Namibia country report

garden and planted for themselves, but they pooled labour to help each other. When thetime came for weeding, they weeded all their plots. If one of them was away from the farmat weeding time, the others weeded and watered the absent person’s garden. After sellingproduce, each member of the team gave the other members a small share of the proceeds.Contrary to their experience with the communal garden, there were no quarrels among them.The same principles were applied for dryland cropping. Elfrieda had her own piece of landfor cultivation and obtained seed from the government. When short of seed, she obtainedsome from the father of her children. She was able to carry out all the tasks associated withcultivation by means of pooled family labour, her team consisting of her sister, her grownupchildren and the father of her younger children. The team composition was always thesame. They used the government tractor to plough their land if they were able to pay for thediesel; the MLR only provided fuel for ploughing the communal garden.Not all beneficiaries were blessed with enough labour to cultivate their small rain-fed plots,as the story of 23-year-old Gabriel illustrates. In 2005 he obtained a small parcel of land ofabout 0.5 ha for dryland cultivation. It was allocated to him by the Skoonheid ResettlementDevelopment Committee rather than the MLR because he was unemployed. He hoped thatthis land would improve his livelihood, but instead found himself in a ‘poverty trap’: helacked money to buy seed, and the only solution was to do piece work and use his earningsto buy seed, but this meant neglecting his garden which reduced his output.In 2007/08 he had one of the lowest yields of all the dryland farmers on the project. Heharvested only one 50 kg bag of maize and two bags of beans which did not suffice even tofeed himself and his child, let alone sell. His explanation for this sorry state of affairs wasthat he did not have enough seed and his land was too small, but he also faced two othermajor constraints: a shortage of household and family labour; and the need to go out andwork to obtain cash to buy basic foodstuffs and other items while his crops were growing.During the early part of 2008 when labour was required to weed his maize, Gabriel leftSkoonheid to do piece work on a commercial farm. He knew that his absence would impactnegatively on his harvest, but he had no choice as there was no food left in his house. Hereturned to find that most of his maize had been burnt by weeds and his beans had driedup. In addition, goats and cattle had eaten some of his crops. His mother had helped a bit,but could not devote all her time to his land as she also helped his father. His wife had leftto visit her father on a commercial farm. The latter fed his wife while she visited him andalso gave her some food to take back to Skoonheid. Apart from his close family members,nobody on the project was prepared to help him: “People do not help each other on the farm.”For some beneficiaries, a lack of water limited vegetable production. John, for example, hada small garden at a cattle post at Drimiopsis. He planted maize, pumpkin, spanspek andcarrots, using borehole water pumped with a diesel engine. But he struggled to contributecash for buying the diesel. He could water his crops only if the farmers using the boreholehad diesel and the reservoir was full. At the time of the field visit, his carrots had dried upand he had to replant. He had to buy all his seed which he considered to be expensive. HisLivelihoods after Section Land Reform: B ● 6. Group Namibia Resettlement country report Schemes (2010) ● 141