Angolan vendors refuse to go back home

…Say will face more suffering in their motherland

• BY MARX ITAMALO

SOME Angolan nationals who are conducting informal business in the North say they will not leave Namibia until the economic and social situation in their country improves. Confidente spoke to several Angolan nationals amid a police operation aiming at driving them from the streets and deporting them back home.

The police in Oshikoto, Oshana, Ohangwena and Omusati last week commenced an operation to remove Angolan nationals who are viewed as illegal immigrants out of northern Namibia back to their country of origin.

“What people, probably including the Namibian police and government, do not know is that there is no life in Angola. There is only pain and suffering there. How do you expect people to go back to a place like that although it’s where they came from? Life is better here in Namibia,” said Merchizedek Haindongo, who hails from Omongwa area near Ondjiva. He sells polony, oranges and mobile phone recharge vouchers in the streets of Eenhana town in Ohangwena.

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