John Grobler
Angolan civilians began fleeing into Namibia this week as both the Luanda government and its Unita foes started forcibly recruiting soldiers.
But both could find it hard to recruit willing soldiers to a new war, Angolan watchers said. Last Saturday June 20, about 100 Angolan civilians crossed into Namibia from southern Angola.
The men, who were trying to cross at the official border post of Santa Clara, were summarily arrested and appear to have been taken back to a military training camp at Peu-Peu, 150km north of the border, eyewitnesses said.
“A lot of them waited until dark and then crept through the fence. They were terrified of having to go back. They slept next to the road in the culverts, and in the morning disappeared among the local population,” said a businessman from Oshikango. Road traffic to Lubango has also stopped. Trucks have now been waiting for two weeks to get through.”
Angola’s first secretary at the country’s military chancery in Windhoek, Sebastiao Ndombashi, has been travelling throughout Namibia asking Angolans to return home to support the MPLA.
But ordinary Angolans are loath to identify themselves, lest they be called back to serve in another bloody chapter of a senseless war. “You go for a year, and they keep you for five,” said a young Angolan. “It’s the generals’ war – let them send their own sons for a change.”
According to Phil ya Nangoloh of the Namibian National Society for Human Rights, forcible recruitment has also been under way in Unita-held territory. “If you live in their area, you have to fight in their army,” he said.
Most NGOs active in Angola have withdrawn from the field and are now “sitting at the closest airport in case they need to be evacuated on short notice,” said George Kruessner of the German Menschen Gegen Minen (People Against Landmines) based in Luanda.
“Things are looking very bad, as bad as in 1992,” when Unita rejected national election results and returned to its guerrilla war in the bush.
Unita is not only hunting down humans in Namibia. Phil Minnaar, a manager of a lodge in the Caprivi Strip, said about three weeks ago Unita soldiers crossed into Namibia along the Cuando River. They drove a large herd of elephants back into Cuando Cubango province, presumably to be slaughtered.
“We know they’re going hungry over there,” Minnaar said. “But you don’t shoot 30 elephants for the pot.”
The United Nations has to find an honourable way of extracting itself from the Angolan mess, which was approaching Somalia-like proportions of epic bureaucratic bungling, said Ya Nongoloh.
“When I was in southern Angola in 1996, I saw thousands of AKs at Makusso. They had been there since 1994 – but no one from the UN came to collect the guns. Now you can be sure all those guns are back in soldiers’ hands again.”