S.W.A.P.O.’s new view on Namibian elections

Press, 12 May 1982, Page 24

S.W.A.P.O.’s new view on Namibian elections

From “The Economist,” London

The recent thrust by guerrillas of the South-West Africa People’s Organisation (5.W.A.P.0.) deep behind South Africa's defence cordon along the Angolan border has raised new questions about the Namibian issue. It may help to explain S.W.A.P.O.’s puzzling rejection of the latest Western proposal on a voting formula for Namibian elections. S.W.A.P.O. is supposed to have taken a terrible battering from South Africa’s raids into Angola over the past eight months. Yet from the middle of last month it has been carrying out its most aggressive operation in the 16 years of the war. The group of guerrillas that penetrated the white farming country around Tsumeb, Grootfontein and Otavi, killed eight South African soldiers and five civilians, succeeded in laying mines and wounded several farmers..-’ .. All this raised doubts in South Africa about the efficacy of the-raids into Angola and the veracity, of the defence force’s claims. But what, was

the real purpose of such a daring but suicidal operation? (The 100-strong guerrilla group lost 31 men.) Was it linked to the rejection of the new Western proposal? During the negotiations that led up to the abortive Geneva conference early in 1981, 5.W.A.P.0., noting Mr Robert Mugabe’s landslide electoral victory in Zimbabwe, seemed to want to stop haggling over procedural details and move on to an election in Namibia. It was South Africa that baulked, because it foresaw a S.W.A.P.O. electoral triumph. Since then such a triumph has become even more certain, whatever the electoral rules. The Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, the, Pretoria . Govern- • ment’s., sponsored J party; has ,’gbne into decline. The bid to give it prestige by installing it as a provisional administration has ooomeranged, just as a- . similar. bid worked against Bishop Abel Muzorewa in Zim- ’ babwe., . „ \, ; Why, , then, is it S.WA.P.O. that is now delaying agreement

about an election? Perhaps because it is under pressure from its backers to give priority to the larger interests of African nationalism in the whole region.

South Africa has had to commit 50,000 troops to the defence of Namibia. The South African Prime Minister, Mr P. W. Botha, has said it is costing his country more than SI3M a year to hold that territory. Attacks by, guerrillas of the African Nationalist Congress (A.N.C.) inside South Africa have already increased from 19 in 1980 to 66 last‘year.’The A.N.C. says that the real guerrilla war is still to come. Have African nationalist strategists decided in concert to start to try to overstretch the white/South Africans’ military resources by keeping them pinned down in Namibia? That might explain the seeming -reversal of roles, with Soufb Africa now • appearing more eager than S.W.A.P.O. for a. settlement. It . might also account for that S.W.A.P.O. raid deep into Namibia.,, ,