Copyright by Jason Matthew Morgan 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Jason Matthew Morgan Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: A GLOBAL STRUGGLE: NAMIBIAN NATIONALISM AND SOUTH AFRICAN IMPERIALISM AT THE UNITED NATIONS, 1945-1960 Committee: Toyin Falola, Supervisor Mark Lawrence Barbara Harlow Jeremi Suri William Roger Louis A GLOBAL STRUGGLE: NAMIBIAN NATIONALISM AND SOUTH AFRICAN IMPERIALISM AT THE UNITED NATIONS, 1945-1960 by Jason Matthew Morgan, B.A., M.A., M.Ed. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2014 Dedication FOR MARTHA! THANK YOU FOR ALWAYS BELIEVING IN ME AND PUSHING ME TO SUCCEED! Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support of numerous individuals who pushed me to excel at every level. I would particularly like to thank my wife Martha who put up with long nights of writing and countless hours in archives helping me collect the material for this project. I would also like to thank my committee Drs. Toyin Falola, Mark Lawrence, Barbara Harlow, Jeremi Suri, and Wm. Roger Louis for taking the time to read and comment on this project. I would have been unable to complete my research without the generous financial support of the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the History Department at the University of Texas. I would also like to thank the archivists in Africa, Europe, and the United States for helping me find lost documents and guiding me through their collections. I would particularly like to thank Victor Silas of the SWAPO Party Archives and Research Center for guiding me through the intricacies of SWAPO’s archive. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students who read various portions of my work and let me bounce ideas off them throughout my years at the University of Texas. v A GLOBAL STRUGGLE: NAMIBIAN NATIONALISM AND SOUTH AFRICAN IMPERIALISM AT THE UNITED NATIONS, 1945-1960 Jason Matthew Morgan, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Toyin Falola “A Global Struggle,” examines the role that diplomacy, particularly at the United Nations, played in Namibian nationalist and South African imperial policy in the decades following the Second World War. My work is based on extensive archival research in Namibia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and the United States. I argue that the creation of the United Nations out of the ashes of the League of Nations gave both Namibians and South Africans hope that they could shape Namibia into what they wanted it to be. Namibians wanted to end the League of Nations Mandate that had allowed South Africa to rule their country since 1920, and the South African government hoped to annex Namibia as the fifth province of the Union of South Africa. Namibian nationalists worked with the United Nations and other nations to prevent South Africa from gaining legal control of Namibia. Representatives of Namibian nationalists as early as 1947 began transforming the United Nations away from an institution concerned with maintaining empires into a burgeoning anti-colonial force that would hasten decolonization. South Africa, facing decreasing support from the United States and Great vi Britain, desperately tried to reverse the rising tide of anti-colonial sentiment that was building at the United Nations. Both South Africans and Namibians viewed the United Nations as the center of the struggle over the future of Namibia. My project examines the strategies and actions of both groups as they tried to manipulate world opinion in their favor. vii Table of Contents Introduction..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 The Opening Salvo: The Struggle Over Incorporation ...................................18 Chapter 2 A New Atmosphere: The Nationalists Take Over ..........................................83 Chapter 3 Opening the Floodgates: The ICJ, Apartheid, and the Right to Petition .......138 Chapter 4 A New Approach, Mobilty, Massacre, and Nationalism ...............................215 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..266 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................271 viii INTRODUCTION “A Global Struggle: Namibian Nationalism and South African Imperialism at the United Nations, 1945-1960,” examines the role that the UN played in the strategies of Namibians and South Africans in their plans for the future of Namibia. Namibians and South Africans viewed the United Nations as central to their strategies in gaining control over Namibia. Namibian nationalism developed in the crucible of international politics, and until independence in 1990, Namibians viewed international diplomacy as their primary weapon against South African rule. “A Global Struggle” is the first study to look in depth at Namibian and South African activities between 1945 and 1960. The Namibian issue was pivotal in helping transform the UN into an anti-colonial body. By the early 1950s, while the imperial powers tried to reconsolidate their empires, they had to confront the rising anti-colonial sentiment at the UN, which found its focus in Namibia. The actions of Namibians kept the issue before the UN and gave nations such as India ammunition to attack imperialism. South African control of Namibia was formalized under a Mandate from the League of Nations. Upon the dissolution of the League in 1946, the role of the international community in Namibia, represented by the United Nations, was a contentious issue as South Africa and the UN both claimed sovereignty over Namibia. Between 1920, the year the mandate was conferred to South Africa, and 1990, South Africa ruled Namibia as an integral part of South Africa. South Africans moved into 1 Namibia, and when apartheid was instituted in South Africa in 1948, it quickly spread to Namibia. As the United Nations began to take over the functions of the League of Nations, in particular the transferring of the mandates under the umbrella of the Trusteeship System overseen by the Fourth Committee of the UN, Namibia was the only mandated territory not to be turned over to UN supervision.1 Instead of submitting a trusteeship agreement Jan Smuts, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, attempted to annex Namibia into the Union of South Africa. For the next forty-five years, the United Nations and South Africa would wrestle over the future of Namibia. It was at this stage that Namibians began their long liberation struggle against South Africa at the United Nations. Between 1946 and 1990, the United Nations and its judicial branch, the International Court of Justice, played a prominent role in the plans of Namibian nationalists. Namibians utilized the UN to gain support for their cause and to isolate the South African government through forty-four long years of increasing South African domination. The South African government also viewed the UN as the place where it could win a decisive victory and incorporate the territory as a fifth province. When describing the South West African People’s Organization’s (SWAPO) strategies against South Africa, Sam Nujoma wrote that SWAPO had “designed a three- pronged strategy: the political front, the diplomatic front and the armed liberation 1 The Fourth Committee was also known as the Trusteeship Committee and was responsible for ushering the trusteeships towards independence. After the last trustee territory gained independence the Fourth Committee became the Special Political and Decolonization Committee and encouraged all dependet territories towards independence. 2 struggle.” He went on to describe the political front as “working with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the Non-Aligned Movement, the UN, and of course with our people back home,” clearly demonstrating that international organizations and foreign policy played center stage in their struggle.2 SWAPO’s strategy continued the earlier periods of Namibian struggle examined in this dissertation. Namibian nationalists, with help from sympathetic nations visited, petitioned, worked with, and influenced the United Nations until independence in 1990. Namibian nationalists also worked directly with nations around the globe, setting up offices on virtually every continent. “A Global Struggle” is the first work to look in depth at how Namibians and South Africans planned and waged their campaigns at the United Nations. Each side viewed UN support as central to the future of Namibia. While “A Global Struggle” is primarily about the actions of South Africans and Namibians, it sheds light on how the debate over the future of Namibia influenced and was representative of the changes in the global order after the Second World War. I explore how Namibians and South Africans negotiated the changes that consumed the globe as each group tried to manipulate world opinion in its favor. Namibians and South Africans had to negotiate the global transformations that the end of the Second World War created. South Africa was unable to adapt to the changing world and by 1960, world opinion was firmly on the side of the Namibian people. Between 1945 and 1960, the world dominated by European empires 2 Sam Nujoma, Where Others Wavered: My Life in SWAPO and my participation in the liberation struggle