Haimbili. Rebeka2024-05-302024-05-302024http://hdl.handle.net/11070/3855A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of master of lawsNamibia inherited a skewed land redistribution system in favour of a white minority, which necessitated the newly elected government to enact measures to redress this injustice. This study investigated the effectiveness of the willing seller, willing buyer principle and redistribution policies that were enacted to implement the land reform programme. The willing-seller, willing-buyer (WSWB) approach, together with the enacted legislative framework on land have failed dismally in ensuring the equitable distribution of land and in realising the transformative aims of the Constitution. The study analysed the legislative framework to deduce reasons why Namibia has failed to properly address the issue of landlessness 32 years after it attained independence. It also criticises the path of national reconciliation that the government adopted shortly after independence in that it deprived the country of an opportunity to holistically address the inequitable distribution of land. The study found that the major constraints to meaningful land reform are contained in the legislative framework on land, as well as the mixed economy order which undermine the government’s efforts to redistribute land. The study also found that Namibia’s land reform programme does not comply with widely accepted requirements of a successful land reform programme, such as rapidness in implementation, and consensus on the political legitimacy and appropriateness of the mode of land acquisition, which in this case, is the willing seller, willing-buyer policy. Drawing on the experiences of land reforms in South Africa and Zimbabwe this study also found that there is a need to rethink land reform in Namibia, by infusing restorative justice in the land debate, by combining it with other policies that can enhance productivity in agriculture, as well as by easing the burden on the state as the only party responsible for managing and implementing the process of land reform.enLand reformNational reconciliationWilling-sellerWilling buyer policyTransformationLand redistributionThesis