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0 By Cde Thomas Shilumbu – Okahao
While SWAPO leaders were negotiating with the Western Contact Group in New York – USA,
the white apartheid South African army launched a barbaric attack on the SWAPO refugee transit centre at Cassinga, about 200km from the Namibian border in Angola.
On 4 May 1978, at 7 a.m. when the camp residents were gathered at the morning assembly to be assigned to their daily duties,
South African Buccaneer jet bombers dropped POISON GAS, causing the assembled refugee to drop unconscious.
Then waves of mirage jet fighters strafed and dropped BOMBS, setting the whole refugee centre ablaze.
A third attack wave dropped paratroopers who shot and bayoneted those Comrades who were already seriously injured.
The result of this dastardly military attack on the Namibian refugee centre inside Angola was a massacre of about 1000 dead and wounded.
Many were missing, and many others were captured and taken to the concentration camp at Kaiganachab, 11 km west of the town of Mariental (Hardap region).
Others disappeared, possibly taken to South Africa, and WERE NEVER SEEN AGAIN.
To bear witness to the sacrifice so many undertook that day, WE REMEMBER CASSINGA DAY – 4 MAY 1978 – and the hundreds of innocent civilians who were wounded, disabled, captured and killed.
MAY THEIR SOUL REST IN ETERNAL PEACE!
