Speaking during debate on the country's crime situation, Ekandjo also responded to comments that had been made about the SFF, its training and whether this part of the Police which has come under repeated attack over allegedly heavy-handed, unlawful and arbitrary actions has the skills needed to help fight crime properly.

The Minister said soldiers who fought on opposite sides in the liberation war had been absorbed into the SFF to defuse a ticking timebomb.

Ekandjo took the Assembly back to the first half of the 1990s to make his point. Up to 1995, he related, demobilised soldiers involved in Namibia's Independence war - either Plan fighters, or SWA Territory Force or Koevoet members - were patient even while faced with unemployment.

These were people who were "trained to kill", who could "build a bomb out of nothing", the Minister pointed out.

By 1996, though, they started to mobilise to insist on being given jobs. Information was received that the former adversaries had also made contact to combine forces to pursue their demands, he added.

They had the potential "to turn this country upside down", Ekandjo warned. To preserve peace, something had to be done.

The chosen course of action was to recruit the ex-soldiers into the SFF. "That is the price we have to pay for peace," Ekandjo said.

From 1996 to last year the intake of SFF members was dedicated only to solving the ex-combatant problem, he continued.

Today the SFF accounts for 64 per cent of the Namibian Police's staff numbers, Ekandjo announced.

Their duties are focused on guarding Namibia's borders, and they had played an important role in providing security after the attempted secession attempt in the Caprivi Region in 1999 and the insecurity experienced in the Kavango Region from late 1999 to early this year, Ekandjo said.

The exercise of absorbing the former soldiers into the Police has secured stability for Namibia, Ekandjo indicated.

"In Namibia we have shown the world," he said. "In Namibia we have succeeded."

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