This dyad belongs to the conflict South Africa: Namibia
Summary of conflict South Africa: Namibia
The South Africa (Namibia) conflict broke out in 1966. SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation) sought total independence for the territory then known as South West Africa, now Namibia, from South Africa. The armed conflict, which became strongly intertwined with the conflict in neighbouring Angola, was resolved in 1988 following negotiations between South Africa, Angola and Cuba which opened up for implementation of a UN-sponsored process for Namibian independence.
Origins of the conflict
The territory that makes up current-day Namibia, then known as South West Africa, was colonised by Germany in 1884. In 1920, following the First World War, the mandate to administer the territory was given to Britain, to be administered through South Africa. After the Second World War, as administrators were urged to place their mandates under United Nations (UN) trusteeship, South Africa unilaterally annexed South West Africa and implemented the apartheid system in the territory. The non-white groups – which included culturally heterogeneous groups such as Bantu-speaking Ovambo and Herero, San people such as Bushmen and Nama, and mixed or “Coloured” groups – were assigned “ethnic homelands”, while the bulk of the most productive land was assigned for whites. The South African government ruled the territory through local, often tribal, authorities in the homelands. White businessmen set up commercial farms, as well as fishing and mining industries, benefiting from cheap black labour. Workers were recruited from the ethnic homeland territories and made to stay in workers’ compounds, allowed to visit their home and family only very rarely. The largest ethnic group was the Ovambo in northern Namibia, who made up about half of the population. They also became the primary source of cheap migrant labour.
SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation) originated from OPO (Ovamboland People’s Organisation), which emerged in the late 1950s. OPO, which drew its support from the Ovambo people, was created in response to popular resentment with the system of migrant labour imposed by South Africa. In April 1960, Sam Nujoma and other exiled OPO leadership figures formed SWAPO in Dar es Salaam. The aim of this move was to broaden the struggle for an end to South African rule and to mobilise support from all Namibian ethic communities. The group also launched an international campaign for their cause, petitioning the UN and seeking diplomatic support particularly from newly independent states.
In the early 1960s, Ethiopia and Liberia brought the case of Namibia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), arguing that South Africa’s administration of the territory was illegal. Following the announcement in July 1966 by the ICJ that it would not take up the case of South Africa’s mandate over Namibia, SWAPO declared the beginning of their armed struggle. Later that year, on 6 August, South African police carried out an attack on the first Namibian base established by SWAPO’s armed wing, PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia).
The guerrilla war
Beginning in 1966, small contingents of PLAN (People’s Liberation Army of Namibia, the armed wing of SWAPO, the South West African People’s Organisation) fighters infiltrated Ovamboland in northern Namibia and clashed with local security forces. This marked the beginning of the armed conflict between SWAPO and the government of South Africa. The guerrilla activity was met with a harsh crackdown, with many of the early SWAPO guerrillas and leaders being captured and imprisoned under a new Terrorism Act introduced in 1967. Activity in Ovamboland soon became impossible, and the guerrillas shifted their activity to the Caprivi strip in north-east Namibia, launching small-scale operations from bases in Zambia.
The targets of SWAPO’s guerrilla attacks were South African security forces, but also tribal authorities, which served as local representatives of South African rule. Indeed, as an alternative to the full independence pursued by SWAPO, South Africa sought accommodation through granting increased self-rule to the ethnic homelands it had created as part of the apartheid system. Part of the responsibility for the counter-insurgency campaign was later given to local security forces, and a South West African Territorial Force (SWATF) was set up in 1979, composed of local recruits but under South African command. The South African Defence Force (SADF), which took over the command of the operations from the South African Police (SAP) in 1974, incorporated Namibian trackers from the San ethnic group, who later made up the 201 Battalion of the SWATF. The feared counter-insurgency unit Koevoet (“crowbar”), set up by an SAP official in 1978, also incorporated loyalists from Namibian ethnic groups.
At the beginning of the conflict, SWAPO was allowed bases in Zambia and received secondary support in the form of training and other military support from the Soviet Union. In the late 1960s, SWAPO’s headquarters were moved from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to Lusaka, Zambia. During the first years of the conflict, the intensity was relatively low and guerrilla activity mainly consisted of laying landmines and occasional clashes in the Caprivi. In the mid-1970s, however, events in Angola significantly affected SWAPO’s struggle. Following the 1974 coup in Portugal, Angola became independent with the leftist MPLA (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) gaining power. This had two major implications for SWAPO: firstly, it allowed guerrilla operations into northern Namibia from bases in Angola; and secondly, it enabled people in northern Namibia to flee to Angola and join SWAPO in exile. In connection with increased oppositional activity and consequent repression in Namibia, these developments caused SWAPO’s numerical strength to increase significantly. The group also began to benefit from military training by Cuban troops, which were present in Angola to aid the MPLA in its struggle against Angolan rebel groups. Meanwhile, in the early 1980s SWAPO was banned from operating from Zambia, following heavy military pressure from South Africa.
With SWAPO’s operational shift to Angola, the Namibian conflict became intimately linked with the Angolan conflict between MPLA and UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola; National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) - the Angolan government gave secondary support to SWAPO, and South Africa, in retaliation, provided material and active military support to UNITA. South Africa also began launching raids into Angolan territory, purportedly in response to SWAPO operations but often also to provide active military support to UNITA. In a number of large-scale military operations during the 1980s, South African forces destroyed several SWAPO bases and thereby limited SWAPO’s ability to launch attacks into Namibia. On several occasions, these operations entailed clashes against Angolan and Cuban troops; however, these clashes were reportedly either connected to the Angolan conflict, in which South Africa provided secondary warring support to UNITA, or they took place because SWAPO forces took cover among Angolan troops. It does not appear that Angola or Cuba at any time provided active warring support to SWAPO in its armed conflict with South Africa.
During the late 1980s, it was the South African-Angolan relationship that eventually became key to solving the conflict over Namibia. As South Africa succeeded in pushing SWAPO out of many of its bases in southern Angola, the number of guerrilla raids into Namibia decreased and the war was increasingly fought on Angolan soil. There, South Africa attacked SWAPO bases while also fighting on the side of UNITA against the MPLA government and its Cuban allies. Towards the end of the 1980s, as the global system was changing with the Cold War nearing its end, South Africa suffered significant setbacks in Angola while at the same time Angola and Cuba began to tire of the fighting. These military and global developments set the stage for a final diplomatic solution to the conflict between SWAPO and South Africa over Namibia.
Towards Namibian independence: internal and external initiatives
Partly due to SWAPOs (South West African People’s Organisation’s) strong efforts to gain diplomatic support for their struggle, the United Nations (UN) early on became engaged in trying to find a peaceful end to the conflict. In October 1966, the UN General Assembly had voted to end South Africa’s mandate over Namibia, and soon thereafter a UN Council for Namibia was created. From the outset, the UN adopted the stance that Namibian independence must be achieved for the territory as a whole and with UN trusteeship as a first step; South Africa, meanwhile, would only accept a process towards independence based on the ethnic homelands system it had set up. The South African government feared an electoral victory by SWAPO in the case of free elections, and was opposed to the status the UN granted the organisation by viewing it as the “authentic representative of the Namibian people”, as decided by the General Assembly in its Resolution 3111 in December 1973. The South African-sponsored internal process, which began with the Turnhalle Constitutional Conference in 1975 and was estimated to have the support of only a small minority of the Namibian population, would allow South Africa to control the process and retain influence and power over Namibia. The Turnhalle process was rejected by SWAPO, and it was widely held internationally that independence and elections without SWAPO could not be considered representative. During the conflict, the UN issued numerous resolutions condemning South Africa’s continued occupation of the territory and its policy of granting limited independence through the ethnic homelands. There were also many attempts to introduce mandatory sanctions against South Africa, but these were vetoed by South Africa’s main trading partners, the USA, the UK and France, who argued that sanctions would be a counterproductive strategy in trying to solve the conflict over Namibia.
As the UN failed to gain South African support for the envisaged independence process, other actors became involved as third parties. In 1976, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger began holding unilateral talks with the South African government, and circulated a peace plan among the concerned parties. The following year, a Western Contact Group (WCG) was formed by the Western members of the UN Security Council (USA, UK, Canada, France and West Germany). The WCG held indirect negotiations with South Africa and SWAPO in 1977-78, with the aim of getting South African agreement on an internationally acceptable independence process for Namibia. Initially, no progress was made as fundamental disagreement remained with regards to the structure of an interim authority for Namibia. SWAPO insisted that elections leading to independence must be non-ethnic and controlled by the UN, and that South African forces should be withdrawn before the beginning of the process, a demand rejected by South Africa. Furthermore, controversy arose over Walvis Bay, which had been administered as part of South Africa’s Cape Province but which SWAPO insisted must become a part of independent Namibia. After several rounds of talks and modifications of the proposals, and with pressure put on SWAPO by its allies in the front-line states (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia), both parties in July 1978 agreed to a plan that envisaged free elections under UN supervision, with South African withdrawal of all but a 1500-troop contingent and the deployment of a UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) to monitor implementation. The question of Walvis Bay was left outside the peace plan, to be addressed in separate talks after independence. The WCG plan was in September incorporated in UN Security Council Resolution 435 (UNSCR 435).
Despite the positive developments in 1978, implementation of the envisaged independence process soon deadlocked. In 1979, obstacles emerged in the form of disputes over interpretation, and because of reluctance on behalf of SWAPO to accept the compromises the plan envisaged. Consultations with the parties by Martti Ahtissaari, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, and an Angolan proposal for a demilitarised zone failed to break the deadlock. The internal process towards self-governance, sponsored by South Africa and rejected by SWAPO, meanwhile continued, with a National Assembly for Namibia established in May 1979. The continued pursuit of an internal solution by South Africa was condemned by SWAPO and international actors as further obstructing the conflict resolution process. However, after further diplomacy by Ahtisaari and Lieutenant-General Prem Chand, the envisaged commander of the future UN peacekeeping operation, SWAPO announced its willingness to hold direct talks with South Africa, paving the ground for a “pre-implementation meeting” in Geneva in January 1981. Under the chairmanship of Brian Urquhart, UN Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, the primary parties together with eight Namibian internal parties discussed a proposed timetable, the composition of the envisaged UN peacekeeping operation, and the release of prisoners. However, the talks again became deadlocked, and the meeting ended without reaching agreement on a date for a ceasefire and for implementation to begin.
Following the election of a new President of the USA, Ronald Reagan, US policy concerning southern Africa changed, with the new administration looking at Namibia in connection to developments in the neighbouring countries, particularly Angola, rather than as a separate issue. Talks between the US and South Africa resulted in the demand that implementation of the UNSCR 435 must be linked to withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola. This development further complicated the attempts to begin the implementation of UNSCR 435, as the “linkage” lay outside of the UN-sponsored resolution process. Continued efforts by the WCG in 1981-2 to move the process forward were hampered by increasingly firm demands by South Africa on the “linkage” issue. This spurred international frustration as most of the other outstanding issues surrounding UNSCR 435 had by now been resolved. The front-line states and the UN demanded that the issue of Cuban troops be separated from that of Namibian independence, but to no avail, and negotiations again stalled.
Due to the hardened South African stance on the “linkage” issue, as well as to the fact that the war over Namibia was increasingly intertwined with the conflict in Angola, negotiations in the 1980s began to take place between South Africa and Angola. These negotiations, while not considered part of the South Africa (Namibia) conflict in UCDP data as they did not include both the primary parties, would eventually become key to the resolution of the Namibian conflict. While talks involving South Africa and SWAPO became increasingly bogged down, amidst international condemnation of South Africa for impeding the Namibian independence process by its continued insistence on “linkage”, South Africa and Angola in February 1984 signed the Lusaka Accord whereby they agreed to cooperate to prevent SWAPO from operating in the “neutralized zone” of southern Angola. This agreement had limited effect, but talks between the two countries and involving Cuba and the USA continued, and in 1988 a breakthrough in the talks between South Africa and Angola led to the final obstacles to Namibian independence being removed. During the year, talks between South Africa, Angola, Cuba and the USA resulted in the signing of a ceasefire agreement in August and then to two agreements being signed at the UN headquarters in New York on 22 December. One of these was an Angolan-Cuban agreement on withdrawal of Cuban troops, a key issue for South African acceptance of Namibian independence under the UN plan. The other was a tripartite agreement between South Africa, Angola and Cuba providing for implementation of the Namibian independence process outlined in UNSCR 435.
Namibian independence and thereafter
1989 saw the beginning of the implementation of the Namibian independence process as embodied in UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 435. In SCR 629 on 16 January, the Security Council confirmed 1 April as the date when implementation would begin. The date had previously been suggested in the tripartite negotiations between Angola, South Africa and Cuba. 1 April would also be the date for a formal ceasefire between SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation) and South Africa, while a de facto ceasefire had held since August 1988. In March, the Secretary General sent identical letters to SWAPO and the South African government, stating the precise date and hour of the ceasefire and requesting them to state their acceptance of the terms; both parties accepted later in March.
However, implementation got off to a disastrous start. On the evening of 31 March news emerged of a large-scale infiltration of SWAPO forces from Angola, where they were supposed to be confined to bases, and of clashes with South West Africa Police (SWAPOL). In response to this development, and with the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) far from fully deployed, the Special Representative of the Secretary General Martti Ahtisaari authorised the South African forces to leave their bases and stop the breaches of the ceasefire. In the following weeks, before the process got back on track and the parties were again confined to bases, some 3-400 people, mainly SWAPO fighters, were killed in clashes between guerrillas and security forces. It remained somewhat unclear why the SWAPO fighters had crossed the border. UNTAG had not yet deployed to the area of northern Namibia where the fighting took place, so accounts of what happened were dominated by South African security forces. SWAPO officially denied having broken the ceasefire and claimed members that were already in Namibia were attacked. UNTAG, in an early report to the Security Council, suggested SWAPO fighters had misunderstood the ceasefire agreement and intended to set up bases on Namibian territory under UN supervision. Some SWAPO fighters who were captured by the South Africans stated they had crossed the border for this purpose. By mid-May, following diplomatic and practical intervention by the UN and by the Joint Commission set up as part of the agreements between South Africa, Angola and Cuba, the South African and SWAPO forces were again confined to bases and the implementation process could begin.
The independence process, as outlined in UNSCR 435, entailed elections directed by the South African administration but under supervision of Special Representative Martti Ahtisaari and UNTAG. Apart from the turbulent events immediately following 1 April, implementation went relatively smoothly and according to schedule. South African troops on Namibian soil were reduced to 1500 on 24 June and withdrawn completely one week after the election was certified. Elections were held on 7-11 November and were certified to have been completely free and fair, with an astounding 97 % voter turnout. SWAPO won the elections with 57.3% of the vote, with the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (a party based on the previous, South African-sponsored internal process towards self-governance) coming in second with 28.6%. On 21 November, the elected Constituent Assembly convened to begin drawing up a Constitution, which was adopted in February 1990. Official independence took place on 21 March 1990, when SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma was sworn in as President of Namibia by UN Secretary General Javer Pérez de Cuéllar.
The outstanding issue of sovereignty over Walvis Bay was resolved in negotiations between Namibia and South Africa over the next few years, partly due to the firm position during South Africa’s democratisation process of ANC (African National Congress) and other South African opposition groups that the enclave should belong to Namibia. Joint South African-Namibian administration was set up in 1992, and on 28 February 1994 Walvis Bay was formally transferred from South Africa to Namibia.
Since the end in 1988 of the armed conflict between SWAPO and South Africa, and the independence of the country in 1990, there has been some tension in Namibia over what has been described as hegemony of power established by the Ovambo ethnic group through their traditional dominance of SWAPO. However, Namibia has not seen any armed conflicts after 1988 and the internal situation has remained mainly peaceful.
