CAPRIVI: IRIN background report on the Caprivi Strip

The Caprivi Strip, a remote stretch of Namibia's far northeast territory some 450 km long by roughly 35 km at its narrowest point, shares borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, and Botswana to the south. Its easternmost tip meets the Zimbabwe border just 60 km west of Victoria Falls. The source of increased tension between Botswana and Namibia in recent months, it is from the Caprivi Strip where an estimated 2,500 Namibians, allegedly fleeing secessionist tensions, have sought refuge in Botswana. It is here too, where the Kasikili-Sedudu island on a river crossing the Caprivi Strip is currently the issue of a territorial dispute between Botswana and Namibia. The case is currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In 1893, the British colonial authorities in Southern Africa ceded the Caprivi Strip so that the Germans, who ruled Namibia at the time, could have access to the Zambezi River west of Victoria Falls. During the 1970s and 1980s, the territory was used as a rear base by the South African army at the height of the apartheid era in its war against the Namibian independence movement, SWAPO (today's governing South West Africa People's Organisation), and as a support base for UNITA, the Angolan rebel movement then backed by the Western powers in the proxy war against Angola's Soviet- and Cuban-backed government. Western diplomats and independent rights groups in the region said some of the tension in the Caprivi Strip has its origins in the period of South African rule when Pretoria trained and maintained special forces in Caprivi to root out its enemies in Angola and Namibia. The Namibian government, in recent public statements, has accused some of the leaders of refugees now granted asylum in Botswana of having past links to the former South African regime. The majority of the 100,000 population of Caprivi are Lozi-speaking and share a common history and culture with Lozis across the border in Zambia, as part of the pre-colonial Barotseland kingdom. Diplomats said that in recent months, figures of the Caprivi nationalist movement had held several meetings with Zambia's separatist Barotse Patriotic Front. "It is clear that the Caprivi movement enjoys a significant level of sympathy and moral support among the Lozi people in Zambia, especially as their plight in Ovambo-dominated Namibia is considered similar to their own," one western analyst told IRIN. Although it is considered unlikely that the current tension would spill over into Zambia, officials said they could not rule out an influx of Lozis from Caprivi. Such new arrivals would arguably not seek the protection of UNHCR, as they did in Botswana, but move directly into the local Lozi communities, the analyst added.