Proud Namibian Patriot writes:
Please allow me some space in your esteemed newspaper to assert my opinion on the matter regarding our participation in the former border conflict with Plan fighters.
I refer to your newspaper dated Friday, May 30, 2014. This issue of us being labelled as mercenaries and killers is a little bit farfetched as Dr Armas Abdul Malik Shikongo refers to us.
I did my two years’ national service as prescribed by the then laws of our country and I can also inform the esteemed Doctor that I was picked up by the military police at my house and taken to the former 41 Battalion just outside Windhoek where I underwent my medical checkups and was then sent to Rooikop military base to undergo my basic training.
In those years if you did not report for your national service you ended up in jail for two years and then upon your release you had to undergo your training anyway, unless you wanted to go to jail again.
Now as an eighteen-year-old and just out of school and none the wiser, what does the Doctor think will you do? I did not know any politics then and believe me, to go to jail for two years at that age was in my mind out of the question. So you did what was expected of you without any questions.
I do understand that Apartheid was wrong, and also that a lot of other things were done wrong that is a fact that I never will condone. But, on the other hand, what did Plan do to the people they put in dungeons and those innocent people they killed with bombs they planted at hotels, banks, and shopping complexes?
These were innocent civilians that were killed that had nothing to do with the conflict but going about their daily business. Why don’t we call these Plan fighters mercenaries and killers but according to your statements they were in the right in doing so as they fought for the liberation of Namibia.
Dr Shikongo I think you should go back to the drawing board and look at this conflict from both sides before you make any accusations, as both parties on both sides of the conflict committed atrocities by torturing, killing, maiming and detaining innocent people.
So please do not label me as a killer and mercenary. I think that is a wrong assumption as to who we are. We are supposed to reconcile and forgive but it seems it only comes from one side of the spectrum and people can still use the media as platform to insult us and degrade our names as they wish.
I can tell the good Doctor also that today I have an ex-Plan fighter as one of my best friends, but I don’t think you will understand how we ex-soldiers and brothers in arms think even though we fought each other.
The Doctor should watch his mouth; if this was a western country I was likely to sue the hell out of him for calling me a killer and mercenary.
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