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UNITED NATIONS, DECOLONIZATION, AND SELF-DETERMINATION IN COLD WAR SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA, 1960-1994, THE
Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 2005 by O'Sullivan, Christopher
In neighboring South Africa a bitter clash between British imperial aims in the region and Afrikaner, or Boer, nationalism, had given way to an equally violent struggle between blacks, who constituted the vast majority of the population, and whites, who comprised a small minority but ruled through the brutal system of apartheid. Few issues received more attention from the United Nations during its first five decades, and the urgency of its condemnations increased as the composition of the General Assembly changed in the wake of decolonization. The brutality of the apartheid system led the General Assembly to address the controversy during more than 200 debates since first addressing the question, at the request of India, in 1946.19
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The South Africa controversy also exposed the disagreements between the West and the developing world at the United Nations. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s a majority of the General Assembly sought to impose stricter sanctions against South Africa but found that path frequently blocked by the United States, Britain, and France who, concerned with South Africa's pivotal role in Cold War Africa, argued that sanctions violated South African sovereignty.20 Of the more than 75 vetoes by the United States from 1970-today, 20 were deployed to block resolutions critical of white-ruled South Africa or Rhodesia (1973-88) (several of these vetoes sought to block sanctions on the grounds that sanctions violated South African sovereignty). Britain has cast 32 vetoes, of those 25 were to block resolutions critical of white-ruled regimes in South Africa or Rhodesia between 1963 to 1988. By the late 1980s intense international focus on the controversy had made South Africa an isolated pariah and in 1990 President F.W. de Klerk allowed the release of African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela - who had long been proscribed as a terrorist in the West - after almost three decades of confinement.21 The UN's role in South Africa expanded in 1992 with the dispatching of an observer mission to oversee the ongoing process of peace and reconciliation and to aid in the transition leading to the first open elections in South Africa in 1994, which resulted in a sweeping victory for Mandela and his party.
The crisis in neighboring South West Africa was linked to the question of South Africa. Germans began colonizing the region as German South West Africa in 1884, reducing the local population - made up mostly of the Herero and Nama peoples - by an estimated seventy-five percent. After the World War I the region became a class "C" League of Nations mandate administered by neighboring South Africa which, after many decades of rule, introduced its repressive apartheid measures and sought to formally incorporate South West Africa into its territory. The UN General Assembly responded by accusing South Africa of maladministration, calling for an end to South African rule, and declaring Namibia to be the direct responsibility of the UN. In 1971 the International Court of Justice declared South Africa's occupation of South West Africa illegal. Its future became a hostage to the broader regional crisis during the Cold War, with strife in the territory exacerbated by South Africa and neighboring Angola. After the shattering defeat of South African forces at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola (a victory for Cuban forces introduced to the region by Fidel Castro) in May 1988, Pretoria relented, opening the way for the establishment of the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia.22 UNTAG became an early example of the new era - or "second generation" - of peacekeeping operations, as its mission expanded well beyond traditional peacekeeping to monitoring the 1989 elections, aiding refugee populations, and repatriating 40,000 exiles. Having accomplished this mission, UNTAG departed Namibia in March 1990.23
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