WINDHOEK – John Mandume Mbwalala, the former PLAN combatant who has been living destitute for 24 years in Angola, will be repatriated to Namibia next month, the Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Selma Ashipala-Musyavi confirmed to New Era yesterday.

Ashipala-Musyavi says consultations with the Angolan government have been wrapped up and the two governments are now working out modalities on how they will relocate the former freedom fighter from his Angolan makeshift lodgings to his motherland. “We are actually getting together all the stakeholders, we are on top of it and in October which is just next month, Mbwalala will be repatriated,” says Ashipala-Musyavi. She added that the government has been in consultation with the family and a team of officials visited Mbwalala recently as part of the consultation process. During that process it was confirmed that Mbwalala was indeed a former PLAN fighter, but details of what exactly happened to him at the end of the war remain sketchy.

A news team of the national broadcaster, NBC discovered Mbwalala in May this year at Olyafiilwa, a village in the south of Angola some 50 kilometres from the border between Angola and Namibia. Villagers say he was first spotted in the village in April 1989 and is said to have come there in a confused state of mind. After identifying him from media reports, the family went to see him and confirmed that it was indeed their brother whom they were told had died in the war in 1989. For many years, the former freedom fighter has been living in isolation, surviving on handouts from good Samaritans and appears to have no recollection of the past. Psychologists believe he might be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is said to be common among many war veterans. Although this might make things difficult when he is removed from a place he called home for 24 years, Ashipala-Musyavi says whatever the challenge, the ministry intends to make sure that Mbwalala is reunited with his family next month.

By Tonateni Shidhudhu