by Guy Arnold
In 1966 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2145 terminating the Mandate and stating that South West Africa was the direct responsibility of the United Nations. The world body changed the territory’s name to Namibia and established the Council for Namibia, which came into being in 1967. South Africa, however, ignored the UN resolution and persisted in its application of apartheid to Namibia. As the UN resolution had stated, South Africa had ‘consistently and relentlessly pursued a policy of racial discrimination… in flagrant violation of the spirit of the Mandate entrusted to it by the League of Nations’. The first clash between SWAPO guerrillas and members of the South African Defence Force (SADF) occurred in 1966 and the armed struggle was under way. South Africa now built up its military potential in Namibia in anticipation of the pressures which it expected to be mounted against it, establishing a desert warfare centre for its troops at Walvis Bay and other military installations including a huge military air base capable of handling the largest jet aircraft at Katima Mulilo on the Caprivi Strip in defiance of the terms of the Mandate. By 1968 South Africa was applying all its laws to Namibia and had divided the country into 10 Bantustans as well as one central white region. In 1969 South Africa passed the South West Africa Affairs Bill, which incorporated South West Africa into the Republic, effectively making it the fifth province of South Africa.
Throughout the period after 1946 the United Nations worked hard to detach Namibia from South African control. It had little power and its authority was constantly thwarted by the major Western powers whose interests in terms of trade, investment and Cold War strategy led them to pursue a status quo strategy that favoured South Africa. In 1949, after South Africa had deleted references to the Mandate from the South West Africa Constitution and given whites in the territory direct representation in the South African Parliament, the United Nations submitted the issue of sovereignty to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague to begin the long legal battle over Namibian sovereignty that would last to independence. In 1953 the UN General Assembly resolved to supervise the Mandate by means of a Committee on South West Africa and in 1955 the ICJ confirmed the right of the General Assembly to adopt resolutions on South West Africa. This long period of wrangling between the UN and an intransigent South Africa set the scene for the 1970s, for by the beginning of the decade the South African government had been locked in a confrontation with the United Nations for a quarter of a century. It then regarded Namibia as both an integral part of the Republic and a necessary bulwark against the growing pressures from independent black Africa to the north.
THE 1970S
Two events set the stage for the 1970s: the 1971 ruling of the ICJ and the strike of 1972. In 1969 the Security Council had voted 13–0 (with two abstentions) to withdraw its administration from Namibia. Then, in 1971 the ICJ found that South Africa was occupying Namibia illegally. This decision marked the opening of a 20-year battle between South Africa and the world community, represented by the United Nations, during the course of which, step by step, South Africa would be forced to concede its position until finally agreeing to implement UN Resolution 435 and allow Namibia to become independent. South Africa rejected the 1971 ICJ ruling that it should withdraw its administration from Namibia but almost at once faced massive internal unrest in the form of a strike against the contract labour system, which forced the government to send troops into Ovamboland and establish martial law.
When the ICJ gave its judgment on 21 June 1971 by 13–2 that South Africa was illegally in Namibia and that it was incumbent on all UN member states to ‘refrain from any acts’ and in particular ‘any dealings with the government of South Africa implying recognition of the legality of, or lending support or assistance to such presence and administration’, South Africa’s Prime Minister J. B. Vorster cited the minority judgment of Britain and France as ‘a strong protest against the violation of law contained in the majority opinion’. Following the judgment, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution on 20 October 1971 by 13 votes in favour to two against (Britain and France) that affirmed Namibia to be the direct responsibility of the UN. In March 1972, the UN Security Council sent the Secretary-General (Kurt Waldheim) to initiate contacts ‘with all parties concerned’. Dr Waldheim’s mandate was ‘to establish conditions to enable the people of Namibia, freely and with strict regard to the principles of human equality, to exercise their right to self-determination and independence’. Writing in the Observer2 Stanley Uys said that Dr Waldheim had presumably evoked some kind of encouraging response from Mr Vorster, but his government-sponsored itinerary had an ‘almost comic imbalance’. In Ovamboland he had announced that it was not within his terms of reference to investigate the causes of the strike. Instead, he had been taken on a sightseeing tour, met government-nominated African councillors and visited a modern hospital and hydro-electric scheme. The Council for Namibia issued a statement on 12 July 1972 denouncing the South African decision to ‘grant self-rule’ to Ovamboland and reaffirmed its opposition to the fragmentation of Namibia through the establishment of Bantustans. Dr Waldheim made his formal report to the Security Council on 16 November 1972 and expressed the hope that it provided ‘a useful basis’ on which to decide further action. Prime Minister Vorster, however, refused either to dismantle the embryo Bantustans then being established in Namibia or to define his government’s attitude to independence for Namibia. In December 1973 the Security Council voted 15–0 to halt further talks with South Africa over Namibia. It appointed Sean McBride as Commissioner for Namibia and recognized SWAPO as the ‘authentic representative of the people of Namibia’. The Waldheim initiative came to nothing because the Western powers were unwilling to force a real confrontation with South Africa.
THE OVAMBO STRIKE
In December 1971 between 15,000 and 20,000 contract workers went on strike and by January 1972 had almost brought the country to a standstill. The strike began on 13 December 1971 in the Windhoek Municipal Compound and spread to involve workers in 20 different areas of the country. Almost all the mines, including the giant US-controlled Tsumeb mine which employed 4,000 men and represented the lifeblood of the economy, came to a standstill. The Ovambos, who accounted for 45 per cent of the population and 90 per cent of the workforce, made up the overwhelming majority of the strikers. The South African Minister of Bantu Affairs, M. C. Botha, met employers in Pretoria in December when they decided to revise the contract system and abolish the South West Africa Native Labour Association (SWANLA), which had controlled work opportunities and wages since 1933; in future conditions would be determined directly between employers and employees. No mention was made at this meeting of higher wages or the African right to collective bargaining. The strikers set out their demands in a pamphlet of 12 January 1972. These included the improvement of employment agreements to cover: liberty for Ovambos to do the work they want to do and of which they have experience and knowledge; freedom to change jobs without ‘fear of landing in jail’, freedom to have their families with them; the rate for the job irrespective of colour and equal treatment for all; employment bureaux in all tribal regions and towns; mutual respect between employer and employee; sufficient pay for workers to buy their own food and provide for transport needs; an identification card instead of a passbook; and the removal of the ‘barricade’ – the police post at the Ovamboland border.
A ban on meetings that was imposed by the Ovamboland Legislative Council was largely ignored. The Rand Daily Mail commented as follows:
With great expedition 13,000 contract workers have been sent back to Ovamboland to live out a limbo existence until such time as the conflict can be resolved… The territory’s R90 million-a-year mining industry – the mainstay of its economic viability – has virtually ground to a halt… If most of the Afrikaans newspapers are a barometer, Nationalists within and outside the territory seem content – even eager – to view the Ovambo walk-out as some sort of victory for White enterprise. The cheeky kaffir has tried to buck the system, and
has been put in his place. When the hunger pangs start, he’ll be back, cap in hand. Meanwhile, South West can exist without him.
That is simply not so. Frantic attempts by the mines to recruit workers from other tribes have met with a notable lack of success…3
The aftermath of the strike saw the South West African economy hit, South Africa stepping up its programme of Bantustans, with one new homeland government announced since the Waldheim visit when the Caprivi Legislative Council was opened in March while the various African groups – SWAPO, SWANU and chiefs’ groups – found a new sense of unity. The new labour recruiting system, which replaced SWANLA, caused confusion among white officials and businessmen and aroused opposition in the African township of Katutura outside Windhoek. Other recruiting centres were opened in Ovamboland.
A detailed study of mining in South Africa and Namibia4 demonstrated how close the system was to modern slavery, how hard the white mine owners worked to keep it that way to guarantee maximum profits and how powerful was the Ovambo case for change in the work structure that existed in South West Africa at that time.
In 1971 and 1972… the Ovambo contract workers launched a remarkable protest action. At mines, farms and other workplaces throughout Namibia, then a South African colony, the Ovambo people joined the campaign for a people’s contract, withdrawing their labour and returning home to their families in the north of the country until changes were made. At a great meeting at Oluno, Ondongwa on 10 January 1972, their grievances against the injustices of the contract labour system were set out in a series of speeches and documents, which rank alongside any other twentieth-century distillation of the need for human rights and dignity.5
The author continued to show how the migrant labour system was a modern form of slavery. There was no meaningful contract between employer and employed. Ovambo men could only leave their ‘homeland’ in the north for another part of the country if they had taken a contract and this took the form of an agreement between an individual and a labour recruiting organization belonging to the mining companies, including De Beers and supported by the colonial state. There was no equity in the contract and ‘The people taking contracts had no say whatever in any of the terms and conditions’. A report to the De Beers managers at Oranjemund itemized the many injustices of the system of ‘Kontrak’, which, the report stressed, the Ovambo had christened ‘the Draad’, the fence or prison. The system meant the people were not free to change jobs in pursuit of better wages or conditions. ‘If they left their jobs before the expiry of the term of contract they were in breach of master and servant and pass laws and could be rounded up, jailed or even forcibly returned to their employer. The contract was so restrictive that they could not even return home in time of family sickness or emergency.’6 Humiliating health checks were less about health than the ritual subordination of black Africans by colonial officials and whites working for foreign-owned mining companies.
British management was deeply involved in the mining industries of South Africa and Namibia and complicit in these repressive measures. ‘In 1974 John MacKenzie, the general manager at Oranjemund, decided to try to do something about the overall situation (for blacks employed at the mine) and drafted a Consolidated Diamond Mines (CDM) company charter to summarize appropriate goals and objectives. The draft caused great anxiety at Anglo/De Beers’ head office, with the British De Beers’ director P. J. R. Leyden and his boss Julian Ogilvie Thompson detailing their worries about it. The two men flatly opposed the proposal to increase the number of black and coloured employees housed in married quarters as a key corporate aim.’7 Rather than ameliorate conditions, by 1976 Anglo was asking for cuts in the mine housing budgets. ‘This meant that even CDM management’s modest plans for modification of the hostels and a few token houses where some senior blacks could live with their families came under threat.’ In 1979 the mineworkers’ grievances flared up again following the suicide of a miner who had been refused permission to go on leave on compassionate grounds. It is a long, miserable story with some reasonable managers seeking better conditions for their black workers and being refused even their modest proposals by Anglo-American and De Beers who ruthlessly refused to agree to any improvements. ‘The list of human rights’ infringements and grim conditions at Oranjemund belie the manipulated images of De Beers’ unforgettable worldwide advertising campaigns.’ The mining profit margins were huge and since its inception the Oranjemund mine had sold diamonds worth £5,000 million: its working costs were low, thanks to the ruthless control of labour, and its revenues high. A final comment on conditions at the vastly profitable Oranjemund mine from 1920 onwards showed how appalling they were for black miners working a 10-hour day with a 20-minute lunch break when cold tea and a loaf of brown bread were consumed in the open. ‘They lived isolated from their loved ones, in atrocious single-sex compounds. There were no proper dining-room facilities, the workers had to collect their meals from the mess in metal buckets then take them back to their rooms and eat out of those buckets in the dormitories. Sporting and recreation facilities were virtually non-existent for blacks – there were one or two dirt soccer pitches and a few dartboards, but certainly nothing comparable to the conditions that the whites had. At the world’s richest diamond mine, the majority of people who worked there were simply being exploited, and De Beers grew very, very rich as a result.’8
Mining became the raison d’être of Namibia from 1920 onwards as its vast diamond and other mineral resources were uncovered. The original investments in mines have been recouped several times over: ‘For example, the diamond industry, bought for R7 million in 1919 by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, has yielded pre-tax profits of R500 million to CDM of SWA and De Beers over the last 10 years (to 1974), while the Tsumeb Corporation, purchased by a consortium of US and UK mining companies for R2 million in 1945, yields average annual profits of R12–20 million.’ ‘In 1973, the pre-tax of Consolidated Diamond Mines increased from R100.7 million to R153.4 million, with the dividend lifted from R4.65 to R5.50 a share.’ ‘The profits of the South West Africa Company, the third major mining company in the territory were £916,000 in the six months to 31 December 1973, largely due to the strength of the market in the company’s main product zinc.’9 ‘Although there are no accurate figures, these companies together have capital assets with a total value in excess of the annual GDP of the territory … The total production value of the mining industry in 1973 was R250 million, the major but undisclosed element being gem diamond production at Oranjemund.’ Statistics provided by the South African government showed, in 1969, nine larger operating mines, 13 medium-sized mines and 34 smaller mining and quarrying operations. It is little wonder, apart from strategic reasons, that Pretoria was so determined to hold onto Namibia. The same authors continue: ‘Many of the international mining houses with subsidiaries in Namibia interlock at a higher level in terms of both equity and directors: some with the mammoth Anglo-American Corporation, which controls De Beers Consolidated Mines; notably Charter Consolidated Ltd, Selection Trust Ltd, Falconbridge Nickel Mines (Canada), Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Ltd.’10 This roll call of mining corporations, which were all doing very well out of Namibia, provided a powerful reason for maintaining the status quo – and that meant keeping the blacks in a position of total subservience. At the same time, Pretoria was aware of the gathering external pressures that threatened its control of Namibia and towards the end of 1973, in an attempt to bolster overseas economic support for South Africa’s administration in Namibia, the South African Department of Mines decided to amend the conditions of mining and prospecting grants as applied to overseas companies. Up to that time overseas firms were able to obtain only a 50 per cent participation in any mining grant, with the majority of the mineral rights being held by the administration. Henceforth, overseas mining companies would be able to obtain up to 75 per cent of any mining grant, only needing to take on local participation when the prospecting stage had been reached.11
From 1970 onwards
it was official US policy to discourage investment in Namibia. The former assistant secretary of state David Newsom, giving evidence before the House Committee on Africa, distinguished between US investment in South Africa and Namibia. That in South Africa the US government ‘neither encourages nor discourages’. But, ‘We adopt a much more restrictive policy with respect to Namibia, particularly because of our position that South Africa’s presence in the territory is illegal since the termination of its Mandate in 1966. Since May 1970, we have followed a policy of discouraging further American investment in the Territory and have advised potential investors that we will not intercede to protect their investment against claims of a future legitimate government of the Territory. The Export-Import Bank and OPIC [Overseas Private Investment Corporation] provide no facilities for activities in Namibia. Any American firms which have decided to invest there since 1970 can be presumed to have done so in spite of their awareness of US policy.’12 In 1973 US investment in Namibia was valued at US$45 million to US$50 million. About 90 per cent of this was accounted for by the Tsumeb Corporation in which Newmount Mining Corporation and American Metal Climax jointly owned a controlling interest. ‘The number of American interests in Namibia is extensive, given the limited nature of the territory’s economy, and there is probably much more of it than has been ascertained to date, particularly with the over 300 US companies operating in South Africa that have direct or indirect operations in Namibia.’13