Namibia: will the Boers go?

Xan Smiley

Geneva The South Africans pretended they were hardly in Geneva at all. Only as observers, you understand. Well, they did kindly pluck a man out of Pretoria to be Namibia's administrator-general and to guide South Africa's protégés to the Geneva conference table. But otherwise the South Africans were refuting any suggestion that they had any real connection with Namibia's proclaimed 'internal' rulers gathered together under the banner of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, that sad hotchpotch of black nationalist dropouts, amiable chiefs, pugnacious Hereroes, Rehoboth basters, mild-mannered tame clergy, led by an eager Afrikaner farmer with the sturdy English name of Mudge, who all happened quite by chance, of course to be staying in the same gloomy lakeside hotel as the

low-lying (yes, hyphenated) South Africans.

Poor Dirk Mudge-rejected when he stood, for the leadership of the white Nationalist right-wingers some years ago, rejected again by his own white constituents a few weeks ago for being too liberal, mocked by official world bodies for being a puppet of Pretoria, and soon perhaps to be chastised by Pretoria. itself for being a nuisance, a Puppet not always ready to obey the strings is reminiscent of the middle-line Ian Smith in Rhodesia three years 'before the end', Mudge talks as if he believes he can win, when he knows in his heart he cannot.

For he knows that, in the end, if the stern South African leader, P.W. Botha, says 'Chuck it', he must obey. And if Botha doesn't pull the plug out, Mudge knows things can only, in any case, get Ploddingly, the DTA is carrying out tentative reforms. But the people are less interested than they are supposed to be. They simply want to elect their own leaders. (Perhaps only once but that's what they Want),

The DTA is a shambles. Mudge is captain (,)f a very tatty Third XI. Pretoria has ooked the team on 'ethnicity'. So it is important that each of Namibia's eleven Tain ',groups' is represented. But in Geneva were was a man short: the token bushman

nad gone cru missing. As a compatriot had

e

ily put it: "They didn't have time to catch one, wipe him down and fit him with a nice new suit.'

Some of those who did turn up, like the statuesque Dr Ben Africa of the Rehobothers, that fiercely clannish and highly politicised mixed-race community who trekked up from the Cape in the last century, have but dismal claims truly to stand for their people -on account of sound thrashings in the recent elections by antiDTA parties, even despite the boycott of the poll by the pre-eminent guerrillabacked nationalist movement, SWAPO.

The DTA has no chance whatsoever of winning a real election, despite the services of Sir Harold Wilson's former PR man, Trevor Lloyd-Hughes. SWAPO has block support Among the Ovambo, who are almost 47 per cent of Namibia's population, fairly strong support among the Damara, who at 9 percent are the next most populous group after the whites (II per cent), and surprisingly good backing in many other parts of the country, Large sections only of the bellicose, proud but hopelessly divided Herero (nearly 7 per cent) will vote mainly against SWAPO. That is not enough for the DTA.

A few years ago there was a chance of a centrist revival by an alliance of political parties and talented individualists opposed both to Pretoria and the DTA and to SWAPO. (and therefore to Moscow, as oversimplifiers would argue). But these well-meaning political middle-of-the-road groups have all but collapsed as well. Their only potential is for further whittling away the DTA. Sometimes fractious itself, SWAPO remains by comparison a rock of grim solidarity, ready to sweep a Namibian election.

That is why the Geneva Conference has been even more agonisingly dull than previous African conferences in the same place. There was only one real question. Will the Boers leave Namibia? All the dreary semantics about the meaning of electoral impartiality were part of Pretoria's delaying tactics. And if a 'UN impartiality package' what a concept! be accepted, there are a hundred other ways of stalling, if that is Botha's wish.

The informed view (I didn't say the right one) is that the South Africans are ready to go, but that it is hard for Botha to explain his 'betrayal of South West' to the party right wing, which he continues to fear too much. Hence. perhaps, why the South Africans are making so much of Mudge, building him up as something they know he isn't (but which he may momentarily believe he is), namely, an independent leader. If Mudge finally decided to take the electoral plunge, apparently of his own will, then Botha can tell his own heavies that the whites of Namibia ( never mind that most of them have voted against Mudge as a weakminded liberal) have themselves decided to fight the UN-supervised election. Responsibility then, in theory, falls out of Botha's gentle hands.

Yet Mudge can hardly be itching to go to the hustings when he knows he will lose, (The beauty of the Lancaster House negotiations on Zimbabwe was that each side was convinced it would win.) Mudge will go only if smartly ordered to by Botha. In white South African eyes, making a mess of the Geneva conference is supposed to show that `Mudgie isn't being pushed around'. Oni.e that has been shown, then the South Africans might think about a face-saying formula, and give up Namibia,

For, retreating within the rim of the laager, they know it is easier to defend the desert country along the Orange River, on Namibia's southern border. than to face endless guerrilla aggravation in the bush country adjacent to Angola in the north. In addition, the South African whites can take comfort: SWAPO is far less ideologicallyrooted than, say, Robert Mugabe's ZANU. Sam Nujoma, the SWAPO leader, is an obtuse and tiresome old bore, but the party has quite enough sane men to run a pleasant country, deal in diamonds with Harry O. and so forth.

Nor do the West, the Africans, even the Nigerians, wish to slap some futile form of sanctions against the Boers, in the present impasse. The Americans and British are still bound to veto a sanctions motion fot a while yet. My hunch is that in a month or two, when the sanctions talk begins to increase the South Africans will discover, at the last minute, a roundabout way of saying '1 quit'.

And any idea that the net is closing on the Afrikaner homeland itselfSouth Africa is misplaced. Inside the hanger, they look strong.