Namibia's land redistribution programme has progressed at a snail'space, with farms not changing hands as fast as government would have wanted. White commercial farmers and inflated prices of land have emerged as a bulwark against much vaunted promises for land. Ongoing flare-ups over ancestral land in cases which have been dramatised by direct defiance of court rulings are only a microcosm of a much bigger problem. The plan by government for blacks to own land is flagging, observers and analysts have concluded.