South West Africa: travesty of trust; the expert papers and findings of the International Conference on South West Africa, Oxford, 23-26 March 1966, with a postscript by Iain MacGibbon on the 1966 judgement of the International Court of Justice http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp3b10032 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org South West Africa: travesty of trust; the expert papers and findings of the International Conference on South West Africa, Oxford, 23-26 March 1966, with a postscript by Iain MacGibbon on the 1966 judgement of the International Court of Justice Author/Creator Segal, Ronald (editor); First, Ruth (editor) Date 1967 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Namibia Source Northwestern University Libraries, Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, 968.8 I61s Rights By kind permission of Ronald Segal and Gillian Slovo. Description Preface; The Case for International Action. Gensis: From Conquest to Mandate: German South West Africa, by Helmut Bley; The Origins of the 'Sacred Trust' by Wm. Roger Louis; Blacks to the Wall, by Robert L. Bradford. Inside South West Africa: Techniques of Domination: South Africa's Colonialism, by H.J. Simons; The Legal Apparatus of Apartheid, by J. Kozonguizi and A. O'Dowd; The South West African Economy, by Sean Gervasi; The Economic Relationship with South Africa, by Robert B. Sutcliffe; The Condition of People, by J. Rogaly; The Land Theft, by Zedekia Ngavirue; The Labour Force, by Charles Kuraisa; Education Policy and Results, by Marcia Kennedy McGill; Experiences as a Student and as a Teacher, by Gottfried Hage Geingob; The Odendaal Report: Social and Economic Aspects, by Absolom L. Vilakazi; The Defence (sic) Position, by Richard Gott. The Abuse of Responsibility: From Mandates to Trusts, by Eduardo C. Mondlane; The Legal Case, by Iain MacGibbon. The Conference Findings. Postscript: The International Court Decides?, by Iain MacGibbon. Format extent 347 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.crp3b10032 http://www.aluka.org w, -P w, -P jj ........... South West Africa: Travesty of Trust South West Africa: Travesty of Trust The expert papers and findings of the International Conference on South West Africa,, Oxford 23 - 26 March 1966, with a postscript by lain MacGibbon on the 1966 Judgement of the International Court of Justice. Edited by Ronald Segal and Ruth First ANDRE DEUTSCH FIRST PUBLISHED 1967 BY ANDRE DEUTSCH LIMITED 105 GREAT RUSSELL STREET LONDON WCI COPYRIGHT @ 1967 BY THE STEERING COMMITTEE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EBENEZER BAYLIS AND SON LTD THE TRINITY PRESS WORCESTER, AND LONDON (.7'I l",./ /( ji *7:-J, S _-2_ -; ;:- Contents Preface by Ronald Segal 1 THE CASE FOR INTERNATIONAL ACTION by The Conference Steering Committee 13 2 GENESIS: FROM CONQUEST TO MANDATE 35 German South West Africa by Helmut Bley The Origins of the 'Sacred Trust' by Win. Roger Louis J Blacks to the Wall by Robert L. Bradford 3 INSIDE SOUTH WEST AFRICA 103 J Techniques of Domination: South Africa's Colonialism by H. J. Simons The Legal Apparatus of Apartheid by J. Kozonguizi and A. O'Dowd The South West African Economy by Sean Gervasi J The Economic Relationship with South Africa by Robert B. Sutcliffe The Condition of the People by J. Rogaly The Land Theft by Zedekia Ngavirue The Labour Force by Charles Kuraisa Education Policy and Results by Marcia Kennedy McGill Experiences as a Student and as a Teacher by Gottfried Hage Geingob The Odendaal Report: social and Economic Aspects by Absolom L. Vilakazi The Defence Position by Richard Gott 4 THE ABUSE OF RESPONSIBILITY 267 From Mandates to Trusts by Eduardo C. Mondlane The Legal Case by lain MacGibbon 5 THE CONFERENCE FINDINGS 307 6 POSTSCRIPT: THE INTERNATIONAL COURT DECIDES? by lain MacGibbon 329 INDEX Preface In April 1964 there was held at London a four-day International Conference on Economic Sanctions against South Africa, organized by a Steering Committee of individuals and delegates from movements, South African and British, opposed to apartheid. Our purpose was to submit economic sanctions to the scrutiny of impartial intelligence; to establish whether - as we ourselves believed - they constituted a feasible and effective means of forcing white South Africa to abandon its racial policies; and, if our belief was confirmed, to fortify the campaign for international intervention with the prospect of appropriate tactics. To the Conference we accordingly invited - along with delegates and observers from governing and opposition parties, trade union federations and pressure groups, in several dozen countries individual experts, economists and international lawyers, historians and military strategists, distinguished not only by their competence and reputations, but by the absence of any known commitment on the issues to be examined. The papers that they prepared, with the findings and recommendations of the Conference, comprised the official record, which was dispatched to all governments, considered by the United Nations, and subsequently published as a book." The Steering Committee remained in existence to promote the Conference recommendations - chief of which was the unanimous conclusion that a programme of total economic sanctions against South Africa would be practical and effective - and when we were approached by a leading member of the resistance movement in South West Africa to organize another conference, on the crisis for international responsibility presented by South Africa's continued possession of the mandate, we decided that this fell properly within our purposes. We were much encouraged by the success of the first conference, which had substantially contributed to removing economic sanctions from the realm of fantasy and setting them in the context of practical, if still contentious, politics. If we were now PREFACE to examine an issue that had been engaging the United Nations for so many years, it was in the hope that we could produce new evidence of the extent to which South Africa was betraying its obligations, clarify for public opinion everywhere but especially in the West the implications of failure by the world community to end this betrayal, and accordingly provoke pressure, by governments and on governments, for urgent and collective intervention. We planned to follow the design of the Sanctions Conference, inviting experts to prepare papers on the main aspects of the issue, and dividing the conference itself, with its preponderance of political delegates, into special commissions, which would examine rather than declaim, and together produce, we hoped, a closely reasoned case for international action. The commissioning of the expert papers, however, proved far more difficult than we had, from our work for the Sanctions Conference, supposed. It is an intrinsic need of South African rule to hide as much of South West Africa as possible from outside eyes. The South African government has taken, for instance, to merging trade figures for the territory with South Africa's own, so that a significant and up-to-date assessment of the South West African economy had to be painstakingly elicited from a multitude of different, and often not easily accessible, sources. There were few economists, historians and military strategists who had concerned themselves, we found, with a territory so remote and securely guarded from the traffic of events. In the end, therefore, not the least important achievement of the conference - and one largely due to the efforts of Ruth First - was the production of papers which entailed much original research and which must add much to public knowledge of the territory. The four-day International Conference on South West Africa was held at Oxford in March 1966: its patrons were the Prime Ministers of India, Malaysia, and Trinidad and Tobago, and the Presidents of Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania, and Zambia; its Chairman was Olof Palme, Sweden's Minister of Communications; and the cost, like that of the Sanctions Conference, was met by contributions from sympathetic, in the main African, governments. Delegates and observers from more than thirty countries, including the United States and the Soviet Union, attended, many of them selected by their governments, parties or trade union federations for their particular knowledge of some aspect to be considered at the conference. (The Soviet Union sent as her principal delegate a former PREFACE judge of the International Court). The findings and recommendations of the four special commissions were unanimously adopted by the closing plenary session of the conference and were than dispatched, with the expert papers, to all governments and to the United Nations, where they have played a not insignificant part in recent debates and decisions. This book - with the exception of a postcript on the judgement of the International Court - is just an official record, the evidence presented to the conference and the conclusions which the conference drew.