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Leader:
The UN recognises the liberation movement SWAPO, led by Sam
Nujoma, as the legitimate representative of the Namibian people,
and it is generally agreed that SWAPO would win a free election.
However, in practice, Namibia is ruled by South Africa, in
defiance of the International Court of Justice.
Economy:
is $1,260 per year(1979), but average personal incomes
for Africans only $188. Debt service payments around 15% of
exports.
Main
exports:
uranium, diamonds, other minerals, beet karakul pelts.
Rate
of inflation
(average 1971-1981): 11.20,.
People:
Around 1.3 million / town dwellers 30%.
Health:
Life expectancy (1970-75 UN figures) 41 years.
Culture:
Religion: 50% Lutheran. 20% Roman Catholic, 10% Anglican.
Ethnic
groups:
South Africa claims 11. including 70.000 whites (but excluding
military).
Languages:
Oshivambo by half the population. SWAPO’s official language
is English. 6 or 7 others.
Colonising
Powers:
Germany to 1916. Thereafter South Africa under League of Nations
mandate. Mandate revoked in 1966.
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NAMIBIA
— land of contrasts’ says the tourist brochure.
Yes indeed. In Windhoek on a Saturday afternoon, the descendants
of Germans and Boers sip ice-cold lager on the terraces of
spacious houses squatting under the rocky hilltops. On the
other side of town in Katatura much of the beer is warm and
homebrewed. Knots of people sit in sandy yards, shaded by
their two-roomed houses. The contrast is a familiar one—
for Namibian ‘apartheid’ is shaped by the South
Africans who control it
In
the textbooks, African colonies were acquired so European
powers could gain useful raw materials and then like mature
children finally granted independence in the 1960s. But Namibia
doesn’t fit that standard view. It remains an illegal
colony of South Africa, with its major products —diamonds,
uranium, high fashion karakul coats and lobster tails—
still symbolising the extraction of wealth at the expense
of self-sufficiency.
To
maintain its occupation, South Africa has one soldier in the
country for every white Namibian. Church sources report persistent
harassment and torture of ordinary civilians, and the militia
are much feared.
Trying
to loosen the South African military grip on the country is
the Namibian Liberation movement SWAPO. The guerrilla fighters
are known locally as ‘our boys’.
The
key to the conflict in Namibia is control of the land. Five
thousand white families own huge ranches covering an area
the size of East and West Germany combined, with a few black
farmers confined to patches of land in between. But the majority
of blacks are crowded into Ovamboland. the great northern
plain, dotted with palm trees and watered by an annual flood
from Angola
Throughout
colonial times men had to leave Ovamboland to work on contract
for a few months hundreds of miles to the south, leaving their
families behind. Today the hundreds of unemployed miners in
Ovamboland are symbols of the wider economic crisis that now
grips Namibia. The diamond and uranium mines have cut back
production and told workers finishing a contract to return
home and wait -- six. nine months, who knows? — until
they’ are recalled.
The
world recession has severely damaged Namibia’s economy.
The West is no longer prepared to pay for Namibian products—
karakul is out of fashion and nobody’ is interested in
diamonds. No diamonds, no government tax. And so, too, has
fallen South Africa’s attempt to create a favourable
local administration that would win popular support from SWAPO
by spending their way into favour.
Despite
the cost of the war the South African government stay’s
on, afraid of the impact back home of ’losing’ Namibia.
And glad of the base Namibia offers for its repeated military
invasions of neighbouring Angola. Meanwhile the Western initiatives
to negotiate South African acceptance of UN-sponsored elections
has run into the sand — with no real progress made in
the last five years.
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new
internationalist 122
