Preventing the vacuum: determinants of the Namibia settlement

Abstract

This paper examines the political, military and economic factors behind the diplomatic agreements which led to the withdrawal of South Africa's colonial occupation of Namibia in 1989–90, and it identifies some of the major constraints which Pretoria placed upon the independence of the new Namibian state. The view that the South African government withdrew from Namibia — but not Walvis Bay — because of military defeats in Angola during 1988 is rejected. It is argued that explanations for the settlement given by US diplomats, Chester Crocker and Charles Freeman, do not take into account key variables such as the underlying economic imperatives, South Africa's state and party building strategy in Namibia, and the political actions of the Namibian people themselves. Such determinants have also been ignored or obscured by most of the radical literature on South Africa's destabilisation of the sub‐region. It is argued here that Pretoria's attempts to consolidate stable conditions for a semi‐colonial state on it...