Apartheid Regime Is Up to Its Old Tricks : South Africa: It may have given Namibia its independence, but it’s still holding the Namibian people hostage.
When South African police near Johannesburg opened fire on Monday on a gathering of tens of thousands of blacks, killing eight people and wounding hundreds of others, the government’s violence took most of the American public by surprise. We had been lulled into thinking that, after the release of Nelson Mandela, all was well in southern Africa. We were led to believe that the apartheid regime was coming to its senses, a change proven by its fair and orderly transfer of power to the people of Namibia.
But nothing could be further from the truth. When I was in Namibia for its independence ceremonies last week, I learned that South Africa’s transfer of power to Namibian President Sam Nujoma was neither orderly nor fair. On their way out, the representatives of the South African regime tightened the screws on the Namibian economy, kept members of their death squads on the Namibian payroll, shredded and stole government documents and did everything in their power to ensure their continued control over Namibia.
Because the media provided no context, everyone thinks that South Africa gave up its 75-year colonial domination of Namibia out of the goodness of its heart. In truth, South Africa was forced out by the Cuban presence in Angola, the military and political opposition of the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) and international economic sanctions.
But when it finally left, South Africa made sure that it was leaving behind a complete mess. The Nujoma government inherits a $200-million budget deficit in its first year of independence. In a typical move at the last minute, the outgoing South Africans took $550 million out of the Namibian Civil Services pension fund and bought South African government bonds, thus using Namibian dollars to break the policy of sanctions against South Africa.
Similarly, departing South African police simply took the Namibian police communications system with them, leaving the new police force unequipped and ill prepared. Worse, the South Africans integrated its infamous death squads from local security forces into parts of the new Namibian Police Department, leaving them on the payroll with no specific job description. Thus a violent Contra-like element could be entrenched in Namibia.
South Africa also worked to perpetuate its economic domination of Namibia, which still must use South African currency and is dependent on the South African banking and financial system. All sea, air and railway services are still under South African control.
The South Africans also unleashed a wave of “privatization” of national assets, such as government buildings, before leaving, further impoverishing the public sector and enriching Namibia’s white community. There is an income disparity of 20-to-1 between whites and blacks now.
The new nation faces serious security problems at the borders. South Africa, immediately to the south, plans to keep military facilities at Walvis Bay. Meanwhile, in neighboring Angola, the bandits of Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA forces, bought and paid for by the United States and the apartheid government, roam wild on Namibia’s northern border.
In short, while Namibia has won its political independence, economic and military colonialism persist. South Africa continues to hold the Namibian people hostage in many ways.
The most urgent need is for the redistribution of land to promote greater food self-sufficiency. The United Nations can help to create and administer a Land Reparation Fund that would encourage agricultural self-sufficiency and provide start-up funds for community projects.
The United States, which has been the primary investor in war in the region, should now invest in peace and development. We must change our perverse foreign-policy priorities.
Today, the United States is scheduled to send $1 billion to Poland, $500 million to repair some of the damage in Panama, $50 million to Jonas Savimbi for his doomed campaign to overthrow the government of Angola, but only a pitiful $500,000 to the hungry, war-torn people of Namibia.
We can, and we must, do better than that. We have an obligation to help liberate Namibia from hunger and to secure its borders against the South African-controlled rebels of UNITA. We also have an obligation to be honest about what is going on in southern Africa. The American media, with its extraordinary staffing and technology, must dig deeper. The media were in Namibia during the transfer of power, but it missed the real story.
The burden of South Africa’s military occupation of Namibia has been lifted, but the political, economic and social costs of that occupation are still being paid by the Namibian people. We must now help them recover from the unseen but brutal consequences of South African colonialism.
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