EPISCOPALCIIURIIMEN soUru VAFR[CA Room 1005 * 853 Broadway, New York, N . Y. 10003 • Phone : (212) 477-0066 , —For A free Southern Afilcu ' May 1982 MISSIONS MOVEMENTS NAMIBIA 'The U .S. 'overnment has become an agent in South Africa's "holy crusade" against Communism . ' - The Rev Dr Albertus Maasdorp, general secretary of the Council of Churches in Namibia, THE NEW YORK TIMES, 25 April 1982. It was a . mission of frustration and a harsh learning experience . Four Namibian churchmen made a month-long visit to Western nations to express their feelings about the unending, agonizing occupation of their country by the South African regime and the fruitless talks on a Namibian settlement which the .Western Contact Group - the USA, Britain, France ,West Germany and Canada - has staged for five long years . Anglican Bishop James Kauluma, presi- dent of the Council of Churches in Namibia ; Bishop Kleopas Du neni of the Evangelical Luth- eran Ovambokavango Church ; Pastor Albertus Maasdorp, general secretary of the CCN ;, and the, assistant to Bishop D,mmeni, Pastor Absalom Hasheela, were accompanied by a representative of the South African Council of Churches and the general secretary of the All Africa Coun- cil of Oburches which sponsored the trip . They visited France, Sweden, Britain and Canada, end terminated their journey in the United States . It was here that the Namibian pilgrims encountered the steely disregard for Namibian aspirations by functionaries of a major power mapped up in its geopolitical stratagems. They met with Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester .Crocker, whose time is primarily devoted to pursuing the mirage of a Pretorian agreement to the United Nations settlement plan for Namibia . The Namibians told him - as they told others in and out of government - that South Africa relentlessly builds up its military personnel and fortifica- tions in the International Territory, that Pretoria continues to impose its selected and illegal - governmental structures inside Namibia, that the Western Five's negotiations are making no progress whatsoever . They felt the latest contortion devised by the Five on the original UN plan - one Namibian's vote would ,be counted twice, . for a candidate in a consti- tuency and again for a party on a proportional representation basis - had as a motive the entrenching of ethnic divisions favoring the white minority and' pro-Pretoria blacks . The American officials did not want to hear any criticism of their scheme . Crocker is known to have expressed annoyance and anger with these meddlesome priests. Hard upon the Namibian churchmen's heels came Dirk Mudge, chairman of the South African- compiled Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, the internal shadow government in Namibia which is undergoing increasingly frequent defections . Mudge saw Crocker, whose own , prestige aryd . very job are imperiled by the intractable forces in Southern Africa . The' chunky Afrikaner farmer-turned-politico went off to Texas to look at cattle, it is said, . and he was seen leaving the US Mission across First Avenue from the United Nations before flying off to London to see the Foreign Office in the midst of the South Atlantic war crisis. It regains to be seen how the Namibian church leaders' message is acted upon by their peers in the Western nations they visited . - Most people - in and out of churich - who have to deal with the issue of Namibia appear still to be mesmerized by the Contact Group's negotiations,, These Five, who in April 1977 vowed to deliver Pretoria's agreement to an internationally ., eceptable settlement on Namibia, have produced no Pretoria and operate fran a script vast:. :afferent from the UN plan approved in 1978 . (continued) L4IBIA (continued) Urgent regard crust be paid to an analysis by Elizabeth Landis, foremost authority on the iT .mi.bia issue . Dr Landis, a lawyer who for six years was senior political officer to the United Nations Commissioner for Namibia and is a long-tame researcher-writer on laws as applied in South Africa and Namibia, explains: S.Juth Africa has occupied Namibia illegally, just as the Nazis occupied Western Europe, since 1966 . In that year, the United Nations, by a resolution supported by the United States government,revoked South Africa's League of Nations mandate over the Internation- al Territory of Namibia because of Pretoria's gross maladministration of 'South West Africa', as it was then }mown . The UN Security Council, in its resolution 385 of 1976, set out South Africa's obligations regarding Namibia . South Africa was required to end its many discriminatory and repressive laws and practices, to discontinue its 'bantustan' (ethnic homelands) policy, and to quit the Territory forthwith . The Security Council al- so mandated one--person,one-vote elections to be held in the Territory as a single polit- ical entity under the 'supervision and control' of the UN - that is, the world organiza- tion was to decide an appropriate electoral system, register voters,prevent intimidation, directly control nation-wide election day proceedings, count the ballots, etc. Since 1976, the Western Powers have undercut first one, then another, provision of reso- lution 385, at first in the name of implementing it,but now simply to reassure Pretoria that elections in Namibia will not threaten its control of the Territory . The 1978 West- ern Plan - put together by the Contact Group : the United States, Britain, France,Canada and West Germany - left the bantustans in existence ;many discriminatory and repressive laws and practices in effect, if not Ftrengthened ; and South African administrators, po- lice and some military in Namibia throughout the elections,with those officials empower - ed to run the elections,subject only to monitoring by the UN, which would have no power :~ .3 correct errors or prevent intimidation . Even this watered-down Western Plan, codified n Security Council resolution 435, has been subject to changes since 1978 - all of them -'oncessions to the occupying Pretorians, who have no legal right at all to be in Namibia. :among the concessions made by SWAPO since 1978 has been an agreement that SWAPO soldiers would be kept in monitored bases outside Namibia although 1500 South African troops would remain in Namibia throughout the election . SWAPO also agreed to the inclusion of certain provisions in the future Namibian constitution even though every UN resolution since 1967 had provided that only the delegates elected by all the Namibian people in free and fair elections should determine the fundamental law under which they would subsequently live. It even agreed to a South African/Western demand that the constitution had to be adopted by a two-thirds vote instead of by a simple majority. Originally SWAPO and the other political parties assumed that the election would be held under a system of proportional representation which would accurately reflect the voters' preferences Territory-wide .But the West and South Africa objected that there must be rep- resentation for minorities too small to win a seat even if this required underrepresenting major political groups . They insisted on grafting exotic complications, involving dual vot- ing or dual counting, onto the basic proportional representation system - which, inciden- tal].y, had been good enough for the South Africans in the election they ran illegally in 1978 . The extra vote or count would require the establishment of single-member constit- uencies throughout Namibia. Under South African law in Namibia (South West Africa Consti- tution Act, no . 39 of 1968, sec . 10 (4) and (5) ) these constituencies, while preferably equal in size, could in fact be as much as 15% over the norm or 15% under,thus allowing a difference of 30% between smallest and largest . A justification for over - or under - rep- resentation is 'community or diversity of interests' - South African short-hand for ethnic considerations, i .e ., exactly those considerations which are destructive of national unity and territorial integrity. SWAPO has rejected the Contact Group's dual count voting scheme and is being labeled the obstructionist . The Frontline African states - Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, plus Nigeria and Kenya - support the SWAPO stand as does the UN Coun- cil for Namibia. They also support SWAPO's call for a conference between itself and South Africa under UN auspices . After five long years of ' delicate negotiations' and sham, the agonizing issue of Namibia must get back to fundamentals . Freedom for the Namibian people is too long overdue. Their suffering must end, their nationhood assured . "NAMIBIA - A NATION WRONGED" In November 1981, a four-person delegation from the British Council of Churches traveled to Namibia at the invitation of the Council of Churches in Namibia . They were Anglican Bishop Stanley Booth-Clibborn of Manchester ; the Rev John Johansen--Berg, former Moderator of the United Reformed Church ; Sister Catherine Hughes, Provincial Superior of the Congre- gation of Notre Dame, a Roman Catholic ; and the Rev Jim Wilkie, secretary of the Confer- ence for World Mission of the BCC, a Minister of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Following are excerpts from their 40-page report: 'We heard that political and trade union activities are closely controlled by the'South African Security under AG9 and AG26 . Some people arrested under the former are never seen again. Anyone detained can be kept for thirty days incosivnunicado and this can be extended indefinitely. Thus while internal SWAPO is technically free to organise,in fact its leaders are under great pressure ; some have been detained and on release are restrict- ed to certain areas like Katutura (the black township near Windhoek) . Many blacks are now being conscripted into the security forces with little training . Some of these are re- sponsible for great cruelty inflicted upon the civilian population . Since this force is used by the government to fight its internal war with SWAPO many young blacks feel they are being compelled by the whites to fight against their brothers and sisters .