Placido Hilukilwa
SATURDAY was the anniversary of the deadly bomb blast that occurred in the Oshakati branch of First National Bank 34 years ago.
The bomb blast — on the 19th of February 1988 — killed 27 people and injured many others, among them customers and bank employees.
The dead were buried in a mass grave at Ongwediva, a place currently in a state of neglect.
When a small group of relatives of the dead and survivors gathered there Saturday morning and retired Lutheran Bishop Kleopas Dumeni addressed them, he requested the government to consider proclaiming the mass grave a national monument.
Dumeni lost a daughter in the bomb blast, for which no one has ever claimed responsibility.
The warring sides traded accusations, each blaming the other.
Swapo accused the then security forces of having placed the bomb to kill innocent civilians and then blame it on freedom fighters. The security forces said it was a terrorist act by Swapo guerrillas.
A clandestine Swapo operative, Leonard Sheehana, was arrested and charged, but the case was dropped when the United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 was implemented early 1989, ending the brutal war and paving the way to independence in 1990.
The event was until 2019 commemorated annually at the venue where the bomb exploded and where a bank-sponsored monument was erected, but no commemoration happened there since 2020.
This year, survivors and relatives decided to hold a brief ceremony at a cemetery at Ongwediva town where most of the dead were buried in a mass grave.
