EDITORIAL: Enough of the white red line lies

Next week, president-elect Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and former justice minister Sacky Shanghala will face an uncomfortable moment of reckoning. They will need to justify why the infamous veterinary cordon fence, known as the red line, should remain intact amid growing calls for its permanent removal. It didn’t have to come to this.It’s an awkward position, not least because Swapo, ahead of the November election, loudly championed removing the fence. Yet, just days later, court documents emerged revealing the government’s staunch opposition to Job Amupanda’s legal challenge to dismantle it.Though the red line is defended as a disease-control measure, it has become something far more sinister—a deliberate tool of economic exclusion. It draws a stark divide between Namibians based solely on geography, relegating those living north and east of the fence to perpetual economic and social marginalization.The argument that removing the fence would result in billions of dollars in losses holds weight only for those reaping the profits. For the residents of Okalongo in Omusati Region and Kongola in Zambezi, such a system might as well collapse. It offers them nothing but exclusion and hardship.Thirty-five years of promises to find an inclusive solution have yielded little more than hollow rhetoric. In the meantime, the government continues to destroy and discard meat from these regions, undermining food security and livelihoods while burning away the hope of families struggling to make ends meet.For decades, the red line has been a physical and symbolic barrier, one that prioritizes profit over people and entrenches inequality rather than bridging it. It must fall!

EDITORIAL: Enough of the white red line lies

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Namibian Sun 2025-03-07

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EDITORIAL: Enough of the white red line lies

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Namibian Sun 2025-03-07

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