There is a view (expressed in the work of Lauren Dobell [1998], for example) that the struggle for independence in Namibia was largely fought outside the country, chiefly by the diplomacy of the externally based South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) leadership.
Within the country, certainly, SWAPO faced massive organizational problems, not only because of the way the population was dispersed across the land but also because the group’s attempts to organize were met with harsh repression and violent reactions. Nevertheless, at certain moments the internal struggle played an important role in the process which eventually led to independence. One of these moments came in 1971.
After the International Court of Justice ruled that South Africa’s rule of the territory was illegal, the two main Lutheran Church leaders wrote an open letter to the South African prime minister, John Vorster, which presented a stance of open support for independence; this was the first time that the churches had identified themselves with the movement for independence. Within months, from December 1971 to March 1972, a major strike took place that involved up to 13,000 contract workers, the backbone of the Namibian labor force. The external SWAPO leadership was taken by surprise by the scale of the strike but quickly tried to capitalize on it.
The new political consciousness born from the strike helped motivate the SWAPO Youth League to campaign against the imposition of the Bantustan policy in the north. The increasing resistance within the country to South African rule, and the threat of further mass action, undoubtedly played a part in the Vorster government’s decision to shift ground and accept the idea of independence for the de facto colony. But South Africa wanted to control that process, to bring into the office an independent Namibia—a government that would support, and not challenge, South African interests.
SWAPO was never banned in Namibia because of the international status of the territory, but its internal leadership suffered constant harassment at the hands of the South African authorities, and on a number of occasions its key officials were jailed; some of them were tortured and in September 1989 a top official was assassinated. As the increasingly vicious war in the north intensified, repression elsewhere grew harsher.
But in the mid-1980s, thanks to the reform program of the South African government, new space opened up for protest politics. The South African government knew that without international recognition of Namibian independence, the conflict with SWAPO would not end.
It was not prepared to implement the Western plan for a transition to independence, accepted by the United Nations in September 1978, because it would almost certainly bring into office a SWAPO government, and it sought to create in the territory an anti-SWAPO front that could form an alternative to SWAPO. It, therefore, influenced a group of internal parties to form the Multi-Party Conference (MPC) in 1983, a wider grouping than merely the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, which had won the internal election of December 1978. The MPC then pressed for the establishment of a Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU), which came into office in June 1985. There was no new election, but to give the TGNU some legitimacy, more freedom of expression was allowed, and SWAPO began to organize as it had not been able to for over twenty years.
It now again held mass rallies, and new leadership, returned from imprisonment on Robben Island, organized the first effective trade unions. The Namibian Union of Mineworkers under Ben Ulenga formed the backbone of the National Union of Namibian Workers, and the SWAPO Youth League gained a new lease of life.
In the crucial year 1988, when South Africa, at last, began negotiating the implementation of the Western plan, there were widespread protests within the country, beginning in the north, where scholars at schools next to army bases protested against their proximity to the bases and called a school boycott. The school boycott spread throughout Ovamboland and into other areas, and workers began to give their support to the students.
This growing internal crisis was one factor, argues Brian Wood, for the South African decision to go ahead with the implementation of the Western plan and to withdraw from Namibia. After a delay of over a decade, implementation began on April 1, 1989, and a large United Nations presence entered the country to supervise the election that took place in the first week of November that year.
SWAPO emerged victoriously, but with only 57.4 percent of the vote, and not the two-thirds majority that would have enabled it to write the constitution for the new country on its own. By February 1990 the new constitution had been accepted, and the country became independent on March 21, 1990. Any account of the road to that independence must allow some space for internal resistance and mass protest in extremely difficult circumstances.
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