Word: namibian
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...committee of diplomats from the five Western powers on the U.N. Security Council in July negotiated a tentative plan for U.N.-supervised independence elections between South Africa and the South West Africa People's Organization, the Namibian freedom-fighting group that has led the struggle for Namibian independence for the past 12 years...
...make a cease-fire difficult to achieve. As guerrillas under his command blew up a vital water line in northern Namibia, SWAPO Leader Sam Nujoma declared that "prospects for free, fair and democratic elections are increasingly doubtful, if not untenable." Until South Africa confines its 10,000 or so Namibian troops to then-bases, said Nujoma, he will not order his guerrillas to lay down their arms. The South Africans retorted that there could be no confinement or withdrawal until a cease-fire had been arranged...
Under the peace plan, both the South Africans and SWAPO would have to release all their Namibian political prisoners. South Africa has been holding about 400 nationalists in its jails, and some 700 SWAPO dissidents, held by Tanzania and Zambia as a favor to Nujoma, have recently been set free. In both groups, there are men who pose serious threats to the inarticulate and unpredictable Nujoma, 49, who has failed to excite either Western or African leaders. Among them: Andreas Shipanga, a former SWAPO Information Officer released from a Tanzanian prison, who formed the SWAPO Democrats in opposition to Nujoma...
That pessimistic appraisal of Nujoma's prospects is shared by some U.S. diplomats, who believe that fast-moving developments have "outstripped" the guerrilla leader's capacity to deal with them. Indeed, virtually every Namibian political group is now so ridden with factions that, in the words of a U.S. official, "you'd have to be a fool to predict the outcome" of any future election...
...Hong Kong of Africa, Walvis Bay's town council has repeatedly petitioned the South African government to make the territory a free port. But Pretoria is more concerned with the area's strategic importance. Walvis Bay is the only deep-water port on the 1,000-mile Namibian coast. As a consequence, the worst South African fear is that a SWAPO-dominated government in Windhoek might allow the Soviets to set up a naval base there...