A leading rights group has welcomed a proposal by Namibia's opposition for a South Africa-style truth commission to examine past human rights violations to further national healing.

The Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), which was formed in 2007 by breakaway members of the ruling party SWAPO, has vowed to establish a truth commission if voted into power in elections later this year.

In a statement on Wednesday, the National Society for Human Rights applauded the proposal, saying "a truth-telling process is a sine qua non element of the democratisation process."

In its election manifesto the RDP says it would "formulate a genuine national reconciliation policy, whereby past mistakes and wrong doings are to be openly admitted and forgiven."

"We believe that this is the only way to bring about true reconciliation," the party said.

The south-west African desert state of Namibia was a protectorate of apartheid South Africa from World War II until independence in 1990.

While South Africa sought to heal the racial divisions caused by apartheid by encouraging perpetrators to admit to their actions in return for amnesty from a two-year Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Namibia's ruling SWAPO party has shied away from examining the past.

There have been repeated calls, among other things, for ex-liberation-movement SWAPO to lift the veil of secrecy over and forced disappearances of people from within its own ranks during its struggle against the apartheid state.

An organisation formed by family members of disappeared people calling itself "Breaking the Wall of Silence" has been campaigning for an open inquiry into the past along the lines of the TRC.

The NSHR has also been calling for the government to disclose the whereabouts of hundreds of people allegedly disappeared during a crackdown on the northern border area with Angola in the 1990s.

At the time Angolan rebels embroiled in a lengthy civil war with the government were using the area as a hideout.

Sapa