The Struggle for Namibia

'The grave of the chief is open, but so are the graves of his assassins

When a heavy sea fog rests on its frightful desolation, a place better fitted to represent the infernal regions could scarcely be found ... Death would be preferable to banishment to such a country.

So wrote a 19th century Swedish explorer about a land that threatens to become the scene of Africa's next bitter conflict: Namibia. With its 1,000-mile, surf-attacked Atlantic Ocean coastline and its seemingly endless expanses of desert, Namibia (also known as South West Africa) is startlingly beautiful--a virgin land the size of Texas and Louisiana, with a population of only 900,000. More important, it is one of the richest corners of Africa, possessing vast and largely untapped treasures of diamonds, copper, and other minerals. At Rossing, near the deep-water port of Walvis Bay, the world's largest uranium mine, one of at least five reported uranium strikes, went into full production this year.

Halfway between a colonial past and an uncertain political future, Namibia is already a stricken land, threatened by an incipient civil war that has begun to tear it apart. Last week, even as the U.N. Security Council debated a proposal by its five Western members (the U.S., Britain, France, West Germany and Canada) for a political solution to Namibia's problems, thousands of members of the territory's Herero tribe gathered to pay tribute to their fallen leader, Chief Clemens Kapuuo, who had been slain by his political enemies. He was no ordinary tribal elder but the head of a multiracial coalition, who might have become the first President of an independent Namibia.

Even the funeral scene was marred by fighting. As Kapuuo's cortege passed through Katatura, a black township outside the modern territorial capital of Windhoek, a group of Ovambo tribesmen, the Hereros' traditional enemies, threw stones at the chiefs followers. Enraged members of Kapuuo's home guard immediately retaliated with ancient British rifles in an attack that left five dead and eleven wounded. At the funeral, thousands of Herero women garbed in scarlet mourning dresses wailed and chanted under cloudy skies. Although most of the orators counseled restraint, one warned pointedly: "The grave of the chief is open, but so are the graves of his assassins and the men who ordered them to commit this act."

A former schoolteacher, Kapuuo was shot to death in Windhoek late last month by two men who vanished without a trace. The Hereros believe that he was murdered by SWAPO (South West African People's Organization), the Marxist-oriented guerrilla movement whose political base is the 430,000-member Ovambo tribe, Namibia's largest ethnic group. (Second largest are the whites, with 100,000, followed by the Hereros with about 60,000.) Headed by bearded Militant Sam Nujoma, SWAPO has an estimated 4,000 guerrillas, most of them based in southern Angola, who have been carrying out an intermittent campaign of terror in northern Namibia since 1966. In consequence, South Africa, which has administered the former German territory under a League of Nations mandate since 1920, is obliged to keep 15,000 soldiers in Namibia and spend $1.5 million a day to fight the guerrillas.

In 1975, under international pressure, South Africa agreed to begin to prepare Namibia for independence. At the same time, Pretoria placed its support behind a white-led coalition of black and white parties and tribal groups, including the Hereros. That coalition, now known as the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance,* is headed by Dirk Mudge, 49, a rich white farmer who broke last year with the Namibian branch of South Africa's ruling National Party to join forces with moderate black and colored (mixed race) groups.

The problem is that SWAPO is too militant and too radical to suit the South Africans, who would like to preserve Namibia as a sort of buffer state to the north. On the other hand, the Turnhalle coalition is too closely aligned with South Africa to suit SWAPO and its backers, which include most nations of the Organization of African Unity as well as the Soviet Union.

In an effort to reach a compromise, the five Western powers have proposed a plan under which, following a ceasefire in the guerrilla war, U.N. peace-keeping forces would replace all but 1,500 of the South African troops in Namibia: after that, U.N.-supervised elections would be held. Some critics--mostly in Johannesburg--have charged that the Western powers' plan would lead inevitably to a SWAPO takeover and turn Namibia into another Angola. For this reason, South Africa will probably oppose the plan. Most observers believe, however, that in a fair and free election the political power of SWAPO and that of the Turnhalle group would be almost evenly matched.

To its credit, the Turnhalle leadership has already had some success in moderating the views of the territory's whites, many of them of German descent. As soon as he took office late last year, the Pretoria-appointed administrator general, Justice Marthinus Steyn, began to enact a number of reforms, making equal pay mandatory for blacks and whites, removing the hated pass and immorality laws that still rule the lives of blacks in South Africa, and ending a ban on political meetings. Mudge, a pilot who tirelessly flies his own plane around territory, told an audience of grim whites in the mining town of Tsumeb: "If we can't come to an understanding with them [the nonwhites], we might as well cancel the election and begin to oil our guns. You can't fight a war without gas and ammunition, and we don't have those things ... I have joined hands with them in mutual trust. I will walk the road to the end with them."

Mudge's Turnhalle Alliance has launched a lavish campaign to convince blacks and whites alike that its electoral plan is the right way to peace and prosperity in a truly integrated socirty. A catchy anthem has been recorded promoting the theme "For us, for you, for a free land, for Namibia." The party has hired helicopters to carry Alliance organizers to areas where SWAPO influence is considered strong. There have been numerous mass rallies and free barbecues, offering both popular entertainment and crude propaganda warnings, frequently in poster form, about the consequences of a SWAPO victory.

Despite the coalition's well-financed campaign, SWAPO seems stronger than ever. "The more I have been doing," admits Justice Steyn, "the more the SWAPO line has hardened." Moreover, the quality of training--possibly by Angola-based Cubans--and of equipment has obviously improved. Whereas SWAPO guerrillas formerly carried only rifles and grenades, they now pack Communist-manufactured rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns. They still avoid direct clashes with the South African army, but lately they have been making some daring attacks. In the Caprivi Strip, three South African officers were killed in a rocket attack on their car.

Not surprisingly, Namibia's whites are beginning to show signs of fatigue and frustration. Revisiting the coastal resort city of Swakopmund last week, TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter found the mood greatly changed since last year. "We are getting frightened," admitted a German merchant. "SWAPO has already threatened a black magistrate as a 'black Boer,' and a black employee here has been told he is a marked man. Sometimes they come into my shop in groups of five or six and they look at things as if to say 'Tomorrow we take over.' I have put my business up for sale. If it doesn't sell, I will just pack up and leave." Others worry about SWAPO's assassination campaign. "What if Mudge is next?" asks one resident of the city. "Who is there to follow him?"

Although one SWAPO official vows that "the struggle will be intensified at all levels," other leaders of the organization insist that they still seek co-existence with the territory's whites, and are willing to let them stay in an independent Namibia on a nonprivileged basis. The most hopeful prospect for the territory is that both SWAPO and the Turnhalle group might be induced to take part in elections under the Western powers' plan. But apart from that, it seems unlikely that either of these inimical forces would find very much room in which to tolerate the other.

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