U.N. Must Win Workable Conditions for Namibia Vote

This is showdown time for the United Nations’ mission to ensure a successful transition to the independence of Namibia, Africa’s last colony, after years of harsh South African rule.

With the scheduled November balloting for a constitutional convention only weeks away, the United Nations has not yet secured from South Africa the conditions necessary for free and fair elections in Namibia. Some progress has been made, but formidable obstacles remain.

On the plus side, voter registration has gone well. Turnout has been heavy, and the rejection rate for would-be voters has been small. South Africa has pledged to confine 1,200 former members of its notorious Koevoet (“crowbar”) counterinsurgency unit to their bases.

But this progress will come to naught if the United Nations does not achieve two objectives in the immediate future--an end to intimidation by South African-led security forces and the enactment of sensible rules for the election. In both instances, the United Nations must lean on South Africa to moderate its intransigence.

The environment is not conducive to fair elections. Intimidation, primarily attributable to South African-led security forces, continues at a high level, particularly in the north. John Rwambuya, the ranking U.N. official in the tense, northern Ovamboland, where 50% of the country’s population resides, recently stated that conditions for free and fair elections were still a “very long way off.” The sobering assessment of this declaration was underscored last week by the assassination of Anton Lubowski outside his home in the Namibian capital of Windhoek. He was the leading white official in the nationalist left-of-center South West African Peoples’ Organization (SWAPO).

Equally disturbing is the absence, even at this late date, of any rules for Namibian balloting. It is now only five weeks before the scheduled start of voting, and yet nobody knows how the balloting will be conducted, what the role of the parties will be at voting sites, where the counting will take place and how it will be carried out. The original U.N. plans had called for promulgation of the electoral laws several months ago.

Primary responsibility for the delay lies with South Africa. Pretoria did not publish its proposals for electoral rules until July 21, even though U.N. Resolution 435, calling for transition elections, was passed by the Security Council 10 years ago. South Africa could have worked out its position on this subject well before the arrival of U.N. forces in April.

Further, the South African proposal contains many objectionable provisions. It would compromise ballot secrecy by marking each voting envelope (into which each ballot would be placed) with the voter’s registration number. And it would allow assistance to illiterates, who constitute 40% of the population, to be provided only by election officials appointed by the South African authorities.

The same draft would allow no local counting and no local breakdown of the tally. Instead, all ballots would be shipped, some from hundreds of miles away, to Windhoek. Counting would take place only after weeks of a complicated verification process. That delay would increase the opportunities for tampering and guarantee the results a lack of credibility.

Weeks of high-level discussions between the U.N. special representative, Maarti Ahtisaari, and the South African administrator, Gen. Louis Pinaar, on electoral rules have not yet produced a final statute. In an apparent effort to expedite the process Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar called U.N. lawyer Paul Szasz out of retirement in late August and sent him to Windhoek to assist in negotiations.

Clearly, the United Nations should insist on major changes in South African proposals on election rules and in Pretoria’s administration of law and order in Namibia. After all, under Resolution 435 it is the United Nations that has the ultimate supervision and control of the transition process. It should exercise that authority to the hilt and, in so doing, enlist the active support of the entire international community.