Word: namibia
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...NAMIBIA IS ONE NAME for the area that stretches from South Africa to Angola across countless billions in unmined diamonds and uranium. On maps and in much Western press coverage, the territory is more often called by its official label--South-West Africa--than by the native derivative it will supposedly assume when and if it gains its independence. The longer Western viewers think of it as South-West Africa, the more they tend to blur its saga together with that of South Africa--the nation which has held power in Namibia since 1920 under a League of Nations mandate...
More than nomenclature has made Namibia's quest for independence from South Africa confusing. The first push came in 1951, when representatives of its Herero tribe sent a petition to the U.N. denying South African assertions that Namibia's natives wanted to become South Africa's fifth province. For the last decade, a Western alliance of the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, France and Canada have been pushing for some agreement under which the region's grab-bag of native peoples--including 11 ethnic groups and more than 40 political parties--could begin governing themselves...
...country's political composition makes that goal elusive at best. On the far left, the nationalist South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) makes periodic guerrilla raids from Angola into Ovamboland, the northern strip of Namibia where most Blacks still live. South Africa has spent the last decade trying to beat them back from the Ovamboland border. Meanwhile, the ruling regime has sought to pull together a party of native moderate leaders--tribal, white and Afrikaner--claiming that they, not SWAPO, represent the population. South Africa, for its part, has continually balked at the one-man-one-vote system which...
...expectancy has since evaporated. In place of the housing ads are reports, denied by the U.N., that the UNTAG operation has been canceled. In yet another pessimistic sign, the South African government last week announced a three-month extension in the term of its governing body for Namibia, the South West African National Assembly. Said Prime Minister Pieter W. Botha regarding the independence settlement: "We hope there will be greater clarity on that matter within the next three months, but it might naturally take longer." The government hinted that South African-supervised elections for the National Assembly might come early...
...Bush declared that "we're going to stick with it." His words met with displeasure from his hosts, who included Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, leader of one of the five "frontline" states that most actively support the SWAPO guerrillas. That did not bode well for the future of Namibia, nor for the U.S. image in black Africa...