S. Africa Grants Namibia Rule : Defies U.N. Plan for Independence of Area

In defiance of renewed U.N. calls for the independence of Namibia, South Africa established an autonomous local government here Monday, giving it broad administrative powers while retaining overall control of the mineral-rich and sparsely populated territory.

President Pieter W. Botha told the members of Namibia’s new Cabinet and National Assembly that their appointments should be taken as a warning that South Africa is losing patience with the international approach to the Namibian problem and might seek a solution outside the 1978 U.N. independence plan.

The international approach has been stalemated over the 30,000 Cuban troops stationed in neighboring Angola, which also harbors black nationalist Namibian guerrillas of the South-West Africa People’s Organization who have have waged war for 19 years against South African rule.

The territory is a former German colony also known as South-West Africa.

South Africa would remain committed to “an internationally acceptable independence” for the area only “as long as there is a possibility that recent international negotiations hold any realistic prospect of bringing about the genuine withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola,” Botha said.

Those American-mediated negotiations have all but collapsed with the South African commando raid last month on Angola’s Cabinda oil fields and another last week on neighboring Botswana. The latter incident prompted the United States to recall its ambassador to South Africa over the weekend.

“We have a message for the world,” Botha said, “for Soviet strategists shifting their pieces on the international chessboard, for Western diplomats anxious to remove, at any cost, this vexatious question from the international agenda, for terrorists of the South-West Africa People’s Organization lurking in their lairs in Angola: We are not a people who shirk our responsibilities.”

The message, marked by the establishment of the new Namibian administration, seemed to be that the world will have to deal with South Africa on its own terms over Namibia and other regional issues.

‘Clear-Cut Interests’

“South Africa has clear-cut regional interests in southern Africa that it is not prepared to relinquish,” Botha said.

At U.N. headquarters in New York, Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said the new government is “null and void.”

“No recognition should be accorded by the United Nations or by any member state to any representatives or organs established by such acts,” he said.

The arid, mostly desert region has been governed by South Africa since 1915. The United Nations called for self-rule and U.N.-supervised elections for Namibia in 1978.

South Africa will not allow the U.N. to guide Namibia toward independence until the 30,000 Cuban troops leave Angola, Namibia’s northern neighbor.

The Cubans support Angola’s Marxist government, which lets guerrillas of the South-West Africa People’s Organization use Angola as a staging base for attacks on South African forces in northern Namibia. South Africa says the Cubans would destabilize a newly independent Namibia and install a left-leaning government.

‘Puppets of Pretoria’

As members of the new eight-man Cabinet and the National Assembly were inaugurated with much pomp and ceremony in the Tintenpalast, the traditional seat of government here, their opponents branded them “puppets of Pretoria” and called upon Namibians to “condemn, reject and ignore” the new administration.

Supporters of the South-West Africa People’s Organization, known as SWAPO, charged at a daylong political rally that the new administration is the first step toward a “unilateral declaration of independence” that would keep Namibia under the control of the minority white regime in Pretoria and prevent SWAPO from ever coming to power.

When the rally broke up at dusk in Katatura, Windhoek’s black township, with participants chanting such slogans as “we want true independence” and “freedom now,” police dispersed them with tear gas and repeated baton charges. Six persons were reportedly injured.

Most of the police at Katatura belong to the special counter-insurgency Koevet unit that, ironically, the new administration has promised to disband after repeated allegations of atrocities in the war against the guerrillas in northern Namibia.

Heavy Security

Throughout Windhoek, security was heavy out of fear that the guerrillas would launch anti-government attacks in the capital to disrupt the inauguration.

Dawid Bezuidenhout, first chairman of the “transitional government of national unity”--as the new administration has been termed--called in his inaugural address for an end to the war and a new attempt at reconciliation.

“The people of Namibia are tired of this armed struggle waged about them,” he said. “They are tired of having their children abducted into Angola. They are tired of the death and destruction sown by land mines, bombs and fragmentation grenades.

“They have no interest in foreign ideologies or the struggles forced upon them by those with imperialist designs on southern Africa. Our people, the people of this country, have now stood up and said, ‘Leave us alone. Let us determine our future.’ ”

Bezuidenhout, a former schoolteacher, appealed to other parties, including the South-West Africa People’s Organization, to reconsider their decisions against joining the new administration. But he said the coalition partners “reject with scorn the United Nations’ designation of SWAPO as the ‘sole’ and authentic representative of the Namibian people.’ ”

Six Political Parties

Members of the Cabinet and National Assembly were appointed by South Africa’s administrator general, who retains a veto over their actions, from six political parties, one of them itself a coalition of several parties.

Prolonged negotiations were required in the effort to balance the interests of the 71,000 whites in the territory against those of the 1 million blacks and coloreds, or persons of mixed race, and to give it as much credibility as possible.

The outcome was a Cabinet of two whites, both Afrikaners descended from the Dutch colonists of South Africa; two Coloreds, including Bezuidenhout; two Hereros, members of a small but politically influential tribe; a South African-born Tswana and only one Ovambo, although the Ovambos constitute more than half of Namibia’s population and are the basis of SWAPO strength. The 62-member National Assembly has a similar composition.

To give the new government a semblance of international recognition, though no claim was made that it was sovereign or independent, South Africa recruited 25 conservative politicians from Britain, France, West Germany and the United States to attend.