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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, January 16, 1981
Page 13
Failure of talks centered around well-grounded suspicions on the part of
South Africa and the democratic political parties in Namibia that the UN
--officially biased toward SWAPO--could not effectively monitor a cease
fire and supervise a fair, intimidation-free, four-month-long election
campaign.
(The election would be held to select delegates for an assembly
to draw up a Namibian constitution.)
Pretoria and its sister parties wanted the 1973 UN resolution publicly
revoked, something the UN fudged in doing, saying only that the special
UN status enjoyed by SWAPO would somehow be terminated
(along with funds
given to it for its "peaceful" activities).
There is no doubt that South Africa prefers to have additional time in
order for the internal parties to gain strength to tackle SWAPO head-on
in any election.
Pretoria feels that if SWAPO wins the election, it will
be Namibia's first and last election as a free country--"one man, one
vote, one time."
Predictably, SWAPO, backed by several Black African states
(who were in
Geneva as "observers"), have called for comprehensive UN-mandated trade
sanctions against South Africa, including an oil embargo.
Under a Carter
administration, the sanctions threat probably would have become a reality,
since the U.S., U.K., Canada, France and West Germany have represented the
UN in its case against South Africa.
Now, however, with the new Reagan
administration taking over, Pretoria is banking on the hope that a U.S.
veto will block any sanctions move.
Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan will be presented with a nasty foreign relations
problem in the UN Security Council right at the outset of his term of
office.
Nigeria will probably champion the African cause.
Nigeria is
America's second most important foreign oil supplier.
While this confers
upon the Lagos regime some leverage, Nigeria also must sell its oil some
where.
Moreover, sanctions could be an embarrassment for the many black African
states dependent on millions of dollars in trade with South Africa
(in
cluding vital food supplies) despite an already existing, totally in
effective OAU embargo.
At the Africans' press conference after the con
ference, a Zimbabwean spokesman gave an ambiguous reply to the question
of whether the Africans would respect the sanctions they were proposing.
The sanctions game is a very dangerous one.
If and when enacted, they
would assume a permanent character, playing into Moscow's hands to de
prive the western world of the African subcontinent's vital raw materials,
a topic explored earlier in this column [Oct. 31, 1980].
Much is at stake, therefore,
At the very least, SWAPO's war will inten
sify, further polarizing the diverse population of South West Africa.
The S.W.A. situation is a far more difficult situation to solve than
Rhodesia.
The proportion of Europeans and other advanced mixed-race
peoples is much higher--over 10%.
Pretoria feels it must stand on prin
ciple and not merely walk away from these peoples, consigning them to
a communist-backed dictatorship arising mainly from one of the territory's
twelve ethnic groups
(the Ovambo).
As Africa's last colony to be "liber
ated," the "South West" is proving to be the most difficult.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau