Leading newspaper voices concern over border situation

‘The Namibian’ on Tuesday voiced concern over the situation along the Angolan border in northeast Namibia, where it said lives continued to be lost on an almost daily basis.

It said the tension, on the rise since last November when the government invited the Angolan army to use Namibian territory for attacks against UNITA rebels, was still not getting the attention it deserves.

The independent newspaper said in an editorial: “Perhaps because it is confined to this fairly remote part of Namibia, the realisation that civilians are dying, injured and abducted continually, does not seem to have penetrated the minds of most of our countrymen and women.”

“That our people are dying, and being maimed and abducted, primarily by UNITA bandits, must surely give impetus to attempts to resolve the situation which has resulted in this ‘small Sierra Leone’ on our north-eastern border”, the report added.

It said that the local inhabitants were “essentially living in a state of war”, where “the daily fabric of their lives is being rent asunder because of our involvement in the Angolan conflict”.