The history of Namibia has passed through several distinct stages from being colonised in the late nineteenth century to Namibia's independence on 21 March 1990.
The United Nations Angola Verification Mission II, established May 1991 and lasting until February 1995, was the second United Nations peacekeeping mission, of a total of four, deployed to Angola during the course of the Angolan Civil War, the longest war in modern African history. Specifically, the mission was established to oversee and maintain the multilateral ceasefire of 1990 and the subsequent Bicesse Accords in 1991, which instituted an electoral process for the first time including the two rival factions of the civil war, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the de facto government of Angola, with control of Luanda and most of the country since independence in 1975, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
Operation Displace was a military operation by the South African Defence Force during the South African Border War and Angolan Civil War. It involved maintaining the illusion that the SADF had remained in brigade strength east of Cuito Cuanavale at the end of April 1988 and the eventual withdrawal of all South African military units from south-eastern Angola during August 1988.
Chester Arthur Crocker is an American diplomat and scholar who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from June 9, 1981, to April 21, 1989, in the Reagan administration. Crocker, architect of the U.S. policy of "constructive engagement" towards Southern Africa including apartheid-era South Africa, is credited with setting the terms of Namibian independence.
The United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) was a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force deployed from April 1989 to March 1990 in Namibia to monitor the peace process and elections there. Namibia had been occupied by South Africa since 1915, first under a League of Nations mandate and later illegally. Since 1966, South African forces had been combating an insurgency by the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the military wing of the Namibian-nationalist South West African People's Organization (SWAPO). The UN Security Council passed Resolution 435 in 1978, which set out a plan for elections administered by South Africa but under UN supervision and control after a ceasefire. However, only in 1988 were the two parties able to agree to a ceasefire. As UNTAG began to deploy peacekeepers, military observers, police, and political workers, hostilities were briefly renewed on the day the transition process was supposed to begin. After a new round of negotiations, a second date was set and the elections process began in earnest. Elections for the constitutional assembly took place in November 1989. They were peaceful and declared free and fair; SWAPO won a majority of the seats. The new constitution was adopted four months later and it was followed by Namibia's official independence and the successful conclusion of UNTAG.
The Agreement among the People's Republic of Angola, the Republic of Cuba, and the Republic of South Africa granted independence to Namibia from South Africa and ended the direct involvement of foreign troops in the Angolan Civil War. The accords were signed on 22 December 1988 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City by the Foreign Ministers of People's Republic of Angola, Republic of Cuba and Republic of South Africa.
Louis Alexander Pienaar was a South African lawyer and diplomat. He was the last white Administrator of South-West Africa, from 1985 through Namibian independence in 1990. Pienaar later served as a minister in F W de Klerk's government until 1993. He married Isabel Maud van Niekerk on 11 December 1954.
United Nations Commissioner for South West Africa was a post created by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 1966 to assert the UN's direct responsibility for South West Africa which was then under illegal occupation by apartheid South Africa.
The Western Contact Group (WCG), representing three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - France, United Kingdom and United States - and including Canada and West Germany, launched a joint diplomatic effort in 1977 to bring an internationally acceptable transition to independence for Namibia, after a decade of illegal occupation by apartheid South Africa.
In the 1980s in Angola, fighting spread outward from the southeast, where most of the fighting had taken place in the 1970s, as the African National Congress (ANC) and SWAPO increased their activity. The South African government responded by sending troops back into Angola, intervening in the war from 1981 to 1987, prompting the Soviet Union to deliver massive amounts of military aid from 1981 to 1986. The USSR gave the Angolan government over US$2 billion in aid in 1984. In 1981, newly elected United States President Ronald Reagan's U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Chester Crocker, developed a linkage policy, tying Namibian independence to Cuban withdrawal and peace in Angola.
The Cuban intervention in Angola began on 5 November 1975, when Cuba sent combat troops in support of the communist-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in against the pro-western National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) and National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA). The intervention came after the outbreak of the Angolan Civil War, which occurred after the former Portuguese colony was granted independence after the Angolan War of Independence. The civil war quickly became a proxy war between the Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union and the Western Bloc led by the United States. South Africa and the United States backed UNITA and the FNLA, while communist nations backed the MPLA. 4,000 Cuban troops helped to turn back a three-pronged advance by the SADF and Zairean troops, backed up by foreign mercenaries. Later, 18,000 Cuban troops defeated the FNLA in the north and UNITA in the south. Separatists from the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) fought the Cubans but were defeated. In 1976, the Cuban military in Angola reached 36,000 troops. Following the withdrawal of Zaire and South Africa, Cuban forces remained in Angola to support the MPLA government against UNITA in the continuing civil war. South Africa spent the following decade launching bombing and strafing raids from its bases in South West Africa into southern Angola, while UNITA engaged in ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, and harassment of Cuban units.
The Brazzaville Protocol mandated the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola, paving the way for Namibia's independence through the New York Accords. Representatives from the governments of Angola, Cuba, and South Africa signed the protocol on December 13, 1988 in Brazzaville, Congo.
In the Angola–Cuba Declaration of 1984, signed 19 March 1984 in Havana by president José Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola and Fidel Castro, premier of Cuba, the two countries agreed to the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola after the withdrawal of South African troops from Angola and Namibia, and after UN-Security Council resolution 435 on Namibian independence was strictly applied.
The People's Republic of Angola was the self-declared socialist state which governed Angola from its independence in 1975 until 25 August 1992, during the Angolan Civil War.
Parliamentary elections were held in Namibia between 7 and 11 November 1989. These elections were for the Constituent Assembly of Namibia, which, upon independence in March 1990, became the National Assembly of Namibia.
The 1978 Settlement Proposal in Namibia, devised by the Contact Group of Western States, mandated the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) under United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 to assist a UN Special Representative appointed by the UN Secretary-General 'to ensure the early independence of Namibia through free and fair elections under the supervision and control of the United Nations'.
United Nations Security Council resolution 626, adopted unanimously on 20 December 1988, after noting an agreement between Angola and Cuba regarding the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and considering a report by the Secretary-General, the Council endorsed the report and established the United Nations Angola Verification Mission I for a period of thirty-one months.
United Nations Security Council resolution 629, adopted unanimously on 16 January 1989, after recalling resolutions 431 (1978), 435 (1978) and 628 (1989), the Council noted that the parties to the Brazzaville Protocol agreed that 1 April 1989 be established as the date of the South African withdrawal from Angola and therefore lead the way to the independence of Namibia.
The Australian Services Contingent was the Australian Army contribution to the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) peacekeeping mission to Namibia in 1989 and 1990. Australia sent two contingents of over 300 engineers each to assist the Special Representative of the Secretary General, Martti Ahtisaari, in overseeing free and fair elections in Namibia for a Constituent Assembly in what was the largest deployment of Australian troops since the Vietnam War.
Operation Merlyn was a military operation by the South African Defence Force (SADF), South West African Territorial Force (SWATF) and South West African Police (SWAPOL) during the South African Border War and Angolan Civil War in April 1989. The aim of the operation was to prevent the incursion of PLAN (SWAPO) insurgents into South West Africa/Namibia from bases in Angola. These incursions were in violation of a ceasefire which came into effect on 1 April 1989 via the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 435 and the Tripartite Accord. Initially, these PLAN incursions were tackled by South West African police units and eventually by SADF and SWATF units, released to assist the police having been confined to their bases by the peace agreements. These incursions and the conflict that occurred ended after hastily arranged talks resulted in the Mount Etjo Declaration and an eventual ceasefire.
