Namibia country report

give regional and traditional leaders an opportunity to provide inputs into the resettlementprocess (ibid.).In terms of the “Draft Resettlement Manual”, the RRCs consist of 13 members each, with eachchaired by the Regional Governor. The Regional Deputy Director of the MLR serves as Vice-Chairperson, and the other members of each RRC are: 2 representatives of the MAWF; 1Regional Health Officer; 1 Regional Education Officer; 2 Regional Councillors; 1 traditionalleader; 1 representative of youth; 1 representative of women’s organisations; 1 representativeof NGOs; and 1 representative of farmers’ unions (RoN n.d.: 3).The functions of the RRCs as described in the “Draft Resettlement Manual” (ibid.) are:• z identification of regional resettlement needs;• z help to select farms in the region;• z receiving and processing of resettlement application forms;• z recommendation of resettlement beneficiaries; and• z monitoring of regional resettlement projects and promoting development.Despite this catalogue of functions, the role of the RRCs continues to be limited to assistingin the selection of beneficiaries. They convene only when the need arises, i.e. when farms intheir respective regions have been advertised. Applications to be settled on an advertisedfarm are directed to the office of the MLR in the region in which the farm is located. Thisoffice collates the applications and then calls a meeting of the RRC to discuss them.In the past, the RRCs discussed shortlisted applicants and made recommendations to theNational Resettlement Committee (NRC). Like the RRCs, the NRC is not required by law.Its existence was first made known in the revised National Resettlement Policy of 2001(RoN 2001: 12). In terms of this policy, the NRC is an interministerial committee composedof all line ministries involved in the land reform process as well as Agribank and theNamibia Development Corporation (NDC) – 12 institutions in total. The NRC’s functionsare not described in any detail in the policy, except to say that, like the Land AcquisitionCommittee, it seeks to bring together and utilise as broad a range of expertise as possiblefor the “identification, planning, implementation and evaluation” of resettlement projects(ibid.: 9).The NRC was not obliged to accept the RRC recommendations. Once the NRC had reviewedthe regional recommendations, it forwarded them to the LRAC which in turn made finalrecommendations to the Minister. With the Minister’s approval of these recommendations,letters were sent to the beneficiaries to inform them that their applications were successful.In recent years, however, RRCs have sent their recommendations directly to the LRAC,cutting out the NRC.Table 5 lists the institutions involved in the land reform process and sums up their maintasks.46 ● Livelihoods after land reform: Namibia country report (2010)