The days before 21 March 1990
ON 9 February 1990, the Constitution was unanimously adopted. The Constituent Assembly had agreed on a Namibian flag, chosen from 400 entries in a national competition. A shadow cabinet had been found to facilitate the transition, with the ministers- to-be shadowing the appropriate government officials to learn more about their future tasks and to identify the policy directions of the incoming government.
The thorny question of forming our own Namibian Defence Force from a merging of PLAN and SWATF had been tackled. As a result of my request to the British government, four British military experts visited Namibia and saw all the appropriate individuals and groups in order to put forward a proposal for the integration and training of our future defence force, as they had done in Zimbabwe. Despite their continued unhelpfulness in the past, Britain now appeared anxious to help, and proposals for training the unifying Namibian Defence Force, Namibian Police and for English language training were put forward.
It had been decided by SWAPO many years earlier that English would replace Afrikaans as the medium of instruction and as the official language of the Government. We had had much help from Britain and the Commonwealth in raising the SWAPO teacher’s standard of English instruction in SWAPO education and health centres and colleges in exile.
My own unanimous election by the Constituent Assembly as President took place on Friday 16 February 1990. I was the sole candidate and the acclamation that followed my election was evidence that SWAPO’s policy of national reconciliation was already bearing fruit. In the gallery on this occasion was the prominent American political activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, who exclaimed: “Mandela’s out of gaol and Sam Nujoma is in office!” Nelson Mandela had been released the previous Sunday, 11 February, and the two events did indeed symbolize the new era, in which southern Africa was moving towards the final defeat of colonialism, apartheid and the total liberation of the African continent.
It was also the decision of the Constituent Assembly that I should be sworn in by the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, on the day now fixed for the independence celebrations. This was to be 21 March 1990, a date of poignant memory as it was the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, news of which had reached me soon after my arrival in Dar-es-Salaam, and which was to have an electrifying effect on the freedom movement throughout the continent. It had also been chosen by the United Nations as Human Rights Day.
The white South African oppressors, whose role in the transition had already been so much greater than had been envisaged under UN Security Council Resolution 435, wanted to perform the ceremony. But we made it absolutely clear that it was the United Nations, as the de jure government of Namibia since the termination of the mandate by the General Assembly Resolution 2145 in 1966, that should, through the UN Secretary-General, swear-in the first President and that South Africa had no status in the matter at all.
The ministers were all to be sworn in by the Namibian-born Chief Justice Hans Berker, whose position, together with that of the other judges, we had accepted in the changeover.
There was a lot happening around the country that showed that the South African elements, at all levels, were not going to move out without doing all the damage they could. In the north, armed men whom we knew to be under Koevoet command destabilised wherever they could the fragile peace that had succeeded 23 years of war. It came out that General Dreyer, their commanding officer, was accommodating his men on a farm, Manheihm, near Tsumeb, and that they had a large supply of arms. In the south too, arms caches were discovered and the undercover units such as that which had assassinated Anton Lubowski had not been apprehended.
Our relations with the South African Administrator-General Louis Pienaar grew increasingly strained. As his remaining time in the country shortened, he set about doing all he could to benefit those who had run the country with him during the illegal occupation of the apartheid South African regime, by promoting them beyond their proper rank, increasing their pay, and transferring pension funds out of the country and even making it possible for officials to take out lump-sum pensions there and then. In the closing days of the South African colonial administration it became necessary for the Minister of Finance, Dr Otto Herrigel, to dash from one bank to another telling managers not to honour cheques made out on instructions from the Administrator-General.
The South African colonial officials were determined that they would not leave Namibia empty-handed. Pre-fabricated houses at all South African military bases were dismantled and transported to South Africa. Even the contents of what was to become the first State House were not safe from the grasping hands of the departing South African administrators. In the old residence that had been the home of the German governors and South African administrators, many historically interesting objects, paintings and ornaments, which had accumulated over the preceding century, disappeared along with the former occupants. As a result of a tip-off, our officials found that these had been secretly moved to a warehouse, in readiness for being transported by rail to South Africa.
We were able to reclaim much of that collection, but many other valuable items were stolen from Government offices by the departing white South African administrators.
It was not a dignified departure from the country which they had exploited for so long, but it was consistent with the way they had behaved towards the Namibian people – as was their stated repudiation of Resolution 432 which had required the “early re-integration” of Walvis Bay and the off-shore islands after independence.
This thieving should be contrasted to the demand they made in which they were supported by some Western governments, that SWAPO should inherit the 800 million rand debt owed to South African commercial banks for expenditures in Namibia. Since some of this was spent on civilian infrastructure such as schools and hospitals, we eventually accepted the debt. A government with a sense of honour and jealous of its national reputation might have made the gesture of writing off such a sum, especially to help a new country get on its feet.
I attended Pienaar’s farewell banquet on 20 March, after a long day spent at the airport receiving heads of state and government, and where possible talking with prime ministers, foreign ministers and politicians who had been invited to attend our independence celebration, in recognition of their support for the struggle of the liberation of Namibia. The last to arrive was Comrade Mandela and I felt that meeting him at the airport must take precedence over my attendance at Pienaar’s banquet, though I did manage to arrive while it was still in progress. I saw Pienaar off at the airport the day after South Africa’s illegal rule was finally terminated.