Sinvula Mudabeti (Son of the Soil)
To set the record straight and help naïve minds get issues in perspective. The Zambezi Lives Matter Movement (ZLMM) is comprised of people from all tribes in the Zambezi region as well as from outside the Zambezi region. It is a movement that is apolitical; we have members from different political parties in Namibia. Ours is a movement beyond petty political loyalty and blind obedience; ours is a cause seeking for justice and peace against a foreign army. It is only those whose eyes are dim to the sad reality and truth who due to their appetite of political favours and promised positions of power who choose to ignore our concerns! We refuse to remain silent when the truth is at stake!
The arrogance of the Botswana Defence Force (BDF) and its government is evident in a newspaper article reported in the Botswana paper ‘GAZETTE’, where a mere colonel of the Botswana Defence Force (Colonel Tebo Dikole), said they will ignore and will not even care to respond to President Geingob’s utterances of calling BDF trigger happy. The report further says that the BDF has not taken it lightly to be called trigger happy by our President and are seeking intervention. How can a mere colonel [in the army] of a foreign small nation such as Botswana, dare to address our Head of State in this manner?
It was clear that the narrative that was paraded by the NDF and Inspector General of NAMPOL was the usual propaganda that BDF has always issued every time they killed innocent Namibian people. Perhaps Sebastian Ndeitunga has forgotten that he gets paid by the Namibian people’s hard earned tax dollars? Why is he reducing himself to [acting as] a tea boy for the Botswana police? Why is the head of NAMPOL showing his loyalty to a primitive government of Botswana? No wonder the President is being misdirected and ill-advised if such is the calibre of the man who briefs him on internal security matters.
I would like to remind fellow Namibians and allied friends and sympathisers of the Namibian Lives Matter Movement that let us rededicate and recommit ourselves to the cause of seeking justice for the fallen heroes (the fishermen).
Fishermen are heroes in the true sense of the word. They brave cold nights to bring food to their family’s table; they brave crocodiles and hippos; they brave disease-carrying mosquitos and venomous snakes to find food; they take care of their families with their hard work and make life meaningful for their children and communities.
Eleanor Roosevelt, famous former US First Lady, United Nations diplomat and human rights activist once said, “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
Let’s all unite and hold hands as we stand against BDF, against government’s SILENCE and against tribalism, regionalism and name calling! It starts with you my brother, my sister, my friend! Divided we fall, united we stand!
