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A New Small State With a Powerful Neighbour: Namibia/South Africa Relations Since Independence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Graham Evans
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Extract

Namibia gained independence on 21 March 1990 after 106 years of colonial rule, first under Germany and then for 76 years under South Africa. As a consequence, throughout the greater part of the twentieth century the South West Africa/Namibia issue has been a constant item on the political and legal agendas of the international community, primary because of its ‘double-victim’ status as unwilling host to both imperial conquest and apartheid. Not unnaturally the independence process when it finally came, was widely hailed as a triumph for the United Nations and the ‘new political thinking’ that signalled the end of the cold war and the tentative (no more than that) beginnings of a ‘new world order’. Thus, sub-Sahara's last colony was also the first to proceed to self-determination unsullied by the need to define its existence in terms of superpower bipolarity. At the systemic level at least, the new state began with a virtual blank sheet, as well as a great deal of international goodwill and bonhomie.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 131 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 The framers of The Constitution of the Republic of Namibia (1990) appear not to have recognised this. Article 96 asserts that ‘The State shall endeavour to ensure that in its international relations it … adopts and maintains a policy of non-alignment’. This has been robbed of much of its rationale as a general orientation by the demise of the cold war, and without radical redefinition and restructuring the ‘movement’ is likely to become an anachronism, or at most a quaint label or taxonomy for a large but divisive group of states. In the Namibian context, non-alignment presumably means broad identification with the interests and aspirations of the ‘South’.Google Scholar

2 See Mayall, James, Nationalism and International Society (London, 1990), p. 56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The Constitution of the Republic of Namibia, Article I (4), p. 2.Google Scholar

4 See Evans, Graham, ‘Walvis Bay: South Africa, Namibia and the question of sovereignty’, in International Affairs (London), 66, 3, 07 1990, pp. 559–68.Google Scholar By far the most comprehensive account of this dispute is to be found in Berat, Lynn, Walvis Bay: decolonization and international law (New Haven and London, 1990).Google Scholar

5 United Nations Security Council Resolution 432 of 1978.

6 ‘Second Joint Statement on Walvis Bay and the Off-Shore Islands’, Embassy of Namibia, Brussels, 20 September 1991.

7 ‘Southern Africa: the new diplomacy’, Embassy of South Africa, Washington, DC, 1990, p. 17.

8 Walvis Bay is an enclave of Namibia but an exclave of South Africa. See Barnard, W. S., ‘The Political Geography of an Exclave: Walvis Bay’, in South African Geographer/Suid-Afrikaanse Geograaf (Dennesig, South Africa), 15, 1–2, 09 1987 – 04 1988, p. 85.Google Scholar

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10 See especially, Simon, David, Independent Namibia One Year On (London, 03 1991), Conflict Studies No. 239.Google Scholar

11 Catholic Institute of International Affairs, Report 20 (London, 06 1991), by Steve Kibble, who has provided much of the material in this section.Google ScholarPubMed

12 See Halpern, Jack, South Africa's Hostages: Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland (Harmondsworth, 1965), which shows that the ‘settlement’ was by dint of force majeur and not regarded as permanent by the Basotho.Google Scholar

13 See especially, Mahao, Nqosa Leuta, ‘Some Legal and Political Issues in Respect of Lesotho's Options in the Context of a Future Democratic South Africa’, in Santho, Sehoai and Sejanamane, Mafa (eds.), Southern Africa After Apartheid (Harare, 1990), p. 198.Google Scholar

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15 See Simon, op. cit. p. 15.

16 Heerden, Neil van, ‘Developments in Southern Africa’, South African Institute of International Affairs, Pretoria, 12 1990Google Scholar, and Mbeki, Thabo, ‘Domestic and Foreign Policies of a New South Africa’, in Review of African Political Economy (London), 11, 01–04 1978, pp. 6–16.Google Scholar

17 For an elaboration of what might be called the ‘AK47 factor’, see Greg Mills, ‘Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: Southern Africa's security after apartheid’, Conference of the Political Studies Association of South Africa, Hunter's Rest, Rustenburg, 10–11 October 1991, pp. 3–5.

18 See Slabbert, Frederick van Zyl, ‘Political Implications of Post-Apartheid South Africa with Emphasis on Southern Africa’, Africa Leadership Forum, Windhoek, 09 1991.Google Scholar

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20 Van Zyl Slabbert, op. cit. p. 9.

21 Namibia has a smaller population (estimated to be 1·5 million in 1989) than Wales, but is larger than Italy in size, with an area of 823,629 sq. kms., excluding Walvis Bay.Google Scholar

22 Quoted by André du Pisani, ‘The Role of New States in the Region: the Namibian example’, Conference on ‘South Africa's Choices for the 1990s: change and the pain of change’, Leicester University, 20–22 March 1991, p. 6.Google Scholar

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24 See Deutsch, Karl, Political Community in the North Atlantic Area (Princeton, 1957).Google Scholar

25 See Buzan, Barry, ‘Third World Regional Security in Structural and Historical Perspective’, in Job, Brian L. (ed.), The Insecurity Dilemma: national security of Third World states (Boulder and London, 1992).Google Scholar

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27 Wolfers, Arnold, Discord and Collaboration (Baltimore, 1962), p. 111.Google Scholar See also, A., Scholl and Brundtland, A. O. (eds.), Small States in International Relations (Stockholm, 1971), pp. 30 and 46.Google Scholar