Formalisation of Orange River border still looming

Renthia Kaimbi

Nearly two years after a technical committee reached an agreement, the formalisation of the long-disputed Orange River border between Namibia and South Africa remains unresolved, with the matter still looming over bilateral relations.

The dispute, which has been ongoing since Namibia’s independence in 1990, boils down to a fundamental disagreement over where the international boundary lies along the Orange River, spanning roughly 600 kilometers of the shared border.

Pretoria’s claim relied on the colonial 1890 Helgoland-Zanzibar Treaty between Great Britain and Imperial Germany, which demarcated the boundary along the high-water mark of the northern bank of the river.