Word: swapo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...biggest vote getter, as expected, was the South West African People's Organization, or SWAPO, the Marxist-led group that conducted a 23-year guerrilla war for independence. But SWAPO won only 57% of the vote and 41 seats, far short of the 85% prediction by Sam Nujoma, 60, the group's leader, or of the 67% that would have let SWAPO shape the constitution...
...SWAPO's main opposition in the assembly will come from the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, a moderate, multiracial group that favors private enterprise. The alliance won 29% of the votes and 21 seats. Five minor parties will provide SWAPO and the D.T.A. with possible allies...
...SWAPO's lackluster performance stemmed partly from gruesome accounts of torture, killings and imprisonment of dissidents at SWAPO detention camps that emerged during the campaign. Nujoma was also blamed for ordering his armed troops to return last April in contravention of a U.N. cease-fire; 300 of them were killed by waiting South African forces. Nujoma tried to counteract the bad publicity with a conciliation offensive. He met with South African officials, released white doves at rallies to symbolize peace and reassured the country that SWAPO "has no intention of imposing our views on others." Now that the elections have...
...leftist SWAPO Party, which led a guerrilla war against South Africa for 23 years, is expected to win a majority of the 72 seats in the National Assembly, but the key question will be the size of its victory. If SWAPO gains two-thirds of the seats, it will be able to frame the country's new constitution on its own terms. But observers believed the voting procedures would limit SWAPO's prospects. Example: since about half the voters were illiterate, many were likely to be confused by the fact that nine of the ten contending parties had ballot symbols...
...officials denounced the supposed intercepts as fakes, and peacekeepers in Namibia reported that the country was "exceptionally calm." South Africa's actions appeared to be a last pre-election blast against SWAPO, which is favored to win and install a leftist government on South Africa's border. Pretoria retreated by week's end, saying it might have fallen for a hoax...