South Africa's Growing Power-Two Articles Defying the UN
IRVINE, KEITH
Defying the UN By Keith Irvine Can the Republic of South Africa challenge an aroused United Nations and get away with it? For a time, at least, the answer would seem to be Yes. At stake is the...
...Unless a large force suddenly landed at Walvis Bay, the South Africans have little to worry about...
...At the moment, the world community is preoccupied with events in the Middle and Far East, but every problem has its day and the South West issue is potentially explosive...
...Should the second eventuality occur, a whole series of internal changes would then be set in motion...
...Occasional reports of such fighting find their way into the press: On May 19, the very day that the UN adopted its most recent resolution, South Africa announced that a government patrol had shot a swapo guerrilla leader in a boat on the Zambezi River...
...Not that there was much pomp about it...
...The major African tribe is the Ovambo people, numbering 239,000 in South West Africa...
...Should that happen, so far as South Africa's present rulers are concerned, the day of judgment would finally have arrived...
...The main black political organizations are the South West African Peoples Organization (swapo), and the South West African National Union (swanu), both inter-tribally organized...
...Only the larger powers pose a threat to Pretoria now that the danger of attack from independent African states has waned...
...Later, South Africa changed its mind and flatly refused to discuss the matter so long as the Assembly resolution terminating the mandate was on the UN's books...
...While the latest resolution was adopted on May 19 by a vote of 85-2 (South Africa and Portugal), the abstainers included the four major powers, the U.S., Britain, France and the Soviet Union...
...And the UN resolution, affirming that South Africa has no right to administer the territory, constitutes an open invitation to any other power to eject South Africa by force in the name of the United Nations...
...The outside world might well find itself eventually implementing United Nations decisions by landing an international force there...
...His organization, however, conducts no more than harrassing action...
...Other African groups are the Damara, the Herero, and the Nama, each of them under 50,000...
...Most of those who come speak English and not Afrikaans, and few if any of them belong to the Dutch Reformed Church or accept its tenets, which are often at variance with the mood and-the necessities of 20th-century living...
...more live across another European-drawn line, the frontier between South West and Angola...
...Economically, it should be noted, an independent South West could survive by exporting its wealth overseas, and in this sense is not dependent upon South Africa...
...Its moral position—that it was carrying out, in Jan Smuts' phrase, "a sacred trust of civilization"—has been completely washed away...
...Guerrilla action against South African rule occurs sporadically...
...Even South Africa's Foreign Minister, Dr...
...in South West preparations continue for eviction of the African population from Windhoek, a section of the capital—an action that caused a riot when it was last attempted in December 1959...
...South Africans sometimes wistfully intimate, not entirely without reason, that so far as racial discrimination is concerned they have been made the scapegoats of the world, being ritually beaten not only for their own sins but also for those of others...
...The step, Goldberg said, was "necessary in the first place for the people of South West Africa, which has a right to expect from us not only words but also concrete, helpful and meaningful actions...
...Sam Nujoma of swapo, a stockly-built Ovambo, smiling, serious, discreet, and of recognized integrity, is South West's most prominent nationalist leader...
...Not until the millstone of apartheid policies is removed can that unhappy land look forward to a stable future with any confidence...
...South Africa, the single most interested party, spoke only one word in four weeks—which was to say "No" when the vote was taken...
...The desert provides a better protection than coastal defenses...
...The day of judgment, though, is not yet at hand...
...The South African government wants nothing more than to make South West safe for Afrikaaners—a prospect no more acceptable to some white South West Africans than it is to the UN General Assembly...
...Instead, occasional nibbles have been made at the edges of South African intransigence...
...Of the UN's 122 members, only a handful, almost all of them the smaller African countries, sent foreign ministers—a sure indication that the session was low on diplomatic voltage...
...The ultimate solution of the South West problem is clearly intertwined with the fate of South Africa itself...
...This decision ran closely parallel to an "action proposal" made by U.S...
...Thus, as the 22nd session of the Assembly convened last week the issue remained on the agenda...
...Moreover, the South West case has been under consideration for so long that many have come to regard it as the ultimate test for the world organization itself—the same kind of test that Mussolini's predatory attack upon Ethiopia represented for the League of Nations...
...Superficially, at least, it appears the critics were right in their contention that the special session merely interred the issue with due pomp and ceremony...
...For the moment, outside intervention in favor of the Africans seems unlikely...
...Meanwhile, the scapegoats are leaving no stone unturned to assure their security...
...H. Muller, reversed his original intention to attend...
...Thus a key question for white South Africa is whether the newcomers will become absorbed by Afrikaanerdom, or whether, on the contrary, it is the Afrikaaners who will finally find themselves absorbed...
...declared that the League's mandate over South West Africa was finally terminated...
...A former German colony, "South West," as it is colloquially known, has been administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate since 1920...
...Further contradictions arise from its efforts to consolidate its position by calling in more white immigrants...
...South Africa, the Assembly resolved, by failing to fulfill its obligations toward South West or to insure the moral and material well-being and security of the people there, had "disavowed" its commission...
...To many observers, indeed, the special session in the spring was an exercise in pointlessness...
...But the Pretoria government, although it has not backed down in the present eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the UN, remains nervous...
...At stake is the arid but mineral-rich territory of South West Africa, with a population that numbered 526,000 in the 1960 census, including 73,000 whites...
...Presumably they expect as much of the Soviets, but the South Africans, being "brothers," should know better...
...Ambassador Arthur Goldberg on October 12, 1966...
...and it is equally necessary for the sake of the United Nations itself, for the authority and prestige of this world body...
...It was reported, for example, that the United States and South Africa would enter into a "dialogue" over South West, with Pretoria emphasizing that its acceptance of the proposal in no way compromised its basic objection to any dialogues with the United Nations...
...These organizations have not formally established a united front, but they maintain a de facto unity in their independence struggle...
...Increasingly, in the years ahead, it will become harder for those who do not adjust to the linguistic and metaphysical requirements of the Afrikaaner volk to prosper in South Africa...
...Nobody else has offered to send them either...
...The shock of losing its territory would doubtless precipitate the ultimate internal crisis that has so often been forecast for South Africa, and that once—in early 1960, after the Sharpeville shootings and the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Verwoerd ?nearly occurred...
...Most of the territory's white population of Afrikaaners, Germans and English (in that order of importance) are spread over the Southern nine-tenths of South West...
...Earlier, on May 5, the Tunisian nationalist newspaper L'Action noted the general concensus that the special session would not advance the South West African question "by one inch...
...Last October the General Assembly, backed by the United States, Keith Irvine, a previous contributor to these pages, is a specialist on contemporary African affairs...
...There is, however, one remaining obstacle: The South African government, which still has de facto control, shows no more inclination to pay attention to the UN decision than it has to the previous 76 Assembly resolutions adopted on South West Africa...
...Guerrillas landed from submarines would have little chance of reaching the interior...
...And speaking ex cathedra, a West African head of state remarked that without troops being sent to "South West" nothing would be done—adding that his own country, for one, could not afford to send them...
...The basic fact is that international diplomacy, which for over 20 years has served to stave off a decision on South West Africa, must finally come to grips with the problem...
...Perhaps this is why South West African whites have shown themselves more concerned with the appearance of South African trawlers off their coasts—which they publicly castigate as "fish stealers"—than the large number of Soviet vessels that have similarly put in an appearance there...
...Since the territory has an "international status," it was decided that the UN itself must assume responsibility for South West...
...The government, in the grip of its racist philosophy, is led into ever greater expenditures for its internal and external defense...
...In South Africa militarization and repression continue apace...
...Nigerian and Ghanaian troops, who a few years ago were serving the UN in the Congo, are at present occupied at home, and the United Arab Republic also has other preoccupations...
...The Afrikaaners recognize this possibility and are doing what they can to avoid it...
...The majority Africans are crowded into the northern tenth, divided from the rest of the territory by the "police zone boundary"—marked in red on South African maps and representing a frontier beyond which whites cannot venture without permission from the authorities...
...To be sure, the General Assembly, meeting in special session from April through May, decided to set up a Council in South West to administer it until independence is proclaimed—hopefully, by June 1968...
...Even if a dialogue had begun, it would have represented only another kind of game played to fill in time, just as soldiers on opposing sides, during World War I, sometimes used to play football together between battles...
...As winter gave way to spring, the promise of action gave way to yet more words...
Vol. 50 • September 1967 • No. 19
