A Vast, Rugged Land Prepares for Independence : World Spotlight Now on Long-Ignored Namibia

Winds whipping off Antarctic Ocean currents are stopped cold here by the steep, apricot-colored dunes of one of the world’s oldest deserts. The progeny is the Swakopmund fog, gripping a mostly uninhabitable stretch of African beachfront longer than the California coast.

Such mischief from Mother Nature has made Namibia the continent’s hidden, forgotten colony. Its raw landscape, flanked on the east and west by the Kalahari and Namib deserts, has been sealed off from most of the world for centuries. Finnish missionaries, German colonizers and finally Afrikaners came to the southwestern coast of Africa to forget and be forgotten.

Now the prospect of Namibian nationhood has brought world attention to this unusual territory of bush people and Dutch, sand dunes and rainbows, Nazi memorabilia and Marxist rhetoric. And Namibia, more accustomed to the sort of independence that comes with international obscurity, is trying to adjust.

“South-West has been very good to us. We’ve never had it better in our lives, really,” Isabel van Heerden said recently as an orange sunset lit the sky outside her kitchen window. She and her husband left a South African apartment 15 years ago to start a new life on 25,000 acres of ranchland ringed by purple mountains on the central Namibian plateau.

“I would never want to go back,” she added.

Most old-timers, black as well as white, still call this South-West Africa, or simply South-West, even though the United Nations recognizes it as Namibia. And being a “South-Wester” still conjures up images here of diamond speculators, sunburned cowboys and women lugging rifles.

In fact, the rugged landscape and the great distances--fewer than two people per square mile in a land twice the size of California--has attracted a fiercely independent and insular breed of white settler.

It also has been home to resilient, widely diverse African tribes, from the nomadic Bushmen to the Herrero and their starchy Victorian dress. Although a South African colony for 74 years and a German colony for 30 years before that, Namibia has throughout history been a land too vast for anyone to easily control.

40 Political Parties

On those rare occasions when Namibians have gathered together for their common good, they have not been able to agree on much of anything. More than 40 political parties and factions do business under separate banners--even though South Africa retains ultimate control of the territory.

Namibia’s best hope for independence from South Africa was threatened this month by a rebel invasion in the heavily populated province of Ovamboland, along the northern border with Angola.

Most people had thought the 24-year guerrilla war waged by the South-West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) against South African rule was over. But on April 1, as a U.N. plan for nationhood was being launched, SWAPO sent hundreds of fighters into the territory, touching off a bloody 10-day confrontation.

The mess now is being untangled, and the United Nations says that the process leading up to Namibia’s first free and fair elections is still on track for November.

The Ovamboland battlegrounds are remote from the rest of Namibia, cut off from central and southern regions by the Etosha Pan, a 100-mile-long, treeless white depression that is home to pink flamingos, dust devils and herds of elephant, giraffe and zebra.

Namibia’s capital, Windhoek, is a mile-high city of 100,000 splashed with bougainvillea and perennially bathed in clear, dry air. South Africa’s colonial touch is most apparent there, where the South African flag flies outside Tinten Palace, the administrative center. On Kaiser Street downtown are South Africa-based shops, from the OK Bazaar department store to a Spur steak house. The banks and their 24-hour teller machines, as well as the gasoline stations, are all South African.

Although Pretoria has granted the black majority in Namibia some political autonomy over the years, South Africa’s influence still permeates. Namibia has a South African postal code and telephone area code. The roads, railroads and power lines were built by South Africa. And the currency is South Africa’s rand.

Apartheid Outlawed

Namibia’s whites, who account for less than a tenth of the 1.3 million people, like to remind visitors that apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial segregation, has been officially outlawed here.

But in practice schools, hospitals and neighborhoods remain segregated. Windhoek’s black and mixed-race townships still sit across a six-lane highway from the palm trees and parks of downtown. And the Namutoni tourist camp in Etosha warns visitors on the registration form that “no tipping of nonwhite staff members is allowed.”

The prospect of nationhood is bringing a lot of strangers to the territory. About 2,500 U.N. soldiers and civilians have arrived, and an additional 3,500 are expected by November. That’s roughly one U.N. election monitor for every 30 Namibian voters.

In addition, about 200 journalists have descended on Windhoek, making the quaint capital about as relaxed as a New Hampshire coffee shop on the eve of a presidential primary.

And, adding to the confusion, tourism has boomed, especially from South Africa and Germany. Restaurants and hotels are booked in the seaside town of Swakopmund, a tiny oasis of German colonial architecture and steepled churches in the Namib Desert.

‘Let’s Have a Look’

“Maybe they think they won’t be able to come later,” Paul Pohl, the local baker, suggested as he wiped his floured hands on an apron. “They think, ‘Let’s have a look while we still can.’ ”

Pohl is typical of the German-descended Namibians, who account for about a quarter of the 80,000 whites. (Most of the remainder are Dutch-descended Afrikaners from South Africa.) Pohl’s grandfather came to Swakopmund in 1905, and now the baker has sent his son to Europe to learn the trade.

The owners of Peter’s Antiques in Swakopmund have set aside a corner of their store for pictures, books and flags from Nazi Germany. A swastika flag is draped over a lectern, and a framed photograph of Adolf Hitler, priced at 150 rand (about $70), is on the wall.

The proprietor says he isn’t endorsing the Third Reich, only selling its artifacts for collectors. And he complains that he’s been maligned by televised reports in Europe about his store. “No more interviews, not for any amount of money,” he said.

Down the coast from Swakopmund is the sand-swept enclave of Walvis Bay, smelling of oil and sardines. As the only port on Namibia’s coast, it is the center of the territory’s fishing industry. The cold Benguela Current from the South Pole brings everything from lobster to sole, and fish canneries line Walvis Bay’s harbor, processing sardines and anchovies for South African tables.

The strategic port, which has a British rather than a German heritage, will remain South African soil even after independence.

“In my opinion, the South African flag will always fly here. Just like the (British flag in the) Falkland Islands,” said G. W. Shewell, the port director.

The coastal desert extends the length of Namibia’s shore, varying from 30 miles to 60 miles wide, and providing a natural shield against unwanted visitors. It is called the Namib, a word meaning barrier or shield, and it is especially hostile south of Swakopmund, where the dunes that reach 30 stories are said to be the tallest in the world.

North of here, though, on what is known as the Skeleton Coast, the desert turns into a gravel plain. That treacherous, fog-bound Skeleton Coast, closed except to permit holders, has over the years been a graveyard for ships and animals as well as shipwrecked explorers.

The Namib is an eerie, little-explored desert, created over thousands of years by the wind and the frigid Atlantic Ocean currents that resist evaporation. Its oldest and hardiest resident, the Welwitschia mirabilis, is a prehistoric plant found nowhere else in the world.

Mineral Wealth

No one knows for sure what mineral wealth may lie beneath the desert. The southern Namib yields about 1 million carats of diamonds a year, and one of the world’s largest uranium mines operates 24 hours a day near Swakopmund.

But few mining companies have been willing to invest in exploring a territory that, as part of South Africa, is subject to international sanctions. Some believe the advent of independence may touch off a flurry of exploration.

Many like Dirk Mudge, leader of Namibia’s now-defunct transitional government, think the territory’s mineral wealth has yet to be tapped.

Said Mudge: “I don’t see how God could make a country that looked like this without hiding something underneath.”