Abstract
In a September 1986 interview concerning South Africa’s ongoing war in Namibia, South African Defense Force (SADF) General Georg Meiring observed, “In this long war there are two statements which were accepted in the past but which we have proved to be false. Firstly, that time is always on the side of the terrorists. Wrong. We have been fighting for 20 years, and they (the terrorists) are deteriorating. Secondly, that you can’t win a counterinsurgency war. You can. They are losing here and at the same time we are winning.”1 Three aspects of this statement stand out. The first is simply that the war was already two decades old. Even by the standards of protracted war in this day and age, South Africa’s counterinsurgency campaign in Namibia was protracted. Next, Meiring points to this duration as a sign South Africa was doing something right, that South Africa had proven time could favor the powerful state. And finally, even after 20 years of fighting, he remains confident South Africa is on the path to victory.
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Notes
Quoted in Willem Steenkamp, South Africa’s Border War, 1966–1989 (Gibraltar: Ashanti Pub., 1989), 145.
Chester A. Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 353.
See Robert I. Rotberg, “Namibia: The Regional Stalemate,” in South Africa and Its Neighbors: Regional Security and Self-Interest, ed. Robert I. Rotberg et al. (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985), 147
Robert S. Jaster, The Defence of White Power: South African Foreign Policy under Pressure (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 19.
Lieneke Eloff de Visser, “Winning Hearts and Minds in the Namibian Border War,” Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies 39, no. 1 (2011): 88
See Richard Leonard, South Africa at War: White Power andthe Crisis in Southern Africa (Westport, CT: L. Hill, 1983), 61–3
Longmire, “Land and Labour in the Namibian Economy,” in Studies in the Economic History of Southern Africa, ed. Zbigniew A. Konczacki, Jane L. Parpart, and Timothy M. Shaw (Savage, MD: F. Cass, 1990), 208
Dale, “The Armed Forces as an Instrument of South African Policy in Namibia,” Journal of Modern African Studies 18, no. 1 (1980): 64.
UNESCO, Racism andApartheidin Southern Africa: South Africa and Namibia (Paris: U.N.E.S.C.O. Press, 1974).
Brian Pottinger, The Imperial Presidency: P. W. Botha, the First 10 Years (Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1988), 209–12
Robert M. Price, “Pretoria’s Southern African Strategy,” in Exporting Apartheid: Foreign Policies in Southern Africa, 1978–1988, ed. Stephen Chan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 166.
Quoted in Hilton Hamann, Days of the Generals: The Untold Story of South Africa’s Apartheid-Era Military Generals (Cape Town: Zebra, 2001), 7.
see James Michael Roherty, State Security in South Africa: Civil-Military Relations under P.W. Botha (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), 73.
Philip H. Frankel, Pretoria’s Praetorians: Civil-Military Relations in South Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 35.
Also see Robert Davies and Dan O’Meara, “Total Strategy in Southern Africa—an Analysis of South African Regional Policy since 1978,” in Exporting Apartheid: Foreign Policies in Southern Africa, 1978–1988, ed. Stephen Chan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 193.
Mark Phillips, “The Nuts and Bolts of Military Power: The Structure of the S.A.D.F.,” in Society at War: The Militarisation of South Africa, ed. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 25.
James Selfe, “South Africa’s National Management System,” in Society at War: The Militarisation of South Africa, ed. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 150–3.
Quoted in P. W. Botha and Pieter-Dirk Uys, P. W. Botha in His Own Words (New York: Penguin, 1987), 63–5. On Botha’s demands for Cuban troop withdrawal, see also United Nations Security Council, S/18767, Further Report of the Secretary General Concerning the Implementation of Security Council Resolutions 435 (1978) and 439 (1978) Concerning the Question of Namibia, (March 31, 1987).
Kenneth W. Grundy, The Militarization of South African Politics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 94.
Daniel Conway, “Somewhere on the Border—of Credibility: The Cultural Construction and Contestation of the Border in White South African Society,” in Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s late-Cold War Conflicts, ed. Gary F. Baines and Peter C. J. Vale (South Africa: Unisa Press, 2008), 79.
See William Cobbett, “Apartheid’s Army and the Arms Embargo,” in Society at War: The Militarisation of South Africa, ed. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 232
Peter H. Katjavivi, A History of Resistance in Namibia, Apartheid & Society (London: Unesco Press, 1988), 110–11.
Chester A. Crocker and Georgetown University. Center for Strategic and International Studies., South Africa’s Defense Posture: Coping with Vulnerability, The Washington Papers (Beverly Hills: Published for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University by Sage Publications, 1981), 28–9.
Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 21.
Christopher Coker, South Africa’s Security Dilemmas, The Washington Papers (New York: Praeger, 1987), 16.
See also Harald E. Winkler and Laurie Nathan, “Waging Peace: Church Resistance to Militarisation,” in Marching to a Different Beat: The History of the End Conscription Campaign, ed. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 325–31.
Laurie Nathan, “Marching to a Different Beat: The History of the End Conscription Campaign,” in Society at War: The Militarisation of South Africa, ed. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989).
South African Institute of International Affairs., “What Do We Think?” in Geleentheidspublikasiel die Suid-Afrikaanse Instituut van Internasionale Aangeleenthede (Braamfontein, South Africa: South African Institute of International Affairs, 1982)
Van Wyk, Elite Opinions on South African Foreign Policy, occasional paper/ Research Project on South Africa’s Foreign Relations (Johannesburg: J. J. van Wyk, 1984).
Helen E. Purkitt and Stephen Franklin Burgess, South Africa’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), 50–4.
Tore Linné Eriksen, Norway and National Liberation in Southern Africa (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordic Institute of African Studies, 1999), 89.
Tony Weaver, “The South African Defence Force in Namibia,” in Society at War: The Militarisation of South Africa, ed. Jacklyn Cock and Laurie Nathan (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 94.
Willem Steenkamp, Borderstrike! South Africa into Angola (Pretoria: Woburn Butterworths, 1983), 11.
Gary F. Baines, “Introduction: Challenging the Boundaries, Breaking the Silences,” in Beyond the Border War: New Perspectives on Southern Africa’s Late-Cold War Conflicts, ed. Gary F. Baines and Peter C. J. Vale (South Africa: Unisa Press, 2008), 9–10.
Also, see Daniel Conway, “The Masculine State in Crisis: State Response to War Resistance in Apartheid South Africa,” Men and Masculinities 10, no. 4 (2008): 424.
Johann Van Rooyen, Hard Right: The New White Power in South Africa (London I. B. Tauris, 1994), 121
Brian Wood, “Preventing the Vacuum: Determinants of the Namibia Settlement,” Journal of Southern African Studies 17, no. 4 (1991): 755.
Also see André Du Pisani, SWA/Namibia, the Politics of Continuity and Change (Johannesburg: J. Ball Publishers, 1985).
Chester A. Crocker, Correspondence with Author, March 2015. Conway, “Somewhere on the Border—of Credibility,” 75, 84–8.
John A. Marcum, “Retrenchment and Recalculation: South Africa and the Angola-Namibia Agreements,” in Disengagement from Southwest Africa, ed. Owen Ellison Kahn (London: Transaction Publishers, 1991), 136.
Jannie Geldenhuys, At the Front: A General’s Account of South Africa’s Border War, 2nd ed. (Jeppestown: Jonathan Ball, 2009), 101.
Ian Liebenberg, “Through the Mirage: Retracing Moments of a War ‘Up There,’” Scientia Militaria, South African Journal of Military Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 144.
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© 2016 Shawn T. Cochran
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Cochran, S.T. (2016). South Africa in Namibia (1966–1989). In: War Termination as a Civil-Military Bargain. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137527974_6
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