Word: ovambo
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...carried out. But the new administration has limited power: the 62 Assemblymen, all of them selected by six of Namibia's 35 political parties, will have no say on foreign affairs or defense matters, and Botha will have an effective veto over any Assembly decision. Moreover, the Ovambo tribe, which makes up roughly half of Namibia's population, has been given only one of the eight Cabinet seats, while whites, who constitute less than 8%, hold two. Western diplomats in the region suggest that South Africa aims to entrench a friendly government that will eventually force SWAPO, the predominantly Ovambo...
...shot outside the front door of a store he kept outside the capital city of Windhoek, and questions of national representation becme moot as crowds of his tribesmen and others marched and lamented and staged a massive ritual funeral. Rioting broke out at the funeral and seven Ovambo tribesmen were killed, the climax of weeks of Herero-Ovambo strife. SWAPO leaders denied any involvement, just as they had three years before when Ovambo chief Philemon Elifas was shot to death in a similar incident...
...seemed just as inevitably cyclical as the flux of international negotiations. Both times, South African officials had immediately suggested SWAPO as culprits; they noted the guerrilla group's opposition to any Turnhalle-type talks, in which Elifas had also agreed to participate shortly before his assassination. Even then, some Ovambo migrant workers opposed to the conference had been quoted in the New York Times as predicting "jubilantly" that "Clemens Kapuuo will be next...
Like most of the guerrillas, 46% of the population belongs to the Ovambo tribe. In addition, most of Namibia's 1 million inhabitants are clustered within 20 miles of the long Angolan border. Thus it is exceedingly difficult for South African troops to distinguish enemy guerrillas from the local populace. Yet on paper, the South Africans seem to have the war under control. Their claimed "kill ratio" over the past two years: a phenomenal 3,343 SWAPO dead compared with 72 South Africans. Such lopsided figures are vigorously disputed by SWAPO...
...released from a Tanzanian prison, who formed the SWAPO Democrats in opposition to Nujoma last month, and Herman Toivo Ya Toivo, one of SWAPO's founders, who has been in the South African maximum security prison on Robben Island for the past ten years. Toivo, popular with the Ovambo tribesmen who constitute the bulk of SWAPO membership; is no friend of Nujoma's. "His big problem is that he is no longer a major force within the country," says Shipanga. "He has been too long on the outside and too reluctant to go back except...