Govt urged to review 2018 border treaty with Botswana

The Namibian Lives Matter (NLMM) movement has implored the government to engage the Botswana government on considering the impact of the 2018 border treaty on the residents of the Zambezi region.

In 2018, president Hage Geingob and the former president of Botswana, Ian Khama, signed the historic Boundary Treaty, which reaffirmed colonial delimitation and clearly outlined the borders between the two countries.

Locals living along the Chobe and Kwando rivers are claiming they have been harassed constantly since independence at the hands of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF).

Some 37 Namibians have been shot and killed by BDF soldiers on suspicion of being poachers.

The situation was exacerbated by the signing of the 2018 border treaty between Namibia and Botswana, as Zambezi residents feel their ancestral land is being taken by Botswana, the movement says.

In light of this dispute the parliamentary standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and security undertook a two-week-long fact-finding mission to the Zambezi region to assess the conditions under which local communities living along the border live and to interrogate and understand the effects of the treaty.

The committee’s findings, which were released on Wednesday, stated that the Namibian government has not implemented the instruments of rectification required for the infamous 2018 border treaty to be implemented.

However, Botswana has seemingly started with the implementation of the treaty, the report has revealed.

In reaction to this report, NLMM spokesperson Sylvester Kabajani said it was the movement’s wish that president Hage Geingob undertake this assignment on the Namibia/Botswana joint commission.

Additionally, the movement is in support of the recommendation of the parliamentary standing committee on the ministry of international relations and cooperation to open a consulate at Kasane.

“At this office, they should recruit natives of the Zambezi region who understand the cultures and different dynamics of the people around the Zambezi and Chobe districts.

“We alike urge the ministry of defence and veterans affairs to deploy military personnel along the border, thus allowing visibility and deterring illegal activities and the harassment of our people,” Kabajani said.

He said the tabling of this report gives the movement direction and a position to seek legal remedies in the High Court of Namibia and to find alternative international remedies under the Border Treaty of 2018.

Ministry of Defence and Veterans Affairs spokesperson Petrus Shilumbi said the ministry has deployed Namibian Defence Force (NDF) members at various locations along the shared borderlines in the region to combat illegal border crossings and other cross-border crimes.

He said the soldiers are deployed in areas such as Sangwali, Ngoma, Kapani, Kasika, Linyanti, Malegalenga and Liansulu.

“There has been no incident of shooting or death reported since the deployment of NDF soldiers in the region in 2020. The deployed soldiers undertake border patrols on a regular basis,” Shilumbi said.

Questions telephonically sent to the minister of international relations and cooperation, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, have gone unanswered since Thursday.