patth@ccnysci.UUCP (Patt Haring) (09/04/89)
GEO2:SOUTHNEWS Date: 31-08-89, 23:54:19 UNCERTAINTY GROWS ABOUT SIZE OF SWAPO ELECTION VICTORY AS ELECTION GROWS Windhoek/ With just 10 weeks to go to the UN-monitored Namibian elections, Sam Nujoma's South West African People's Organisation (Swapo) is acknowledged even by its rivals as the dominant force in Namibian politics, writes a correspondent. But there is mounting concern within Swapo itself and among some of its strongest international allies that it will not achieve the two-thirds electoral support it needs to control the resulting constituent assembly. "I've recently begun to wonder whether it will even get 50%," confided an African diplomat last week. "I arrived here assuming that it was no contest, that Swapo would walk away with far more than 66%. Now I don't know." Other Windhoek-based African and Eastern European diplomats are similarly pessimistic. And while members of the Angolan mission in Windhoek remain tight-lipped, from Angola itself come reports of deep official disenchantment with the Namibian liberation movement to which Angola played host for 14 years. In diplomatic circles, Swapo has not recovered from its still inexplicable decision to begin pushing fighters of its People's Liberation Army of Namibia (Plan) across the border from Angola in the hours before the UN-monitored independence process began on April 1. A furious South African reaction left more than 300 Plan fighters dead and four times that number fleeing northwards across the Angolan border. It also provided South African authorities with the excuse it needed to keep its military and its paramilitary police in the field, thus delaying the freeing of the political process envisaged under UN resolution 435. South African administrator Louis Pienaar twice used the apparent threat of further Plan incursions to head off attempts from UN representative Martti Ahtisaari to restrict South African military activity, particularly in the populous north of the country. Only in mid-August, fully six weeks after the official start of the Namibian election campaign, did Ahtisaari finally manage to force the confinement to barracks of South Africa's 1 200-strong Koevoet counter-insurgency unit. "By then," says an African diplomat, "it had done enough in northern Namibia to persuade many rural people of the danger of having anything to do with politics - registering for the election, attending meetings, all brought the risk of a visit from Koevoet." However accurate this assessment, the fact is that Ovamboland - a Swapo stronghold and home to half Namibia's 1.5m people - has shown a consistently slower registration rate than any other area of the country. With no accurate figures of the over-18 population, UN officials based their original figures on a 1981 census plus 6%. Most areas of the country have already passed that - Keetmanshoop, for example, has already registered 130% of the base figure. Ovamboland, by contrast is still in double figures - 85% last week, although Swapo's Hidipo Hamutenya argues that this is based on voter numbers that are probably 30% too low. Calculations by African observers suggest the slow pace of registration in the north - where, at South Africa's suggestion, there are proportionately fewer registration centres per capita than anywhere else in the country - could, on its own, be enough to rob Swapo of the crucial 66% vote. But it is not the only factor working against Swapo's 66%. The ambiguous duality of power in transitional Namibia - with Pienaar making the rules and Ahtisaari attempting to veto whatever he feels breaches the bounds of decency - have also enabled Pretoria to grant the vote to several thousand South Africans, who will cross the border to vote in November. Added to this is the possibility that Unita fighters and members of the South African police and military will also cast their votes in November. With a total voter population of around 700,000, this could be a crucial intervention. An additional negative element for Swapo is the fact that the bulk of the 40-odd contesting political parties in Namibia are, clearly, fighting not so much for a place in an independent Namibian government, as they are fighting against Swapo. In the wry assessment of a Swapo activist: "Namibia has at last achieved concesus poilitics. The consensus is: Stop Swapo." Backing this up is the South African-run SWABC national broadcasting service, which has made little effort to change its pre-April 1 biases or to grant air time to parties other than those favoured by South Africa - Dirk Mudge's Democratic Turnhalle Alliance in particular. Pienaar continues to make little pretence of neutrality, routinely using what legislation he can to restrict and hamper Swapo's election campaign. Several Swapo rallies have been broken up by force by South Africa's SWAPOL police force, and Swapo activists continue to experience the routine harrassment that characterised life under direct South frican rule. In addition, with physical clashes between the contending parties an increasingly routine part of the election campaign, Swapo officials charge that South Africa is approving dozens of firearm licences for members and officials of other parties. However valid, these protests have a major flaw: Swapo officials acknowledge that conditions are better that they were before the arrival of Untag's 4,000 monitors and officials. But the party has seen its support slipping steadily. Part of the explanation for this is Swapo's apparently unique ability to shoot itself in the foot. The first example of this was the April 1 incursion, when it sent almost 300 fighters to the slaughter for what was in fact little more than an ill-conceived attempt at a propaganda coup. "Unfortunately," says a former Swapo supporter, "that was only the start." As Swapo's leadership began to trickle back into the country after April 1, the organisation appeared increasingly ill-prepared for the new realities facing it. Faced with a barrage of criticism over their post-independence policy proposals, the movement displayed a marked lack of consistency, retreating steadily on economic policy, particularly earlier tough positions on the need to nationalise sectors of the Namibian economy and break ties with South Africa. However logical the shifts in policy, the resulting image is one of ill-considered, hasty policy positions based on rhetoric not reality. Then, with unease already growing in the leading ranks of the National Namibian Students' Organisation and the National Union of Namibian Workers - both of them influenced by their South African counterparts - the issue of Swapo's detainees emerged to batter the organisation. Under the terms of the independence process, both Swapo and South Africa were obliged to release detainees and prisoners. South Africa's foot-dragging reluctance to do so was quickly overshadowed by the growing realisation in Namibia itself that Swapo had not only detained innocent people and held them for years without trial, but that it had treated them with a brutality matching anything the South Africans had managed. Several of those who had died in Swapo detention camps - most notably Swapo central committee member Victor Nkandi - were veterans of South African detention. Detainees, many of them former leading Swapo figures, began returning to Namibia to display scars and offer accounts of torture, beatings, and confinement for months on end in underground pits in Swapo camps in southern Angola. Of greater concern for many Swapo supporters was the fact that much of this clearly had little to do with the supposed motivation of rooting out a substantial South African spy-ring in the organisation. Interrogation teams were clearly less interested in facts than in extracting confessions of any sort - many of them clearly untrue. At the height of the detentions, which ultimately netted around 600 Swapo members, Swapo officials toured Europe and attempted to calm the growing fears of their members there by playing a video confession of two young women who claimed they had been recruited to seduce the Swapo leadership after having had razor blades strategically placed in their vaginas by South African agents. Swapo officials have since acknowledged that "mistakes were made", and have attempted to explain away a sustained purge by saying it took place under war conditions. They have also said they will act against any individuals in the movement's ranks who is found to have been guilty of irregularities. Among African diplomats, and within Swapo's own ranks, however, these is a growing concern that the organisation's leadership has neither the will nor possibly the intention to act against those responsible. "The responsibility leads too high," says one Swapo member who left the organisation after discovering that relatives had died in the Swapo detention camps. Certainly, no action has yet been taken against Salomon 'Jesus' Haula (Hawala), deputy head of Plan and head of Swapo security, despite the fact that he has been named by the bulk of the 200 returning detainees.as the man responsible "The fact that Swapo has done nothing, taken no disciplinary action, is worrying," says an African diplomat. "All is not well in the organisation." Returning detainees have been divided over the correct political response - some combining to form the Patriotic Unity Movement, while others remained in or returned to the ranks of Swapo. Few ventured into the DTA or any of the other South African-backed parties. Almost all, however, appear to believe that Namibia would be safer if, in the immediate post-independence years at least, Swapo does not attain the 66% it is seeking. NAM:1SEPT89/ KOEVOET 'WILL STUDY' IN BASE The withdrawal of 1,200 former members of the counter- insurgency unit Koevoet from Northern Namibia was due for completion by August 31, according to agency reports quoting Police Commissioner Dolf Gouws. From the deadline, members of the former police paramilitary unit would be confined to bases, where they would receive retraining, instruction on law, police administration, target practice and fitness training, Gouws said on August 24. Administrator-General Louis Pienaar had earlier announced the unit's withdrawal and invited the UN to monitor details of Koevoet's restriction to base. However, visitors this week still spoke of a high profile Koevoet presence in the north, with patrols of Swapol Casspirs on the Angolan border. Untag spokesperson Fred Ekhardt said this week that it was up to the South African administration to guarantee that those being confined were in fact former Koevoet members. --- Patt Haring | UNITEX : United Nations patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information patth@ccnysci.BITNET | Transfer Exchange -=- Every child smiles in the same language. -=- -- Patt Haring | UNITEX : United Nations patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu | Information patth@ccnysci.BITNET | Transfer Exchange -=- Every child smiles in the same language. -=-