Word: swapo
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Elections for an independent Namibia were less than a week away when South Africa, which has controlled the country for 74 years, called foul. Pretoria dramatically claimed that hundreds of Marxist SWAPO guerrillas were infiltrating illegally into the country, posing a serious threat to a free and fair vote. Claiming to have "monitored" internal messages from a United Nations group supervising the election, South Africa suggested that the unit was reluctant to act against SWAPO. Vowing to "take whatever steps would be required," South Africa put its own troops on alert...
...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...
...proclaiming a "spirit of peace, love and national reconciliation." But the homecoming of Sam Nujoma, leader of the South West Africa People's Organization, was overshadowed last week by old hatreds and death. Two days before Nujoma's arrival, Anton Lubowski, a Namibian-born lawyer and a prominent white SWAPO activist, was gunned down outside his home in Windhoek. Within 36 hours police announced that they were holding a white man in connection with the killing...
Nujoma, who has waged a protracted armed struggle against South African rule, returned to Namibia in time to register as a voter in the November elections for a constituent assembly, which will prepare the territory for final independence next year. But SWAPO's election director, Hage Geingob, is among those who fear that Namibia's history of political bloodshed may not yet be over. If any harm came to Nujoma, he said, "the consequences would be too ghastly to contemplate...
Commission members monitoring the border situation formally declared SWAPO's presence in Namibia a violation of the peace accord and instructed the rebels to return to Angola. The U.N. belatedly began deploying, but at week's end only a handful of rebels had surrendered, apparently because assembly points were also manned by Namibian security forces. Some chose instead to make their own way over the border...