South Africa and Namibia: Domestic Politics and Decolonization

South Africa and Namibia: Domestic Politics and DecolonizationIn Search of Namibian Independence: The Limitations of the United Nations by Geisa MariaRocha; To Be Born A Nation: The Liberation Struggle for Namibia by Department ofInformation and Publicity, SWAPO of NamibiaReview by: Gerald M. McSheffreyCanadian Journal of African Studies / Revue Canadienne des Études Africaines, Vol. 20, No. 2(1986), pp. 270-274Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Canadian Association of African StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/484874 .

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South Africa and Namibia: Domestic Politics and Decolonization

Gerald M. McSheffrey

While the debate over the future direction of political change in South Africa heats up, the appearance of these two works on Namibia serve to remind us of a longstanding issue that has once again been shunted into the background. This is regretable not only for the long suffering people of Nam- ibia but also for those specialists and others who are wont to speculate about or attempt to predict the probable course of political development within South Africa itself. Most South African specialists, it seems, choose to ignore the important lesson to be gleaned from the recent history of Euro- pean decolonization, namely, that we can often learn as much from it about the patterns or parameters of political change with the decolonizing metro- poles as we can about those within the colonies themselves. Were South Africanists to reflect on this, they would realize that a careful consideration of Pretoria's policy towards Namibia in recent years can offer very useful insights into the possible parameters of political change within South Africa. Strange as it may seem, the view from Namibia may actually help to dispell some of the cloudy thinking that has abounded of late concerning the likely direction and pace of political change within South Africa itself in the near future.

This is surely the case with one of the volumes under consideration - In Search of Namibian Independence by Geisa Maria Rochas. Although the primary purpose of this work by the former Secretary to the UN Com- missioner for Namibia is to examine the failure of the United Nations to effect a settlement of the Namibian independence question, this book is far more interesting for the intriguing insights it offers into the political

Geisa Maria Rocha. In Search of Namibian Independence: The Limitations of the United Nations. Boulder: Westview Press, 1984. 192 pp.

Department of Information and Publicity, SWAPO of Namibia. To Be Born A Nation: The Liberation Struggle for Namibia. London: Zed Press, 198 I. 3 57 PP.

Gerald M. McSheffrey is affiliated with the Higher Education Group at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), Toronto, Ontario, Canada.



27I McSheffrey: South Africa and Namibia

mindset of the South African government as revealed through its Namibian policy. Even the most cursory reading of Rochas' insightful analysis of the attitudes and concerns that have shaped South African priorities in respect to decolonization in Namibia calls into question the optimistic views of some South African specialists, such as Heribert Adam, who insist that Pre- toria has both the political desire and the political will to forge a new order in post-Apartheid South Africa.

The overriding impression left by this work is precisely the opposite, namely, that to expect meaningful political change in South Africa from a regime that has consistently rejected even the most moderate proposals for the devolution of political power in Namibia is highly unrealistic. Indeed, in its successive efforts to create and install the Turnhalle Conferent, the Dem- ocratic Turnhalle Alliance, and most recently, the all-Party Multi-Racial Alliance, Rochas demonstrates that the South African objective in Namibia has not been to seek out a constructive alternative to the colonial status quo but rather to gerrymander together a coalition of colonists and collaborators acceptable to Pretoria and creditable enough to sell to its ally, the United States.

It is apparent from Rochas' description of the South African political agenda for Namibia that it has been shaped by and large by what Pretoria has (or has not) in mind for post-Apartheid South Africa itself. Essentially, that seems to be a cosmetic reconstructing and rerooting of the traditional coercion / collaborator colonial model in South Africa sufficiently modified to provide some appearance of political change while withholding the essential reality of it. That this may be South Africa's ultimate intention is confirmed by Pretoria's historic response to political dissent and possible independence in Namibia where, as Rochas points out, it has consistently refused to enter into any kind of open-ended political dialogue with groups that fall outside its own dependent collaborator network. South Africa's persistent refusal to engage in any direct discussions with the South West African People's Association (SWAPO) in respect to Namibia's future, for example, mirrors its stance in respect to the African National Congress and United Democratic Front in South Africa, both of which, like SWAPO, have refused to accommodate themselves to a political agenda and political timetable dictated by Pretoria.

Clearly, the most important inference to be drawn from Rochas' study is that the decolonization of Namibia along the lines of earlier European mod- els elsewhere in Africa has always been and remains impossible precisely because of the far-reaching consequences that independence under African majority rule there has for the existing political order within South Africa itself. As Rochas observes, were South Africa to allow for free elections in Namibia and, as is likely, SWAPO were to emerge victorious, this would have



272 CJAS / RCEA XX:2 1986

"a profound psychological and political effect on the domestic situation in South Africa itself" (143).

While events within South Africa since this book was published in 1983 may have shifted political opinion in Pretoria somewhat, there is no evi- dence to indicate that the political blueprint Afrikanerdom has in mind for post-Apartheid South Africa is yet either reformist or radical enough to accommodate the reality of an independent Namibia under majority African rule. Namibian independence, therefore, has been put on indefinite hold, and as the principal thrust of Rochas' study shows, United Nations initia- tives alone (as past events have demonstrated) will do little to alter this situation in the absence of any concerted pressure on South Africa from its allies in the West, particularly the United States. While the notion of Namibian independence under majority rule remains ideologically and politically unacceptable in Pretoria, South African political strategy there and in Nami- bia is more likely to continue to ressemble that of Ian Smith's in post UDI Rhodesia, that is, a kind of political holding action rather than a realistic effort to come to terms with present political contradicitions and future political possibilities.

There is cause for sober reflection in all of this, especially for the "ratio- nalists" like Heribert Adam and others who seem to be suggesting that, because White South Africa must change, it will in fact change and that change, when it does come, will be positive and constructive in intent. The problem with this particular logic is that there is little in the history of South Africa to this point to support it, nor is there any real indication at present that a government which has imprisoned 9 ooo political dissidents and has been responsible for the deaths of over a thousand more in the past year is either capable of or inclined to move expeditiously from a policy of coercion to one of political reform. Furthermore, if this particular government were indeed to do so, it would be acting contrary to the whole thrust of South African history in the twentieth century whereby periods of intense Black protest in the 1920os, 1940s, and 960os have been followed by periods of intense White repression and political reaction rather than liberalization and reform.

History and the symbols it enshrines are as important to Afrikaners as to any people on earth, and those who would attempt to read the future of South Africa would do well to remember how Afrikaners have chosen to read their history up until now. Clearly, the symbolic implications of decolonization in Namibia are far greater for South Africa (as indeed they have been for other nations such as France) than mere rationalist analysis might suggest, and we would do well to remember this when we ponder the political future there and in Namibia.



273 McSheffrey: South Africa and Namibia

To Be Born A Nation was initially published in 198I to mark the twentieth anniversary of the founding of SWAPO the year before. It would be unrealistic to expect a work authored by the Department of Information and Publicity of SWAPO to provide a detached or objective rendering of the history of Namibia or the role of SWAPO in events there over the past two decades, and this one unquestionably does neither. As the publishers' remark on the cover unerringly understates, "To Be Born A Nation presents the Namibian liberation movement's own analysis of its country and the struggle to liberate it." In fact, this work is a somewhat uneven mixture of advocacy and information, history and polemic, socio-economic analysis and political propaganda. Nevertheless, To Be Born A Nation is not without some merit for, despite its polemical tone, it does provide a useful overview of the role of SWAPO in the liberation movement and the history of South African colonialism in Namibia since I919. Informed readers should be forewarned, however, that this SWAPO account contains little factual information that is either new or original, and even the most interesting chapters on the economics of South African colonialism are based almost exclusively on secondary sources, particularly the previously published reports and commissioned studies of the United Nations Institute for Namibia. Docu- mentation, moreover, is almost haphazard in nature, and sources are cited or omitted with no apparent rationale. On the other hand, the extensive appen- dices contain a number of excellent maps and a wealth of economic and demographic data on Namibia.

As a kind of capsule history of Namibia and particularly of SWAPO, this book demonstrates all the familiar failings of the nationalist manifestos thrown up by the independence movements elsewhere in Africa in the

I95os and I960s. Much of To Be Born A Nation is taken up with a damning critique of South African rule in Namibia, with particular emphasis on the "economics of exploitation." While much of this nationalist critique of South African rule is unquestionably valid, the implicit premise that South Africa has profited inordinately in the past from the exploitation of Nami- bian resources and that South Africa's continued presence there is motivated by economic interests is clearly suspect. Namibia was never a profitable colony either for Germany or South Africa, and the country remains one of very limited economic potential despite the now spent min- ing boom of the late I960s and early 1970s. As Wolfe Schmokel (1985) has shown, White settler agriculture in Namibia has never been anything other than marginally profitable and, in recent years, despite continued heavy sub- sidies, not profitable at all. Furthermore, as Rochas estimates, the cost to South Africa of defending Namibia alone amounts to approximately a bil- lion dollars annually, and this far exceeds any direct or indirect return from



274 CJAS / RCEA XX:2 1986

South African investment in Namibia (164). Indeed, even SWAPO itself con- cedes somewhat in the manner of an aside that the loss of Namibia would have a minimal effect on the South African economy (132).

The hard reality is that the economic prospects of an independent Nami- bia are exceedingly dim, no matter how imaginative or innovative the SWAPO socialist program proclaimed here might actually prove to be in prac- tice. Recent history would seem to affirm that an independent Namibia, visionary socialism notwithstanding, would be as much, if not more, a hos-

tage to South African economic and political dominance as the other Afri- can states in the area. Under these circumstances, it is difficult to discern

just why South Africa has been so reluctant to opt for the neo-colonial solu- tion in Namibia even if that scenario involved recognizing SWAPO as its

political heir. Has this not happened because, as is suggested here, an inde-

pendent Namibia under SWAPO would pose too great a threat to South Afri- can economic, political, and military objectives in the area at present? Per-

haps, but not likely; South Africa after all has proved very successful in

extending its dominance over southern Africa in recent years, and an inde-

pendent Namibia would pose no challenge to this. Could it be that the real reason South Africa will not give up Namibia is

that Pretoria is far too concerned with the political backlash that would arise from the perceived abandonment of the White population of Namibia, as Rocha infers? President Botha, moreover, has indicated on numerous occasions in the recent past that majority rule would never be acceptable in South Africa, and majority rule in Namibia at this point might set a pre- cedent that is far too troubling to the White regime in Pretoria. That, in the final analysis, may be as important as anything else, and this does not bode well for the prospect of meaningful political change within South Africa, now or in the future.

Schmokel, Wolfe W. 1985. "The Myth of the White Farmer: Commercial Agriculture in Namibia, 1900oo - 1983." International Journal of African Historical Studies I8: 93-108.



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South Africa and Namibia: Domestic Politics and Decolonization