Nujoma dared to deport ‘elements of Koevoet’

THE Communist Party (CP) has challenged the founding President Sam Nujoma to carry out his recent threat to deport “elements of Koevoet”, whom he alleges are civil servants sabotaging government’s development programmes.

“I am warning you to stop sabotaging government programmes. We know you. We defeated you during the liberation struggle. We’ll just deport you out of the country,” Nujoma remarked when officiating at the opening of the N$31 million Rosh Pinah Zinc Corporation storage and shipping facility at Lüderitz last week.

Reacting to Nujoma’s statement in an open letter addressed to all former SWAFT/Koevoet members, CP advised them that neither Nujoma nor Swapo Party will ever be allowed to deport any member of SWAFT/Koevoet nor their families and relatives from Namibia.

“This land called Namibia is not a private property of Sam Nujoma or Swapo, but it belongs to all of us,” the letter reads.

CP said Nujoma and Swapo must keep their warnings and threats to themselves, and stop intimidating and victimising fellow citizens.

The party further rejected Nujoma’s claims that Koevoet was defeated by Swapo during the liberation struggle, claiming that a peace accord between South Africa, Cuba and Angola led to the demobilisation of both SWAFT/Koevoet and Plan.

“The independence of the country was thus achieved not through the barrel of the gun, but was negotiated – also not by Swapo but by the aforesaid parties. And let us face it, if we should talk about who defeated who between SWAFT/Koevoet and Plan, then certainly it was SWAFT/Koevoet who were superior on the battlefield. What the Swapo death squad, (an integral section of Plan) successfully carried out under Sam Nujoma’s leadership though, was to capture, incarcerate, torture, main and kill thousands of innocent Namibians up to 1 April 1989,” the letter further states.

CP claimed that the aforesaid reactionary and treasonable activities were Nujoma and Swapo’s “acts of liberation,” apart from that, “their favourite hobby was to entertain themselves by raping hundreds and hundreds of revolutionary-minded female freedom fighters”. “This is the sordid legacy of Sam Nujoma and his fellow Swapo leadership, including RDP’s Hidipo Hamutenya. Everything else the Swapo leadership politically tells Namibians are lies for they never fought in the liberation struggle, but had in fact betrayed it,” the letter claims, challenging Nujoma, Prime Minister Hage Geingob and the Speaker of the National Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab to deny that Swapo sold out the people’s interests by its acceptance of the 1982 principles through signing UN Resolution 435.

“The CP hereby publicly challenges them in advance, to set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the country, soonest,” the letter reads.

CP also urged former SWAFT/Koevoet members to stay calm, advising them not to be disturbed by Nujoma’s utterances.

luqman@namibian.com.na