with its land reform project but reneged on their undertaking. "They dislike us because we have taken back our land. It...

Call off the manhunt, we have a Wesley Snipes spotting. A Namibian film official has announced that the actor, currently wanted on charges of tax fraud in the U.S., has been in the African country for the past two months shooting a movie. "It is confirmed," Edwin Kanguatjivi, chief executive officer of the Namibia Film Commission, told Reuters. "He has been in Namibia since the end of August." According to the wire service, Snipes has been filming Gallowwalker in the desert near Swakopmund, the same coastal town that was home to a prenatal Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in the...

BEIJING, June 22 -- Namibia's National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) branded the couple "colonial overlords" and accused them of taking over the African country when Shiloh Nouvel was born this month. An NSHR spokesman said: "To shut down a national border so she can give birth in peace is a massive abuse of power." The human rights campaigners claim Angelina and Brad "used heavy-handed and brutal tactics" to persuade the Namibian government to agree to their demands. Meanwhile, Angelina has confessed she was "terrified" while giving birth to her daughter. The "Tomb Raider" star has spoken out about the...

The Associated Press is now running a story that claims that Britney Spears may follow the path of world traveler Angelina Jolie over to the African nation of Namibia to give birth to her second child. However - a bit of sleuthing may shows that the AP may have been duped. The first "report" that Britney Spears was considering such a move came from the fine satire site "postcards from the pug bus."

A fast-moving and deadly outbreak of polio has erupted in Namibia, in southern Africa. The country had been free of polio for a decade. The outbreak is unrelated to the one that began spreading from Nigeria in 2004 through several countries in central Africa and the Arabian peninsula, and is unusual in that it is striking mostly adults, according to the World Health Organization. Most children in Namibia have been vaccinated, but most adults have not. The disease has killed 7 Namibians and paralyzed 33 more, driving panicked citizens to swarm hospitals seeking immunization. But because there was very little...

PANIC is sweeping through suburbs north of Katutura after three people died and 19 others were hospitalised with a disease that still has to be identified. A press release from the Ministry of Health and Social Services last night indicated that the disease was not confined to the Khomas Region, and that cases of "undiagnosed paralysis" among adults had been reported in the Otjozondjupa and Hardap regions. A media briefing is scheduled for this morning to reveal information related to the outbreak. Well-placed hospital sources confirmed yesterday that two other people were fighting for their lives in the Intensive Care...

WINDHOEK (Reuters) - Congratulations Namibia ... it's a Brangelina baby boom. Namibian officials hope the world media furor over a visit by pregnant Hollywood star Angelina Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt will translate into a tourist rush to the African country, famous chiefly for its huge sand dunes and vast empty spaces. "If Angelina Jolie gives birth in Namibia, she would have done for our tourism sector what our tourism board budget cannot do in a year," Namibian Ambassador to the United States Hopelong Iipinge said in a letter released to the media late Thursday. He said the Namibian...

According to reports Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt may be forced to return home for the birth of their baby due to the health of their little girl Zahara. The couple and their two adopted children Maddox and Zahara are currently in Namibia where Jolie is promoting a new campaign, the Global Campaign for Education that aims to meet the Millennium Development Goal of getting every child into school by 2015. However, the couple are concerned that Zahara may suffer from a recurrence of rickets that was caused by malnutrition in an Ethiopian orphanage. Pitt has flown back to LA...

WINDHOEK (Reuters) - Namibia's land minister has warned the country's white farmers that laws may be amended to speed up land reform, saying the current voluntary sales approach was failing to put land in black hands. Minister Jerry Ekandjo, in comments carried by local newspapers on Thursday, said "land hunger" in the southwest African country was building and new steps would be considered to speed up the reform process. Land remains an emotive issue across southern Africa, where despite the end of colonialism and apartheid huge ownership imbalances remain with much land still in white hands. Ekandjo did not elaborate...

The Namibian government has begun the expropriation of white-owned farms. The former owner of the first farm to be forcibly purchased, Hilde Wiese, said she was paid about a third of the sum she had asked for - about $500,000. Mrs Wiese and the 60 black workers and their families living on the farm will have to leave by the end of the year. The Namibian government says it aims to settle close to 250,000 landless people on the farms it expropriates. Expropriation orders have been served on 18 commercial farmers, but the president of the agricultural union says there...

On Sunday, Namibian president Hifikepunye Pohamba asked white farmers - who own multiple farms - to give one to landless blacks. He said when it comes to the issue of land reform, he prefers "evolution" to "revolution". Four thousand white farmers - out of a population of nearly two million people - own most of the country’s arable land. The Nambian leader made his remarks before a congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church, which had participated in apartheid, or racial segregation. Mr. Pohamba is the first president since independence 15 years ago to address the church -- whose membership is...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. President Bush says increased U.S.-African trade is helping to promote democracy and opportunity across the African continent. Mr. Bush spoke in Washington Monday after meeting with the presidents of Botswana, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia and Niger. He praised the five men as democrats who have taken advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The 2000 law gives African nations greater access to the U.S. market if they show respect for rule of law and human rights. Mr. Bush said the five presidents are doing just that - and noted that African...

Now that Africa is getting an influx of cash to pay off debts, President Bush is pushing for an influx of democracy on the troubled continent. The United States and others of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations agreed Saturday to eliminate more than $40 billion of debt owed by 18 of the world's poorest nations as part of a British-led effort to lift Africa out of poverty. Bush was to follow up on the agreement by playing host Monday to leaders of five countries that held democratic elections last year. "At a time when freedom is on the...

Link post, for the purpose of alerting interested FR denizens to the post in the General/Chat section, where discussion and comments should be posted: Geology Picture of the Week, June 12-18, 2005: Finger Klippe

The World Health Organization (WHO) warned Friday that the outbreak of the deadly virus Marburg which has killed 174 people in Angola is not yet under control. "The situation right now in Angola is not under control yet," Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's emergency response unit, told reporters here. He asked international agencies and local health authorities to remain firmly engaged in Angola for the next four to six weeks to control the epidemic. "This is still a crisis, and a health crisis at the national level, and requires a profound commitment from national authorities and the international community,"...

PRESIDENT Hifikepunye Pohamba on Friday warned that Namibia could face a "revolution" unless white farmers agreed to give up their land. Speaking at a farewell function at the Lands Ministry, Pohamba urged commercial farmers to take up Government's offer to buy their land. "Land expropriation does not mean confiscation, but means selling land to the government at fair prices as provided in the constitution and the relevant laws," Pohamba said, adding that to date "not a single farm has been expropriated". But he warned that the patience of the black population was running out. "We have a fear in the...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, which the United States accuses of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia, the mine's owner told Reuters. Rossing Uranium Limited, which is majority owned by Anglo-Australian firm Rio Tinto, sells its uranium to nuclear power plants in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. Graham Davidson, the general manager for operations at Rossing, said in a letter to Reuters that the company's board of directors only permits the sale of uranium for use in generating electricity. "The government of Iran has...

United Nations observers have sighted about 100 Rwandan troops inside the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thousands of civilians have reportedly begun to flee the area. The Congolese say more than 6,000 Rwandans have crossed the border and are attacking and burning villages. From the eastern town of Beni, Congolese regional cooperation minister Mbusa Nyamwisi said villages were being targeted nearby. "We are being attacked by the Rwandan troops," he said. The apparent incursion comes after threats last week by Rwanda's president Paul Kagame to send troops across the border to engage Hutu rebels inside Congolese territory. President Kagame said any...

Namibia farmers face land grab By Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg (Filed: 16/11/2004) Namibia's white farmers were braced for a Zimbabwe-style land grab after polls opened following the retirement of President Sam Nujoma. Voters among the 1.8 million people queued outside polling booths yesterday at the start of two days of voting which is certain to see the ruling South-West African People's Organisation (Swapo) returned to power, probably with an increased majority. A smiling Mr Nujoma, who unsuccessfully sought to change the constitution so that he could seek a third term, was one of the first to cast his vote. "Namibians...

WINDHOEK, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Namibian farmworkers frustrated at the slow pace of land redistribution have threatened to take matters into their own hands in three weeks time with unspecified action against white-owned farms. The Oct. 16 deadline was agreed overwhelmingly by a packed meeting late on Thursday at which worker after worker vented their anger at the lack of progress and accused government ministers of complacency. "We are going to take drastic action that will shake the farms. We will make these people respect us. We are prepared to face the consequences of our action," said Alfred Angula, general...

By Barnaby Phillips BBC correspondent in Namibia Hilde Wiese's farmhouse is cluttered with antiques and memories. The heavy wooden furniture and old stove belonged to her grandfather, Theodore, who came out to Namibia from Germany more than 100 years ago.He built the farmhouse, and on the walls there are black-and-white photographs of him and his wife, Berta. This is where Hilde has lived and worked for 68 years; raising cattle, growing vegetables and flowers for export to Europe. But Hilde's world is falling apart - she has received a letter from the Namibian government, telling her she must sell the...

Windhoek - NATIONAL Union of Namibian Workers' (NUNW) President Risto Kapenda says the government should expropriate as much land as possible in a short period of time, and without any compensation.He suggested that calls for an orderly expropriation were tantamount to dancing to the tune of Europeans and would be an insult to the people land was taken away. This contradicts government statements that land will be expropriated with just compensation. More than 15 farmers have so far been served with notices of intent to expropriate. Kapenda said in an interview on Friday with a journalist from a German radio...

Africa's despots are saber rattling again. Last week Sam Nujoma, the Namibian President, called white people 'snakes', and then Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's disgraceful dictator, called the almost saintly Archbishop Desmond Tutu an 'evil and embittered little bishop'. Zimbabwe under Mugabe has been a lost cause for years, and the Archbishop's complaints about Mugabe's disregard for the law were likely to fall on deaf ears. But that the disease is spreading to Nujoma's Namibia is a rather worrying development. Collapsing or genocidal regimes, including Sudan's, are rife for providing cover for, if not directly encouraging, terrorism. Remember that Osama bin Laden...

WINDHOEK - Namibia's white farmers are increasingly concerned about their future after President Sam Nujoma's government began targeting a second group of farms for expropriation under its land reform program. A second wave of letters was sent to white farmers last week, on the heels of a first bunch in early May notifying farm owners to set a price for the sale of their land to the state. The letters mark the first time since land reforms began in the southern African country in 1996 that the government has taken steps to expropriate farmers, raising concerns that Namibia is following...

Andreas Wiese, a fourth-generation Namibian of German descent, is preparing to quit farming. His family raise cattle, grow vegetables and cultivate calla lilies for export to Europe and South Africa on an arid 4,000-hectare ranch 50km north-east of the capital Windhoek. Last month the government ordered the Wieses to sell their property to the state within two weeks. The family have since made an offer and the 32-year-old farmer, who also holds a German passport, says he may emigrate. "We are selling," he says, ending a day's work in the family's Windhoek flower shop. "I personally don't see a future...

Windhoek - Namibian President Sam Nujoma Wednesday slammed "racist" white farmers who have claimed the government's land reform programme lacks transparency and threatened to punish anyone who evicted black workers. In a televised speech, Nujoma took a swipe at a farmers' support group which recently said the farm expropriation process was not transparent because the lands ministry did not define the criteria. "I want to make it categorically clear to... minority racist commercial farmers whose objective it is to distort the facts concerning the government's land reform and expropriation policy, that the land question in Namibia is a sensitive issue....

WHITE farmers in Namibia are increasingly divided over how to respond to the government's plans to expropriate some of their land, with a splinter group urging members to fight to stop the process. A group of 30 farmers met at the eastern town of Gobabis this week under the banner of the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative and agreed to pool resources to prevent the state from dealing with individuals. They expressed fear that if they ignored the plight of individuals, the Namibian government would deal with all of them singly, as had happened in Zimbabwe. While the main farmers' body...

Windhoek - A black farm workers' union in Namibia threatened on Friday to seize white-owned farms by force in an angry response to a new farmers' organisation which has vowed to fight land expropriations in the southern African country. President Sam Nujoma's government last month told 15 white farm owners to make an offer to sell their property to the state, the first move by the authorities to force the white farmers off their land. "If the white colleagues do not want expropriation of land, we can always introduce a new method - which is taking the land without compensation...

A DEFIANT group of commercial farmers whose land Government has identified for expropriation claim they are victims of immoral politicking and will fight it tooth and nail. Government served some 15 white farmers with expropriation notices and gave them 14 days to respond. Sigi Eimbeck from the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative (NFSI) told the media yesterday that the planned expropriation had nothing to do with land reform but was a campaign strategy by Lands Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba. The Minister, who is also Swapo Vice President, was elected as the party's candidate for the November presidential elections over the weekend. "We...

May 23 2004 at 01:51PM By Brigitte Wieldich Ongombo West - Four generations of farming in Hilde Wiese's family are about to come to an end in Namibia following a government order to sell their farm. Wiese is among 15 white farm owners who were told by Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba to "make an offer" within 14 days to sell their property and enter into negotiations on the expropriation. The deadline expires on Monday. Wiese, 68, owns Ongombo West, a farm located 50km from Windhoek, where she and her son Andreas raise cattle, grow vegetables and for the past five...

Windhoek - President Sam Nujoma has made good on his promise - made barely two weeks ago - to drive "minority, racist farmers" off the land to make way for blacks. The Namibian government has started taking commercial land for resettlement, following its announcement in February of a change in its willing-seller, willing-buyer policy. This week the first notice of expropriation was issued to the white owner of a "trouble" farm, from where six black employees had been illegally dismissed and evicted last year. It was issued on Monday by Hifikepunye Pohamba, Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation. The owner...

Dozens More Farms Face Expropriation AT least a dozen more farms, including one where President Sam Nujoma undertook a hunting expedition last year, have been served with expropriation notices. Minister of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Hifikepunye Pohamba, yesterday confirmed that "many" farms had been targeted, but was unable to give the exact figure. "Yes, indeed we have started implementing the law," Pohamba said at a press conference in Windhoek. "We have issued many [notices]. I cannot remember how many... but I can tell you they are many." The move has drawn sharp criticism from some quarters, and a cautious reception...

Namibia moves ahead with land reform - May 14 2004 at 12:48PM Windhoek - The Namibian government has told the first group of farmers that they must sell their property under land reforms that some fear could wreak as much havoc with agriculture as a similar programme did in Zimbabwe. Land Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba this week sent letters to 10 white farm-owners. The letters were hand-delivered by ministry officials accompanied by police, The Namibian newspaper reported on Friday. In the letters, Pohamba told the farmers they were "cordially invited to make an offer to sell their property to the state...

WINDHOEK - Namibia has increased the pace of expropriating land from white farmers by asking many to name prices for their plots and enter into negotiations to agree a settlement, a minister said on Thursday. Land, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba told a news briefing: "We have targeted many farms and the owners have already been notified." Land pressure has been mounting in Namibia in recent months, raising fears President Sam Nujoma might be tempted to emulate his Zimbabwean counterpart and fellow independence guerrilla leader Robert Mugabe. The issue has become more urgent because the country will hold presidential...

AS a landless pensioner born in this country, I am concerned about the propaganda, polemic and economic folly perpetrated in the guise of land expropriation or worse: 'land reform'. I am particularly struck by the fact that many of the most prominent advocates are those whose ancestors have never had any land taken away from them. Reform implies reorganisation, a new order of improvement of what is in existence. How dare Government representatives use this word while the "Odendaal farms" are disintegrating and even the farms bought by the independent State of Namibia are going to wreck and ruin? More...

HARARE - Namibian President Sam Nujoma has urged African leaders not to give in to pressure from the West on plans to take away land from whites and farm them out to landless blacks. "As African leaders we were entrusted with the mandate to promote the welfare of all our people," he said in a speech to officially open Zimbabwe's annual international trade exhibition in the second city of Bulawayo. "In carrying out these duties, we must not shy away from taking the bold decisions that can empower our people by providing them with resources which will enable them to...

PRESIDENT Sam Nujoma told over 400 delegates at the Namibia Public Workers Union (Napwu) Congress on Friday to unite and support Zimbabwe. "Today it is Zimbabwe, tomorrow it is Namibia or any other country. We must unite and support Zimbabwe. We cannot allow imperialism to take over our continent again. We must defend ourselves," Nujoma told delegates gathered at the Namib High School. He said he had not heard any union member in Namibia protesting the recent action of the British government when they stopped a Zimbabwean deputy minister from passing through Britain on his way to a conference for...

EXPROPRIATION will be used to punish farmers who evict and dump workers even though poor labour relations are not official criteria for the latest move in Namibia's land reform, says Government. In its most definitive declaration yet, the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation yesterday issued a statement confirming that expropriation could also serve as a penalty to temper what many consider as an apartheid attitude on the part of some farm owners towards their workers. "Abandoned land:this therefore means that aspects of eviction and dumping of labourers - though not a criterion to expropriate a farm - can be...

Zimbabwe has sent six land "experts" to Namibia in a move that could accelerate a planned expropriation of white-owned farms. The Zimbabwean land evaluators arrived in Windhoek this week to advise officials on how to carry out land redistribution, the newspaper The Namibian, reported yesterday. Ndali-Che Kamati, the Namibian ambassador to Harare, said it was hoped that President Robert Mugabe's regime would be able to help the government of Sam Nujoma. "We just started implementing our land reform and in that regard we have a lot to learn from the Zimbabwean experience," Mr Kamati told Zimbabwe's government-controlled daily The Herald....

Cape Town - The Democratic Alliance said on Sunday it noted with concern the news that Namibia had invited Zimbabwean land reform experts to assist in its own programme. DA chair Joe Seremane said in a statement there was nothing that Namibia could learn from Zimbabwe about land reform other than how to ensure that a country descended into economic and political chaos. "Zimbabwe's land reform programme has been characterised by a complete disregard for the rule of law, large-scale violence and corruption," Seremane said. "The only real beneficiaries have been President Mugabe's Zanu-PF cronies. Ordinary Zimbabweans, in contrast, have...

Mugabe land-grab advice - By Christopher Munnion in Johannesburg (Filed: 05/04/2004) President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has begun to export his government's expertise on the most effective methods of seizing farms from white landowners. A team of Zimbabwean "land redistribution experts" arrived in Namibia yesterday to advise the government of President Sam Nujoma. Namibia, a sprawling mineral-rich state in south-western Africa, has announced that it will soon start the forcible expropriation of white-owned land for "redistribution to the landless masses". The government claims that about 4,000 white farmers, most of them of German and Afrikaner descent, own nearly half the...