Democratic Palestine : 32 (ص 35)
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- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 32 (ص 35)
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so m= ew aw ee ees et
Namibia’s Chance for Independence
transformed. South Africa, continuing
its policy of deception, tried to install a
credible puppet government and to
push forward the Bantustan policy in
Namibia.
In 1977 Canada, West Germany,
France, the UK and the US formed the
so-called contact group. They felt that
their interests in Namibia were
threatened as the armed struggle inten-
On December 22, 1988, South Africa, Angola and Cuba signed, at
the United Nations in New York, two agreements: one for the
withdrawal from Angola of 50,000 Cuban troops between April 1,
1989 and July 1, 1991, and the other for Namibia’s independence in
1990, after the holding of free elections under UN supervision. The
agreement was signed after several rounds of negotiations in which
the US participated as «mediator.»
100 YEARS OF COLONIAL
OCCUPATION
Namibians were robbed of their land
for the first time in 1884, when. the
German imperial flag was hoisted over
it, and South West Africa became a
«colonial possession of Germany.»
After World War I, Germany was
dispossessed of its colonies, and the
administrative mandate over South
West Africa was given to a British
dominion, the South African Union. In
1946, all territories under mandate were
to be placed under UN supervision, a
decision ignored by South Africa which
managed, for the following 20 years, to
keep the administrative mandate over
Namibia with diplomatic maneuvers
and tricks.
On October 27, 1966, the General
Assembly of the UN ended the South
African mandate over Namibia, reaf-
firming the inalienable rights of the
Namibian people to independence and
self-determination. South Africa
refused to recognize this decision and
sent troops into Namibia, which meant
a de facto annexation. Namibians were
robbed of their land for the third time.
SWAPO AND THE
LIBERATION STRUGGLE
The Namibian people never accepted
the occupation of their country and
have a long tradition of resistance
against colonialism. A turning point
was reached with the establishment of
SWAPO on April 19, 1960. In its
political program, which was adopted
in 1976, SWAPO defines the stages of
its development as follows: In the se-
cond half of the 1950s, the major task
Democratic Palestine, March 1989
became the establishment of a political
organization able to assume the leader-
ship of the masses and to give an
organized character to the spontaneous
and uncoordinated resistance acts
which characterized this period. This
aim was reached with the establishment
of SWAPO in 1960.
The second stage consisted of making
out of SWAPO an organization deeply
rooted in the Namibian society, dealing
with concrete problems concerning
people’s lives as well as, in a larger
context, the question of national in-
dependence. This process took place in
the first half of the 1960s.
In 1966, the People’s Liberation
Army of Namibia (PLAN) was created
to confront the repression of the South
African occupiers against the liberation
movement. Armed struggle began.
In the fourth stage, in the beginning
of the 1970s, armed struggle became the
main form of resistance against the
South African racist regime.
A CHANGING BALANCE OF
POWER
A combination of events in the 1970s
led to a shift in the balance of power in
the region. In June 1971, the Interna-
tional Court of Justice ruled that South
Africa’s occupation of Namibia was il-
legal. In December 1973, the UN
General Assembly recognized SWAPO
as the sole authentic representative of
the Namibian people. With the fall of
fascism in Portugal and the end of
Portuguese colonialism, which brought
about the independence of Mozambi-
que (1974) and Angola (1975), the
power equation in Southern Africa was
sified, and realized that South Africa’s
occupation of Namibia was no longer
guaranteeing their strategic interests
and the activities of their companies. In
the following process of negotiations,
the «contact group» turned out to be
only interested in preserving the in-
terests of the West and of South Africa,
while putting pressure on SWAPO. The
negotiations failed.
Finally, as South Africa’s isolation
grew and world condemnation became
louder, the UN Security Council passed
Resolution 435 on September 29, 1978.
South Africa formally accepted
Resolution 435, but in the years that
followed Pretoria has repeatedly stalled
on implementing the plan. The Reagan
administration’s policy of «construc-
tive engagement» gave South Africa a
powerful protection for obstructing the
independence of Namibia. Meanwhile,
the US and Pretoria linked Namibia’s
independence with Cuban troop
withdrawal from Angola. This accen-
tuated the ties between Namibia and
Angola which had long existed, not on-
ly due to geographic proximity, but
more importantly due to the common
aspirations and cooperation which
link SWAPO and the MPLA.
ANGOLA, CONFRONTING
THE AGGRESSION
Since its independence in 1975,
Angola has been subjected to massive
military destabilization, with dramatic
social and economic consequences.
Besides direct intervention and aggres-
sion by South African troops, one of
the tools used against Angola is
UNITA. Having failed to install a
counterrevolutionary government in
1975-76, South Africa and its allies,
among them Israel and the US, con- P
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