Election 2024 South Africa: Countdown to Coalition

Namibia—the First Postapartheid Democracy Joshua Bernard Forrest (bio) Namibia became a free nation in March 1990, after 75 years of South African colonial rule. It has been functioning as a multiparty democracy ever since. Its people had suffered the same racially and ethnically based legalized inequalities that existed in South Africa itself. During the course of their long years in exile abroad, however, Namibia's black nationalist politicians had generated an abiding commitment to national reconciliation, which came to be shared by the domestic white community as a result of internal political reforms that long preceded the abolition of apartheid in South Africa. Consequently, black and white political leaders in Namibia were able to establish a postapartheid political framework that has thus far proved conducive to the success of democratic institutions. Their experience holds important lessons for South Africa's newly elected interim government. Namibia's contemporary multiparty democracy can best be appreciated in its historical context. South West Africa, as Namibia was previously called, had been initially colonized by Germany between 1884 and 1915. During this period, the Germans dispossessed indigenous Africans of their land in the central and southern areas of the country, which came to be known as the "police zone." This process was hastened by the wars of mass annihilation conducted by German troops against the Nama and Herero peoples from 1904 to 1907, which resulted in the deaths of between one-half and two-thirds of the members of these groups. The rural areas within the police zone were settled by German farmers, while Windhoek, the colonial capital, was built on the central plateau. The far-northern regions bordering Angola, densely populated by the Ovambo, [End Page 88] Kavango, and several smaller ethnic groups, were located outside the police zone and remained politically untouched by German colonialism. At the beginning of the First World War, South African troops, prodded by Britain, seized control of the colony and imposed military rule for the duration of the war. In 1919, the League of Nations mandated control of the territory to Britain, which in turn conferred it upon the Union of South Africa, whose responsibility for the colony the League confirmed in 1920. Over the next several decades, Pretoria consolidated its rule by hardening the division between the white-dominated police zone and the largely black far-northern and far-eastern regions—known then as "native reserves." African chiefs in the reserves were coerced or bribed into sending large numbers of young men to work temporarily (under a system of pass laws) in mines, in towns, or on farms located within the police zone. A South African-appointed administrator-general ruled South West Africa with extensive executive and policy-making powers and the assistance of an all-white, elected Legislative Assembly whose writ covered only the police zone. South Africa determined policy within the native reserves and remained exclusively responsible for South West Africa's legal system (in all regions) and for its police, military, transport, customs policies, and foreign affairs. The National Party of South Africa, which came to power in 1948, appointed the Odendaal Commission in 1962 to devise a plan for the implementation in South West Africa of the same ethnically segregated "homeland" system of apartheid that was already being established within South Africa itself. The Odendaal plan that emerged essentially preserved the native reserve system already in place in the far-northern and far-eastern regions by declaring these regions "homelands," with tiny black reserves within the police zone being joined to form contiguous homelands.1 This plan, implemented in the late 1960s, was complemented by the establishment of black legislative or administrative councils in each of the ten homelands. In 1977, South Africa convened a conference at Turnhalle, Windhoek, of political parties or organizations representing each of the 11 major ethnic groups (including whites), out of which it had hoped to establish a new government. The apartheid-like character of this effort (the ethnic leadership groups emerged, for the most part, out of the ethnic homelands) produced an international outcry, leading to Pretoria's abandonment of the plan. A consequence of the conference, however, was the emergence of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance...

T | 1HE South African Government's mandate in South West Africa has been a subject of discussion at the United Nations for twelve years, and the International Court of Justice has pronounced three advisory opinions about it. Now Britain, the United States, and Brazil have agreed to form a Good Offices Committee I to try, with South Africa, to find a formula agreeable to all concerned that will accord 'international status' to South West Africa. Behind all the political and legal dispute lies a long history, in which Western standards of international law and justice have been put to the test. The tribes of South West Africa, some 330,000 people, live in a land about the size of France. The Herero, Nama, Berg Damara, and Bushmen who once inhabited the southern part of the country are today either living in eight separate reservations, requiring passes to go from one to another, or are segregated in 'locations' in towns. Their menfolk work on the white man's farms and in his mines. It has been so with them for many years. The African inhabitants of South West Africa have experienced both the harshness of German rule and the severity of the South African administration's segregation policies. Their story illustrates the growth of the concept of accountability to an international authority in a period which has seen two World Wars, the birth and defeat of Nazism in Germany, and the rise of Communism in one of the great underdeveloped countries and its spread through a large part of Eastern Asia and Europe. The fate of all these peoples is, humanly speaking, in the hands of the United Nations. For twelve successive years a member State, South Africa, has refused to submit a Trusteeship Agreement for the administration of this territory under the United Nations, as all other nations have done which held a territorial Mandate under the League of Nations. The issue is not merely a legal one. It is no mere abstract point of law whether South Africa has an obligation under the Mandates Treaty of the League or under the Charter of the United Nations. Whether the League Mandate 1 The Good Offices Committee established by the United Nations at its Twelfth Session (A/RES/i I43 of 25 October I957) consists of the following representatives, appointed by the Governments of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Brazil: U.K.: Sir Charles Arden-Clarke, formerly Resident Commissioner in Bechuanaland and first Governor General of Ghana; U.S.A.: Mr Walter N. Walmsley, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, State Department; Brazil: Sr Vasco T. Leitao do Cunha, Ambassador to Cuba. 3I8

This article chronicles the history of criminal law in South West Africa (SWA) from 1915 to 1939, with a focus on the death penalty. The analysis encompasses South Africa's rule of SWA during World War I (WWI) and under the League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC). The article secondarily explores the role criminal law played in South Africa's consolidation of control over SWA. It was primarily the diplomatic negotiations after WWI that granted South Africa a mandate over SWA. However, wartime legal reforms and cautious use of the death penalty helped lay the foundation for South Africa's anticipated rule of SWA after WWI. Furthermore, South Africa used its wartime record of criminal administration to convince the allies that it would administer SWA efficiently and humanely if granted a mandate. The PMC's reluctance to intervene in court procedures gave South Africa broad authority to administer the death penalty. However, South Africa did not use executions to suppress opposition to its rule, but to punish interpersonal violence of rape and murder. Judicial ideas about race, age, class, and gender guided execution decisions. Nevertheless, administrative constraints and African resistance prevented the complete consolidation of South African criminal law during the mandatory period.

The British alignment with South Africa at the United Nations in the years 1946 to 1%0 seems simple enough to explain. A British government preoccupied with protecting its economic and strategic interests in South Africa (or even just its economic interests there) supported South Africa in this international forum until the domestic and international resction against apartheid forced a limited change of British policy; and though in 1%1 the British government joined the majority of nations represented in the General Assembly in admonishing With Africa, it continued to resist Assembly initiatives that threatened those same economic and strategic interests for many years to come. This is a familiar explanation of Anglo-South African relations at the United Nations (UN), though a far from accurate one.’ For the first fifteen years after the Second World War, the British government was indeed South Africa’s leading ally on the issues that most directly concerned South Africa at the UN the future of South-West Africa (Namibia), the treatment of ‘Indians’ in South Africa and the ‘race conflict’ there. The British government backed the Smuts government’s initial attempt to incorporate South-West Africa within the Union of South Africa and supported the South African contention that the UN could intervene in the administration of South-West Africa only with the agreement of the South African government itself. In these years, the British government also supported 1. According to Andrew Young, American ambassador to the United Nations during the Carter administration, ‘[tlhere was always a desire on the part of Britain to avoid any confrontation with South Africa because of economic connections’: quoted in H. Hunke, Namibia: Zhe Sestgrh of the Powle.~~ (Rome, lW), 17. For further expressions of theview that economic, or economic and strategic, considerations were decisive, see G.R. Benidge, Economic Power in Anglo-SOruh Africrm Dipn J. Mayall, ‘The South Africa Crisis: The Major External Actors’, in S. Johnson, ed., South Africa: No Twning Back (London, 1988), 304; H. Bull, ‘Implications for the West’, in R. Rotberg and J. Barratt, eds, Conjlict and CompromiW in South Af.ica (Cape Town, 1980), 175-7.

When, and how, should we introduce a combination measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine into the national childhood expanded immunization programme in South Africa?

The genus Pentatrachyphloeus Voss, 1974, with two known species, is redefined and compared with related genera. An additional thirty seven new species are described here: P. andersoni sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. baumi sp. nov. (South Africa, Gauteng); P. brevithorax sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. bufo sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. endroedyi sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. exiguus sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. frici sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. grobbelaarae sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. hanzelkai sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. holubi sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. howdenae sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. hystrix sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. insignicornis sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. kalalovae sp. nov. (South Africa, Gauteng); P. kuscheli sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. laevis sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. lajumensis sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. leleupi sp. nov. (Zimbabwe, Manica); P. lesothoensis sp. nov. (Lesotho, Qacha's Nek); P. machulkai sp. nov. (South Africa, Free State); P. marshalli sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. muellerae sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. musili sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. ntinini sp. nov. (South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal); P. oberprieleri sp. nov. (South Africa, Gauteng, North West); P. pavlicai sp. nov. (South Africa, Free State); P. rudyardi sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. schoemani sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. soutpansbergensis sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. spinimanus sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. stingli sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo); P. tenuicollis sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. tuberculatus sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. vavrai sp. nov. (South Africa, Eastern Cape); P. vossi sp. nov. (South Africa, Mpumalanga); P. vrazi sp. nov. (South Africa, Limpopo) and P. zikmundi sp. nov. (South Africa, Free State). All of the species are keyed and illustrated; ecological information is presented only where available. All species seem to be very localised, being known only from one or only a very limited number of localities. Immature stages or host plants are not known for any of the species. The species are distributed as follows: South Africa: Mpumalanga (13), Limpopo (8), KwaZulu-Natal (7), Free State (3), Gauteng (3), Eastern Cape (3), North West (1); Lesotho: Qacha's Nek (1) and Zimbabwe: Manica (1).

The jury is out and the verdict is in, according to most leftist commentators on the African National Congress (ANC) government. The South African political leadership has forgotten its institution...

The Mandela 1 government that came into power in 1994 made the democratization of science and technology a priority in post-apartheid South Africa (Joubert, 2001, p. 316). Attendant ideas of Science Communication and Public Understanding of Biotechnology 2 have hitherto become currency in South Africa’s public sector drive towards the democratization of science. Democratization of science and technology implies that the people as non-experts are an integral part of all deliberations on policy, regulation and control of science and technology, for example, in debates or controversies on issues arising from biotechnology. Democratization of science and technology is about the sociopolitical control of science and technology by wider society. Science and technology must be controlled by wider society because evil-minded groups of people can ill-use it to inflict harm on other groups of people. Moreover, certain unscrupulous and corrupt business entities can collude with the state and/or powerful and influential sociopolitical figures in societies to exploit and abuse indigenous scientific resources as well as endogenous modes of specialized scientific knowledge. On the latter, for example, they can evoke intellectual property rights (IPR) to patent resources that are not theirs historically. Thus, the ideal-type of democracy makes it imperative for the people of South Africa and of other societies in Africa to understand and actively participate in developments in science and technology. 3 This need necessitates increasing scholarly attention to be given to questions of science communication and public understanding of science, arising at the intersection between science, society and politics in South and southern Africa. Some of the major drivers of the processes of the democratization of science are social movements, which are elements of civil society (Ballard, Habib and Valodia, 2006). Social movements do fill and are apt to fill an important gap in science communication and public understanding of biotechnology in South and southern Africa. Scientists are accused generally of being poor communicators of science and technology, preferring to work in isolation, behind closed doors, in laboratories (Latour, 1987). Science communities are notoriously insular (Weingart et al., 2000). News media practitioners are accused of misrepresenting-by distorting, oversimplifying, or sensationalizing-science in public domains and of passively resisting science communication (Joubert, 2001, pp. 324-5). Yet there is a lack of scholarly attention to the role of social movements in the democratization of science in Africa as a whole. Practically, the democratization of science is partial, ad hoc, and biased in South and southern Africa. 4 Therefore, overall, it is unclear what the nature and role of interventions of social movements are in the democratisation of science in Africa.

The hydropolitical history of the Kunene River is usually recounted from a state-centric perspective. I start the Kunene River’s hydropolitical history in the days when colonists colonised South West Africa. It is therefore a very Eurocentric rendition of the river basin’s hydropolitical history. Even so, since the days of the early German colonists, water and the implementation of water infrastructure, played a significant role in building a Westernised state entity. The centrality of water infrastructure for irrigation and hydro-electric production also played a role after South Africa’s mandate over South West Africa. This culminated in a number of initiatives and studies to tap the potential of the Kunene River, which also led to a number of bilateral agreements between Portugal and South Africa over the sharing and utilisation of the Kunene River’s water resources. It was in the 1960s that the exploitation of the Kunene River took off, with the construction of Ruacana for hydro-electric generation to be used in the then South West Africa. In the 1970s, war between the newly independent Angola and South Africa had severe ramifications for further developments along the Kunene’s course. The civil war in Angola and the border war between Angola and South Africa defined the way forward regarding the Kunene’s development. It was only after Namibia’s independence and the short-lived end of the Angolan civil war that the Namibian government initiated plans for Epupa’s construction.

As we have seen, the findings by the International Court of Justice, as part of the 1950 Advisory Opinion, that South West Africa still had the international status of a mandated territory and that the UN General Assembly was the competent body to assume the supervisory functions previously performed by the Council of the League of Nations in respect of administration of the territory, were favourable to the UN. However, the same was not true about the court's view that South Africa was not legally obliged to place the territory under the International Trusteeship System of the UN. This ruling and South Africa's persistent rejection of the supervisory competence of the General Assembly, posed problems for the UN. On the one hand, it could not effectively supervise the administration of South West Africa without the cooperation of the mandatory; on the other hand, the territory would not be placed under the trusteeship system if South Africa did not so wish, and it did not. Under these circumstances, the future of South West Africa hung in balance.

South Africa - within or apart from Africa?, Adebayo Adedeji South Africa in Africa - a South African perspective, Kader Asmal. Part I Africa in the global context: Africa and the new world order - rethinking development planning in the age of globalization, Fantu Cheru South and southern Africa in the new international divisions of labour and power - development prospects in the 1990s, Timothy M. Shaw. Part II The political economies of Africa and South Africa: the state of the African political economy, Bade Onimode the state of South Africa's political economy, Fred Ahwireng-Obeng the debate about reconstruction and development in South Africa, Ben Turok. Part III South Africa's relations with Africa: South Africa in Africa - a Namibian perspective, Hage Geingob South Africa's economic relations with Africa - current patterns and future perspectives, Robert Davies towards common security in southern Africa - regional cooperation after apartheid, Elling Njal Tjonneland and Tom Vraalsen. Part IV Prospects and perspectives: towards a new African order - evolving a strategy for mutually-beneficial political and socio-economic relations after apartheid, Adebayo Adedeji.

Thaumastocoris peregrinus is a recently introduced invertebrate pest of non-native Eucalyptus plantations in the Southern Hemisphere. It was first reported from South Africa in 2003 and in Argentina in 2005. Since then, populations have grown explosively and it has attained an almost ubiquitous distribution over several regions in South Africa on 26 Eucalyptus species. Here we address three key questions regarding this invasion, namely whether only one species has been introduced, whether there were single or multiple introductions into South Africa and South America and what the source of the introduction might have been. To answer these questions, bar-coding using mitochondrial DNA (COI) sequence diversity was used to characterise the populations of this insect from Australia, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Uruguay. Analyses revealed three cryptic species in Australia, of which only T. peregrinus is represented in South Africa and South America. Thaumastocoris peregrinus populations contained eight haplotypes, with a pairwise nucleotide distance of 0.2-0.9% from seventeen locations in Australia. Three of these haplotypes are shared with populations in South America and South Africa, but the latter regions do not share haplotypes. These data, together with the current distribution of the haplotypes and the known direction of original spread in these regions, suggest that at least three distinct introductions of the insect occurred in South Africa and South America before 2005. The two most common haplotypes in Sydney, one of which was also found in Brisbane, are shared with the non-native regions. Sydney populations of T. peregrinus, which have regularly reached outbreak levels in recent years, might thus have served as source of these three distinct introductions into other regions of the Southern Hemisphere.

South Africa steps up

Two new genera, Rumburak gen. nov. and Yimbulunga gen. nov., of euophryine jumping spiders are established from the Afrotropical Region. Thirty three new species included in this subfamily are diagnosed and described: Chinophrys trifasciata sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), Euophrys bifida sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), E. cochlea sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), E. elizabethae sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), E. falciger sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), E. gracilis sp. nov. (♂♀, Lesotho, South Africa), E. griswoldi sp. nov. (♂, Namibia), E. limpopo sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), E. maseruensis sp. nov. (♂, Lesotho), E. meridionalis sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), E. miranda sp. nov. (♀, South Africa), E. nana sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), E. recta sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), E. subtilis sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), Rumburak bellus sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), R. hilaris sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), R. lateripunctatus sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), R. mirabilis sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), R. tuberatus (♂, South Africa), R. virilis (♂♀, South Africa), Tanzania parvulus sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), T. striatus sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), Thyenula alotama sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), T. cheliceroides sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), T. clarosignata sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), T. dentatidens sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), T. haddadi (♂♀, South Africa), T. montana sp. nov. (♂, Lesotho), T. rufa sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa), T. tenebrica sp. nov. (♀, South Africa), T. virgulata sp. nov. (♂, South Africa), T. vulnifica sp. nov. (♂♀, South Africa) and Yimbulunga foordi sp. nov. (♂, South Africa). Two species names are newly synonymized: Thyenula hortensis Wesołowska & Cumming, 2008 with T. munda (Peckham & Peckham, 1903) and Thyenula nelshoogte Zhang & Maddison, 2012 with T. laxa Zhang & Maddison, 2012. Three new combinations are proposed: Heliophanus kittenbergeri (Caporiacco, 1947) (ex Euophrys), Rumburak laxus (Zhang & Maddison, 2012) (ex Thyenula) and Thyenula munda (Peckham & Peckham, 1903) (ex Saitis). Two names are recognized as nomina dubia: Euophrys nigrescens Caporiacco, 1940 and Saitis magnus Caporiacco, 1947. The first member of the genus Chinophrys Zhang & Maddison, 2012 is reported from Africa. The males of Euophrys leipoldti Peckham & Peckham, 1903 and Thyenula sempiterna Wesołowska, 2000 are described for the first time. Tanzania minutus (Wesołowska & Russell-Smith, 2000) is recorded from South Africa for the first time. A list of valid species of Afrotropical Euophryinae with data on their distribution in the region is provided. A key is supplied for the known genera of the region (based on males).

The international litigation over South West Africa, and the judgment which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) eventually handed down on July 18, 1966, have important implications for both international law and international politics. South West Africa, a former German colony, was placed under mandate at the end of World War I. Ethiopia and Liberia, both former Members of the League, asked the ICJ to confirm that South West Africa is a territory under Mandate; that South Africa retained the obligations under the Mandate and under Article 22 of the League; and that the United Nations was entitled to exercise the supervisory functions of the League in relation to the mandated territory. In addition, the ICJ was invited to go beyond its Advisory Opinions, and to find that South Africa had violated its obligations under the Mandate through, inter alia, introducing apartheid, establishing military bases in South West Africa, and refusing to submit reports and transmit petitions. South Africa denied that the Court had jurisdiction to examine these claims.