The ancestral land debate prior to and during Namibia’s Second National Land Conference: the redistribution-recognition dilemma

Abstract

With the 2007 adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, the notion of ancestral land rights has gained greater global currency. However, this international legal instrument falls short of proffering an unambiguous definition of an indigenous person/community, for fear that no definition can capture the diversity of the world’s indigenous communities. Given this lack of a concise definition, this paper examines why there seems to be such apprehension towards ancestral land rights claims and restitution. In the Namibian context, it became particularly evident in the period leading up to and during the Second National Land Conference held in October 2018 that the concept of ancestral land remains not only highly contested but is also misunderstood; it is, therefore, easily politically abused. Drawing on these experiences, the paper identifies and examines a number of challenges and constraints that the conceptualisation and practical operationalisation of ancestral land claims and restitution has commonly encountered.