Mediation mandates for Namibia’s independence (1977–1978, 1988)

ABSTRACT

Though much has been written about the mediation efforts that helped take Namibia to independence in 1990, none of this writing focuses on the mandates that informed the process. This article discusses the two main phases of international mediation in the conflict over Namibia (1977–1978 and 1988), under the United Nations’ overall mandate and the mandates of the various parties. The failure to include the liberation movement, the South West Africa People’s Organization, in the 1988 negotiations almost derailed the independence process. The eventual success came partly because the mandates enabled ad hoc, multiparty mediation to be carried out on a fairly flexible basis.

KEYWORDS:

• Crocker
• mediation mandates
• Namibia
• SWAPO
• United Nations Security Council

Notes

1. This article draws on the conceptual overview of mediation mandates in Laurie Nathan, “Marching Orders: Exploring the Mediation Mandate,” African Security, 2017, 155-175.

2. This article is concerned only with these two formal multiparty mediations, not with the many informal mediation efforts, often bilateral, that took place.

3. For example, Clements Tsokodayi, Namibia’s Independence Struggle: The Role of the United Nations (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2011); Chris Saunders, “The Non-Aligned Movement, the Neutral European Countries, and the Issue of Namibian Independence,” in The Neutrals and the Non-Aligned in the Global Cold War, ed. Sandra Bott (London, UK: Routledge, 2016).

4. See Ronald Dreyer, Namibia and Southern Africa: The Regional Politics of Decolonization, 1945–1990 (London: Kegan Paul International, 1994); Richard Dale, The Namibian War of Independence, 1966–1989: Diplomatic, Economic and Military Campaigns (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2014).

5. André du Pisani, SWA/Namibia: The Politics of Continuity and Change (Johannesburg, South Africa: Jonathan Ball, 1986).

6. Vivienne Jabri, Mediating Conflict: Decision-making and Western Intervention in Namibia (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).

7. The leading U.S. negotiator on the WCG, Donald McHenry, was given no formal instructions by President Carter, though it was agreed that if Pretoria resisted the WCG’s proposals, the United States might vote in favour of a UN Security Council resolution imposing a mandatory arms embargo. See Nancy Mitchell, Jimmy Carter in Africa (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016), 152.

8. See Jochen Prantl, The UN Security Council and Informal Groups of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

9. I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 185, 188.

10. Gilbert Khadiagala, Allies in Adversity: The Frontline States in Southern African Security, 1975–1993 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1994).

11. Dirk Mudge, All the Way to an Independent Namibia (Pretoria, South Africa: Protea, 2016).

12. See SWAPO of Namibia, To Be Born a Nation: The Liberation Struggle for Namibia (London, UK: Zed, 1981); Peter Katjavivi, A History of Resistance in Namibia (London, UK: James Currey, 1988).

13. UN. Doc. S/12636, April 10, 1978, cited in Dreyer, Namibia and Southern Africa, 270–273.

14. Hans-Joachim Vergau, Negotiating the Freedom of Namibia: The Diplomatic Achievement of the Western Contact Group (Basel, Switzerland: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2010).

15. Chris Saunders, “The United States and Namibian Independence, c. 1975–1989,” Journal for Contemporary History 28, no. 1 (2003): 83–91.

16. UN Security Council Resolution 432 of 1978. The Council agreed “to lend its full support to the initiation of steps necessary to ensure early reintegration of Walvis Bay into Namibia.” See also Lynn Berat, Walvis Bay: Decolonization and International Law (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); David Simon, “Strategic Territory and Territorial Strategy: The Reintegration of Walvis Bay into Namibia,” Political Geography 15, no. 2 (1996): 193–219.

17. Mudge, All the Way to an Independent Namibia, passim.

18. Chester A. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 66.

19. Ibid., 58, 63.

20. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa, 33.

21. Ibid.

22. Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson, The Hidden Thread: Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era (Johannesburg, South Africa: Jonathan Ball, 2013), 424.

23. See especially Anatoly Adamishin, “The White Sun of Angola” (Moscow, 2014), www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-white-sun-angola.

24. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa; Chester A. Crocker, “Peacemaking in Southern Africa: The Namibia-Angola Settlement of 1988,” in Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World, eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1999).

25. Neil Barnard, Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss (Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg, 2015).

26. Paul Rich, “The United States, Its History of Mediation and the Chester Crocker Round of Negotiations over Namibia in 1988,” in Mediation in Southern Africa, ed. Stephen Chan and Vivienne Jabri (London, UK: Macmillan, 1993). Piero Gleijeses discounts the idea that the U.S. election had any influence on the 1988 negotiations. See Piero Gleijeses, Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 507–508. However, Crocker knew that he would leave his post once the new administration came into office, so there was pressure to complete the process before he stepped down.

27. Crocker believed in letting the three parties to the formal negotiations interact among themselves. The parties “spent less and less time at the plenary table,” allowing for more time for “direct diplomacy with each of the parties,” in which in mediator at times intervened “in the internal balances within a delegation (e.g. providing ammunition to doves or taking on burdens ourselves at the request of the hawks” (Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa, 396–397). He also sought to bolster the confidence of the parties (ibid., 398) and brought in a range of other players to help exert leverage where they could.

28. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa, 394–395; Crocker, Peacemaking in Southern Africa, 211ff. For a critical view of Crocker’s mediation, see J. E. Davies, Constructive Engagement? Chester Crocker and American Policy in South Africa, Namibia and Angola, 1st ed. (Oxford, UK: James Currey, 2007).

29. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa, 375.

30. Ibid., 435.

31. Saadia Touval and I. Willliam Zartman, eds., International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985), 15; Isak Svensson, International Mediation Bias and Peacemaking: Taking Sides in Civil Wars (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2015).

32. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa, 395, 420–421.

33. Author’s interview with Robert Frasure, key aide to Crocker, Washington, DC, 1990.

34. Chris Saunders, “The Angola/Namibia Crisis of 1988 and Its Resolution,” in Cold War in Southern Africa: White Power, Black Liberation, ed. Sue Onslow (London, UK: Routledge, 2009).

35. C. Crocker, F. O. Hampson, and P. Aall, eds., Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict. (Washington, DC: United States Institute for Peace, 2005), 215–216; G. R. Berridge, “Diplomacy and the Angola/Namibia Accords,” International Affairs 65, no. 3 (1989): 463–467.

36. Dale, The Namibian War of Independence, esp. 79–81.

37. Heribert Weiland and Matthew Braham, eds., The Namibian Peace Process: Implications and Lessons for the Future (Freiburg, Germany: Arnold Bergstraesser Institut, 1994).

38. For details see Theresa Papenfus, Pik Botha and His Times (Pretoria, South Africa: Litera, 2010), Chapter 33.

39. Laurie Nathan, “When Push Comes to Shove: The Failure of International Mediation in African Civil Wars,” Track Two 8, no. 2 (November 1999): 12, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=7D7B5AB117B2E0C0F50C52D0A4F240F7?doi=10.1.1.627.3147&rep=rep1&type=pdf.