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Namibia: a trust betrayed – again?
07.09.2025 15:18
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08.09.2025 14:35
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Assessing Namibia’s performance two decades after independence Part 1: Initial position, external support, regional comparisonThis paper presents the results of a study which reviews Namibia’s performance over its two decades since independence. The study examines the achievements and shortcomings of the country in various fields: politics, civil society, economy, and social / socio-economic development. The results have been split into two separate but interconnected papers. This first article analyses Namibia’s situation at the dawn of independence, its external support by foreign countries and Namibia’s overall performance as compared to the neighbouring countries Angola, Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The present paper evaluates in particular data drawn from the World Bank Development Indicator Database and the 2010 Ibrahim-Index of African Governance. A subsequent second paper will present a more detailed appraisal of the above-mentioned development sectors.
Namibia and the United Nations: A Turning Point in the Understanding of National SovereigntyThis paper tries to answer the question that “To what extent did the UN policy in South West Africa represent a successful and legitimate change in attitude and action by the United Nations towards the sovereignty of individual states when compared to indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination?” This paper analyzes to what extent UN involvement in the colony of South West Africa, now known as Namibia, constituted a tangible change in UN, and therefore globally held, views on national sovereignty. Namibia itself has a long and complicated history. The United Nations’ response to the colonization of South West Africa represented a fundamental change in the traditional view of sovereignty, from old view, which held that the sovereign ruler had the right to govern his own territory; to the modern view, which generally holds that people have the sovereign right to self-determination.
The Contradictions of Independence: Namibia in TransitionAlmost 30 years after other African countries, Namibia finally became free of colonial rule in March 1990. The attainment of formal independence was a momentous occasion, particularly for those who had suffered from the harshness of first German then South African control and who had taken part in the bitter struggle for liberation. For a time, Namibia's independence regenerated the momentum stalled after the liberation of Angola and Mozambique in 1975 and of Zimbabwe in 1980 and gave hope to black South Africans struggling with the same intransigent regime. However, a series of formidable problems have limited the options open to the new SWAPO government. Indeed, at independence Namibia's future was so tightly constrained that its room for manoeuvre, real independence and development was minimal. Few countries have started in such a heavily determined context. The legacy of South African rule included a severe fiscal crisis, a dependent economy, uneven development, and inadequate social services for the black population. While negotiations are underway over the status of Walvis Bay, Namibia's main port, remains under formal South African control. Not surprisingly, the new government has moved cautiously at first, emphasizing national reconciliation and adopting conservative economic policies. This study explores the contradictions posed by the internal and international context within which the Namibian state must operate. Specifically it examines the difficulties posed by the lack of resources available for the present government which must nevertheless demonstrate that it is serious about its promises to transform the legacy of South African rule. It will argue that, barring rapid change in the region, the discovery and rapid exploitation of new natural resources or major Western assistance, the government's inability to meet mass expectations will pose major problems for the unity and stability of Namibia, not to mention its growth and development. While South Africa's role has been crucial, other external factors also place severe constraints on the autonomy of the new Namibian government. The second part of the study assesses the limits on state policy posed by the structure of the Namibian economy - especially its dependence on international capital in the mineral sector. Finally, the paper examines the effect of these cross pressures on Namibian politics. While the government's policy of racial and ethnic reconciliation has provided Namibia with a peaceful start as an independent state, it has not been achieved without cost and compromises that may eventually create problems for the preservation of SWAPO's political base. At the moment, the state lacks both the resources to engineer a rapid transformation of the economy of its people in Ovamboland and the bargaining power to win a major change in the working conditions of migrant labour in the mines and industries of the south. Yet these two groups, particularly the people of Ovamboland, were responsible for bringing SWAPO to power. The question remains as to how long S WAPO will retain their support and tolerance, especially given the expectations which independence has aroused.
Conflict mediation in decolonisation: Namibia’s transition to independence A long conflict in Namibia was resolved successfully by a mediation process that enabled a de facto colony to become a sovereign state via an internationally supervised election. This article reconsiders the relationship between conflict mediation and decolonisation in this particular case, which, while in many ways sui generis, nevertheless permits us to extract some general lessons. We show how case confidence-building measures were applied, how mediating agencies used different pressures, and how important it was that all the parties to the conflict ‘owned’ the process.
Transfrontier Conservation Governance, Commodification of Nature, and the New Dynamics of Sovereignty in NamibiaElephants know no national boundaries. This truism is frequently heard when conservationists explain the establishment of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), the largest in all of Africa. Whenever people talk about KAZA, elephants seem to take centre stage. The trivial fact that these large mammals do not stop their migrations at borders is used to justify an unprecedented international cooperation across southern Africa. Yet the implementation of transfrontier conservation areas (TFCA) does not only concern wildlife ecology. To tell the whole story, one also has to address more complex questions regarding political authority, environmental governance, economic interests, and the marketisation of natural resources. This chapter explores the relationship between emerging new dynamics of political power, the struggle for national sovereignty, and the commodification of nature in north-eastern Namibia.