The South African government will not force or even try to persuade Riemvasmakers to go back to that country, SA High Commissioner in Namibia Eunice Komane said yesterday.

She was reacting to recent statements coming from two sides of the Riemvasmaak community over their planned repatriation to South Africa.

While one group under Abraham William Katimba was keen to return to the Northern Cape, another group under the leadership of Chief Johannes Mangani said they were not interested in returning to SA.

Komane said they would not stand in the way of those who wanted to return for reasons like ancestral graves and being united with family.

"Government has the responsibility to assist them to be able to do so because they did not choose to move here. We have no right to put any obstacles in the way of righting the wrongs of the past," she said.

She said the Riemvasmaak case was treated like all other cases of communities who were forcibly removed by the apartheid government of SA.

The Riemvasmaak community was forcibly removed in 1974 from their 74 000 hectares of land to the former Transkei and Namibia under the National Party government's 'Black Spot Removal Programme'.

Those classified as Damara under apartheid legislation were settled in arid areas in and around Khorixas in the northwest of what was then SA-administered South West Africa.

The removals were brutal and the people were abandoned willy-nilly in Namibia and the Eastern Cape, where they were treated with open hostility by the communities already living there.

The farm Riemvasmaak, about 140 km from Upington, has since been used as an infantry training ground, with 4 270 hectares purchased by the South African National Parks Board in 1982 and proclaimed part of the Augrabies Waterfall National Park.

Komane said the SA government needed to know exactly how many people would return so that it could plan for houses, schools and pensions and, therefore, set a deadline for people to indicate whether they were interested in going back or not. She said Riemvasmaak leaders had the responsibility to make the people aware of the deadline set by the SA courts for repatriation.

"It cannot go on forever. In fact the deadlines of the constitution have already been extended," Komane said.

While Katimba urged those who were interested in returning to the northwest of Upington in the Northern Cape to contact him, those under Chief Mangani said they have decided to settle in Namibia and have even applied for recognition as a traditional authority.

The South African government started the repatriation project in 1995 and made available 13 farms totalling 46 000 hectares to accommodate the families still willing to return.