Deadlock in Namibia

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DEADLOCK IN NAMIBIA /. William Zartman he struggle for collective independence against European colonization and the struggle for individual equality against apartheid are basically quite different—as is not often recognized. But the process of the struggle in both cases involves an underlying similarity. Oppressed peoples obtain agreement for change from their rulers only when they can make the present more painful than the predicted future, or when they can promise the rulers a future as agreeable as the status quo. The tactics are those of stick and carrot, and they need some sense of a deadline, a specific moment when the stick will be invoked if there is no agreement to change conditions for the better. There is no other way. But more important, those who do not have sticks to make the present unpleasant must resort to carrots; if they cannot beat the enemy into agreement, they must win that agreement by assuring him that change will not be unpleasant for him. Again, there is no other way. Namibia has spent forty years in search ofits final status. The conflict began in 1946 when South Africa attempted to annex its League of Nations mandate territory and was blocked by an international reaction within the United Nations and then confronted by the organization with the first forms of a nationalist protest within the territory itself. The I. William Zartman is director of African studies and professor of international politics at SAIS. He is the author of numerous books, including The Practical Negotiator (1982). This article is the result of research conducted in preparation for Dr. Zartman's forthcoming book, Ripe Jor Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (1985). Other cases covered in the book are the Western Sahara, the Horn of Africa, and Shaba. 249 250 SAIS REVIEW General Assembly and Security Council continued pressure while pursuing contacts with South Africa until 1973, when the members of the United Nations lost hope and instead began to work directly toward implementing their own declaration of independence. After the fall of the Portuguese cordon sanitaire and the independence of Angola in 1975, South Africa took over the formal goal of independence for Namibia as a cover for continued apartheid and South African dominance. Before South Africa could reach its goal on this policy track by its 1978 deadline, the five Western members of the U.N. Security Council launched a farsighted initiative designed to open a second track leading to an independence acceptable to both the world community and South Africa. Again South Africa changed its course and inJune 1977 cancelled its project for confederal independence, agreeing instead to hold oneman -one-vote elections underjoint U.N. and South African supervision for a constituent assembly. After a year of careful Contact Group negotiation, the South African government and the Southwest African People's Organization (swapo) agreed to a procedure for independence embodied in U.N. Security Council resolution 435. But in August 1978 the South African government stopped the momentum by withdrawing its agreement, and in October the Western foreign ministers went to Pretoria to give in to South Africa's action in exchange for its agreement to continue to talk to the Contact Group. The sanctions that Secretary of State Cyrus Vance carried in his pocket were never unsheathed. Two years of further effort brought near agreement on several occasions but no final settlement on the details of the elections, and another two years of effort by the secretary-general's office in support of the Western Five's demarche made more progress but without achieving agreement. At least the South Africans' movement along the first track was delayed and independence was not yet unilaterally declared. The problem with the Western initiative, laudable and skillful though it was, was that it contained neither carrots nor sticks. With no rewards for agreeing —since the conflict was not very costly—and no sanctions against either side for failure to agree, it was unable to take the deadline out of South African hands. The only crises in the conflict were of South Africa's making, in the form of threatened deadlines for independence on its own terms, and these crises have been avoided or...