What do the small Murray Islands, in the Torres Strait off the Queensland coast have in common with Namibia? Unlike the bloody German/Herero and Nama wars, no shot was fired when Her Majesty's administration in Queensland declared the Murray Islands a crown colony. Yet, the two peoples had a common history of submission to a colonial power; and although allowed to remain on their ancestral lands, they were not informed that they'd been colonized. One of the oldest justifications for the occupation of inhabited land, the so-called terra nullius rule, was abandoned due to a lawsuit brought by the Meriam people, the Mabo case. The example of the Mabo case provides an opportunity to approach the land reform program in Namibia from a different perspective, at least in the central and southern regions of the country. The Namibian Constitution guarantees private property rights. However, the idea that more than one right can exist over a farm is not unknown to both common law and statutory law in the country. In this article the author proposes a process where several strategies are used to obtain the final goal: a just distribution of land to all the peoples of Namibia in such a way that it contributes to peace, prosperity and stability.
Land rights; Colonial rights; Res nullius; Namibian land issue; Herero genocide