The latest declaration by the Former Refugees Repatriation Association of Namibia (FRRAN) that it will escalate its demands to President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah should concern every Namibian who cares about the country’s future governance. Former refugees, camping at Swapo headquarters since October last year, insist that United Nations funds meant for their resettlement in 1989 were handed to Swapo and never paid to them. The United Nations denies this. Swapo’s records deny this. Yet the protest continues, and a new political audience is now being sought.
At the same time, liberation struggle veterans, despite decades of gratuities, pensions, land allocations, business capital, dedicated ministry support and state funerals, continue to return to the streets and party corridors with fresh demands. These two movements are no longer separate matters. Together they represent a recurring pattern: groups invoking liberation-era grievances to extract new financial concessions from a state that has already gone far beyond reasonable obligation.
It must be said clearly and without apology: the Government of the Republic of Namibia has done more than enough for both former refugees and liberation war veterans. That chapter must now be closed. The state cannot and should not be held hostage every time a group mobilises around historical claims to access money.
Namibia’s repatriation process in 1989 was one of the most successful large-scale refugee returns on the continent. The UNHCR provided transport, food rations and basic reintegration assistance. The Namibian state, newly independent and economically fragile, absorbed returnees into communities, public services and social systems. Not every outcome was perfect, but the fundamental task, bringing citizens home safely, was accomplished.
Thirty-six years later, demands for “missing UN funds” with no documentary evidence, no corroboration from donors, and no confirmation from UN records cannot be allowed to become a perpetual bargaining instrument. The UNHCR has stated unambiguously that all donor funds were utilised and accounted for. Swapo’s financial reviews have found no evidence of such money. At some point, insistence on the absence of evidence ceases to be a grievance and becomes opportunism.
The same applies to the veterans’ question. Namibia has arguably created the most generous veteran support system in Southern Africa. Once-off payouts, monthly pensions, land, agricultural projects, business funding, medical support, burial benefits and a dedicated ministry. These were not symbolic gestures; they were substantial fiscal commitments. And yet, new lists, new classifications, new entitlements and new protests continue to surface.
No state, particularly one facing slow economic growth, youth unemployment and rising service delivery demands, can sustain endless special-interest funding cycles. A nation cannot build schools, hospitals, roads and jobs if it must reopen liberation settlement negotiations every few years. That is not governance. That is ransom economics.
We must also address the political dimension. Party headquarters have become grievance arenas. Protest camps at Swapo offices, negotiations with party secretaries, and appeals to party structures – all of this blurs the line between party and state. Welfare claims must be processed through formal government institutions, not through partisan pressure points. Allowing this pattern to persist weakens public institutions and politicises legitimate administrative matters.
Gratitude for the liberation struggle is permanent. Financial liability is not. Recognition does not equal perpetual compensation. At some point, a liberated nation must transition from revolutionary entitlement to citizenship equality. The liberation struggle was fought so that all Namibians could be equal before the law, not so that historical affiliation becomes a lifelong claim against the public purse.
The uncomfortable truth is this: Namibia’s most urgent crisis today is not unfinished repatriation from 1989 or veteran classification from the 1970s. It is unemployed youth born after independence. It is overcrowded classrooms. It is unaffordable housing. It is hospitals without medicine. It is a shrinking tax base supporting expanding obligations. Every new payout to historical claimants reduces resources available to the living future of the nation.
This is why the liberation chapter must now be formally and decisively closed.
The government has already met decisive moral and material obligations. It is now time to draw a firm policy line: no new compensation frameworks, no new beneficiary categories, and no renegotiation of settled historical processes. Outstanding administrative anomalies can be addressed through existing ministries, but the era of open-ended liberation claims must end.
President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah faces an important test. Listening is appropriate. But leadership requires more than listening; it requires declaring that Namibia will no longer govern by protest encampment or historical ransom. The country needs clarity: the liberation debt has been paid. The future demands attention.
A nation that endlessly reopens its founding settlement never truly moves forward. Honour the struggle, yes. Respect the veterans, yes. Acknowledge the returnees, yes. But govern for all citizens equally, sustainably and firmly.
Namibia’s independence was won in 1990. It is time, in 2026, to finally close that chapter, with dignity, with gratitude, and with finality.
