Namibia

Cave paintings that may be more than 25,000 years old attest to the presence of hunter-gatherer groups in the country during the late Pleistocene period, but the earliest identifiable inhabitants are the San, who were here by the beginning of the 1st century AD. The Nama-speaking Khoikhoi arrived about AD 500. The Ovambo and the Herero migrated to the area much later. European Presence Between a landing by Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 and the creation of German South-West Africa in 1884, most of the few Europeans who visited the territory were explorers, missionaries, and hunters. The next three decades of German rule were marked by bloody suppression of the rebellious black Africans, notably the once dominant Herero, whose revolt in 1904 was not finally crushed until four years later at the cost of perhaps 60,000 lives. In 1915, during World War I, the German colony was conquered by military forces of the Union (now Republic) of South Africa. Germany renounced sovereignty over the region in the Treaty of Versailles, and in 1920 the League of Nations granted South Africa mandate over the territory. In 1946 the United Nations (UN) General Assembly requested South Africa to submit a trusteeship agreement to the UN to replace the mandate of the defunct League of Nations; South Africa refused to do so. In 1949 a South African constitutional amendment extended parliamentary representation to South-West Africa. The International Court of Justice, however, ruled in 1950 that the status of the mandate could be changed only with the consent of the UN. South Africa agreed to discuss the trusteeship question with a special committee of the General Assembly, but the negotiations ended in failure in 1951. South Africa subsequently refused to accede to UN demands concerning a trusteeship arrangement, but it permitted a UN committee to enter Namibia in 1962 in order to investigate charges of atrocities committed against the native peoples. The committee found the charges against South Africa to be baseless. South Africa's Continued Occupation Aroused by steps that the government of South Africa was taking to establish apartheid in the mandated territory, Ethiopia and Liberia took the case to the International Court of Justice, but the court dismissed the complaint in 1966 on technical grounds. In October of that year the apartheid laws of South Africa were extended to the country. The UN continued to debate the question, and in June 1971 the International Court of Justice ruled that the South African presence in Namibia was illegal. South Africa, however, continued to govern the territory. As a result, SWAPO, a black African nationalist movement led by Sam Nujoma, escalated its guerrilla campaign to oust the South Africans. The major Western powers, principally the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and West Germany (now part of the united Federal Republic of Germany), became deeply involved in the Namibian question in the late 1970s. South Africa continued to resist eviction until December 1988, when it agreed to allow Namibia to become independent in exchange for the removal of Cuban troops from neighboring Angola. Open elections for a 72-member Constituent Assembly were held under UN supervision in November 1989, with SWAPO emerging as the majority party. In 1990 the Constituent Assembly approved a new constitution and became the National Assembly; Nujoma was elected to serve as the country's first president; and Namibia attained independence. Until February 1994 an enclave containing the principal seaport, Walvis Bay, was administered by South Africa. In 1994 the first elections following Namibian independence were held. SWAPO won 53 out of 72 seats in the National Assembly. The opposition DTA of Namibia obtained 15 seats.