South Africa’s Withdrawal from Namibia (1989–1990)

Abstract

The former German colony of South West Africa is rather bigger than France and the United Kingdom combined, but is very sparsely populated, having no more than about one and a quarter million inhabitants. After the First World War it was taken from Germany and administered by South Africa as a League of Nations Mandated Territory. South Africa was anxious to include it within her own domain, and after the Second World War refused to convert it into a UN Trust Territory (League Mandates generally being transformed into UN Trusts). Before very long this became one of the grounds on which she was regularly condemned by large majorities in the UN General Assembly, and in 1966 the Assembly purported to terminate South Africa’s right to govern the territory. The International Court of Justice upheld the legality of this act in 1971, by which time South West Africa had been renamed, by the UN, as Namibia. By that date the UN had also appointed a Council to administer it and prepare it for independence, but the Council was unable to secure access to the territory for which it was supposedly responsible.