Preventing the vacuum: determinants of the Namibia settlement

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Abstract
This paper examines the political, military and economic factors behind the diplomatic agreements which led to the withdrawal of South Africa's colonial occupation of Namibia in 1989–90, and it identifies some of the major constraints which Pretoria placed upon the independence of the new Namibian state. The view that the South African government withdrew from Namibia — but not Walvis Bay — because of military defeats in Angola during 1988 is rejected. It is argued that explanations for the settlement given by US diplomats, Chester Crocker and Charles Freeman, do not take into account key variables such as the underlying economic imperatives, South Africa's state and party building strategy in Namibia, and the political actions of the Namibian people themselves. Such determinants have also been ignored or obscured by most of the radical literature on South Africa's destabilisation of the sub‐region. It is argued here that Pretoria's attempts to consolidate stable conditions for a semi‐colonial state on its borders through military and other means was the key determinant in the diplomatic process over Namibia in the 1980s. These attempts were underpinned by the increasing long‐term need of South Africa's dominant business interests to expand into, and create, new African markets at home and abroad. Eventually, in 1988, prompted by the rapprochement between the USA and USSR, financial crises and political and military stalemate amongst the military protagonists, Pretoria was forced to proceed with its project to graft an ideologically reformed and deglamourised Swapo leadership on to its new state ‘in waiting’. F. W. de Klerk's government then acted quickly to minimise the domestic impact of Namibia's UN‐supervised, non‐racial elections to a constituent assembly.

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