The Struggle Over South-West Africa

...THE ROAD FROM OTAVI TO THE UN The Struggle Over s/b South-West Africa BY RICHARD DALE After 26 years of trying to secure the independence of South-West Africa by UN General Assembly resolutions and World Court edicts, the United Nations has turned to negotiation Last month UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim appointed Alfred Martin Escher, a retired Swiss diplomat and former ambassador to Austria, as his personal envoy to help resolve the dispute And the South African government, which has stub bornly defied the UN's demands that it relinquish control of the neighboring territory, has agreed to let Escher travel freely theie When he arrives in Namibia, as the former League of Nations mandate is called by the UN, he will find that it still retains the flavor of its German colonial past In the cities, the visitor cannot fail to notice the distinctive antebellum German architecture, including occasional mini ature castles The seaside resort of Swakopmund, with its picturesque lighthouse, seems more Bavarian than South African, and the local bookstore is fully stocked with the latest bestsellers from Germany Outside the sleepy town of Otavi a small monument marks the spot where the colonial forces surrendered to South African troops on July 9, 19)5 At nearby Lake Otjikoto, where the retreating Germans had jettisoned some of their armaments, scuba divers recently retrieved a few of the old weapons In Windhoek, the seat of administration, one is reminded of the traditional German penchant for bureaucratic niceties The old colonial headquarters building, still m use today, continues to be called the Tintepalast, the palace of ink Typewriters have now replaced the ink wells, but the budding does impart a quaint Teutonic air to the affairs of state The German community remains prominent in the white minority population, too, upholding its identity and cultural heritage by such means as maintaining an active sci entitle society, a well-appointed museum, and a German-language newspaper, whose editor is a postwar immigrant The white population, though it dominates the territory's affairs, comprises only an eighth of Namibia's 750,000 inhabitants, this and land, twice the size of California, is the home of many disparate black tribes They range from the Ovambos, a peaceful agricultural people who live in the northern desert area, to the Richard Dale, Associate Professor of Government at Southern Illinois University, is coeditor with Chustian P Potholm of the recent Southern s/b Africa in Perspective bushmen, Stone-Age aborigines reputed to be among the world's most skillful hunters The economy is based on farming, cattle and sheep raising, fish processing, and mining, $100 million worth of diamonds alone are extracted annually After World War I, South-West Africa was simply territorial booty until the Allies, actuated in large measure by Wilsoman idealism, de cided that the former German and Turkish holdings m Africa, the Middle East and Oceania should not be annexed but rather treated as trusts of civilization Thus arose the mandates system of the League of Nations, a kind of colonial rule by contract Its architects were determined to show the world that the Allies were far better qualified to take up the Kiphngesque "white man's burden" than the Germans had been Field Marshal Jan C Smuts, who had fought the British in the Boer War and the Germans in World War I, initially opposed the adoption of the mandates system m South-West Africa, for it was too close to home Since he and South African Prune Minister Louis Botha had invaded the neighboring land on behalf of imperial Britain over the strong objections of many fellow Afrikaners, they could hardly afford to return from the Pans Peace Conference with only half a territorial loaf Owing to a series of compromises, however, that is what finally happened m the Versailles Treaty Still, the arrangement had much of the aroma of a whole loaf Those who were the white man's burden were not a party to the contract between South Africa and the League of Nations, and self-determination or eventual independence for the territory was not even in the fine print of the mandate agreement There were few restraints on the type of administration that could be employed, certainly nothing to threaten seriously the prevailing ethos of white paramountcy The famous "winds of change" that Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was later to speak of at Cape Town did not disturb the quiet, cordial proceedings ot the Permanent Mandates Commission on the hilltop overlooking Lake Geneva There co lonial rule was made to look like a graduate seminar in public administration Indeed, no black African ever sat on the Commission, and only two black African nations-Ethiopia and Liberia-belonged to the League of Nations itself Essentially a white man's social club, it never questioned the legitimacy of white colonial rule Hence, the road from Otavi to Geneva was a relatively comfortable one for the South African administrators who journeyed there annually to report on their activities With the advent of World War II and the subsequent decline of most Western colonial domains, the white man's burden became increasingly suspect The new hostility to colonial rule was reflected in the United Nations trusteeship system set up to replace the League's mandates arrangement Not only does it require the peoples over whom tutelage is exercised to be consulted more fully than before, but it allows for a type ol self-destruction that is unique among UN organs The system was designed to gradually wither away as the trust territories feel they are ready for self-government and independence In effect amounting to temporary and constrained colonial rule by consent, this approach is tar more attuned to the interests of those whose lands are held "in trust" South Africa's refusal to concede that its old mandate transferred automatically to the new world body has made Namibia the only former League territory neither to become independent nor to be placed under the UN trusteeship system Despite its denial of any obligation to render an account of its stewardship to the UN, Pretoria asked the Genera] Assembly for permission to annex the territory in 1946 The request was turned down, but South Africa proceeded to integrate Namibia into its own political and administrative system-including apartheid Pretoria has tried to meet the demands of the various nonwhite groups in the territory by setting up self-governing tribal homelands, called "bantustans,' somewhat similar to American Indian reservations Opponents of this policy-particularly the Afro Asian bloc in the UN-charge that the establishment of autonomous but separate homelands is obstructing Namibia's progress toward eventual nationhood Indisputably, by emphasizing ethnic distinctions, the bantustans make mter-ethmc cooperation more difficult South African Prime Minister John Vorster counters that if a plebiscite were held, the majority of Namibians would vote for Pretoria's continued rule He claims that his government has spent more than $200 million developing the homelands, much of it going to build schools and health facilities Yet last year 13,000 Ovambo tribesmen employed in industrial enterprises-roughly a third of the work torce-talked off their jobs in protest against a system of contract labor they described as a form of slavery The central issue, of course, is not whether the Vorster regime is administrating Namibia benevolently but whether it has the right to remain in the territory at all On three separate occasions m the 1950s, the UN asked the International Court of Justice at The Hague to clarify the legal status of South-West Africa and the world organization's right to supervise the old League mandate In each case, the result was a standoff, tor the court held that on the one hand South Africa had no legal ob ligation to bring the territory into the trusteeship system and, on the other, that the UN was the legatee of the former mandate system and had the same authority over South Africa's stewardship of Namibia as did its predecessor—an authority that Pre tona rejected In the mid '60s, Liberia and Ethiopia petitioned the international tribunal with a complaint arguing that the South Atncan government, by imposing its policy of apartheid on Namibia, was guilty of violating "the sacred trust of civilization " A favorable judgment would have given the UN Security Council some legal leverage for pressuring Pretoria to mend its ways m the territory After the court, by a majority of one, declined to hear the case on the grounds that neither African plaintiff state had any legal standing to bring charges, the General Assembly voted to deprive South Africa ot its mandate Declaring Namibia to be its own "direct responsibility," the UN established an 11-member council to oversee the territory until it was ready to assume independence, the councilmen were denied entry by Pretoria When South Africa continued to ignore repeated demands for its withdrawal from Namibia, the UN went back to the World Court, whose com position had changed considerably in the interim On July 21, 1971, the court upheld the UN's position, judging South Africa's s/b continued presence in the territory a "flagrant violation of the United Nations' charter,' and ordering UN member states not to recognize the legality of Pretoria's rule there The 13-2 decision, termed "advisoiy" and therefore not binding, was immediately rejected by South Africa, the United Kingdom and France, it was accepted by the United States, which had previously told the UN that it was discouraging American invest ment in Namibia Vorster, in a radio address to his nation, denounced the decision as an international "political vendetta" against South Africa and said that his government did not intend to pay any attention to it In tact, given the major powers' unwillingness to enforce the ruling, it hardly posed an immediate threat to Pretoria's control of Namibia Nevertheless, it served to strip away all pretense of legitimacy, laying bare the reality that South Africa's sole title to the territory is the one gamed in 1915 at Otavi military conquest Even more important, the stigma of illegal occupation has served to further the diplomatic and commercial estrangement of South Africa in the world community This may explain Vorster's decision to reverse his past policy and cooperate with a UN negotiator-a tacit admission of the legitimacy of the UN's effort to win Namibia's independence In a speech before the UN General Assembly a few days after the announcement of Escher's appointment, South African Foreign Minister Hilgard Muller struck a new conciliatory tone too "My country practices and lives dialogue Accordingly, we have on several occasions shown our readiness to seek solutions to current problems within this framework I am convinced that the development of dialogue between South Africa and African nations can lead only to improved relations to the benefit of all We are prepared to discuss even South Africa's internal policies in the course of such dialogue " These expressions of goodwill notwithstanding, it is difficult to see how a compromise can be reached on the Namibia question The UN Secretary General has stood firm on the demand that independence be granted the territory "as a whole", South Africa has shown no sign of relenting from its plan to split the land into 11 bantustans and retain a large part under its own control But aftei a quarter century of mtiansi-gence, it is a considerable measure of progress that the two sides have at least agreed to talk...