17-10-2008, 11:16 AM
David Guyatt Wrote:Looking forward to your next installment...
This is a quick sketch of an answer, but it gets most of the key points in. Apologies, by the way, for the absence of pagination in the cited articles. I had the bad habit in those days of omitting the page number of the articles I clipped.
The context for Lockerbie and the assassination of Bernt Carlsson by plane bomb
Namibia was, and remains, awash with strategic, and very lucrative, minerals. Thus control of the country’s resources was, in and of itself, held vital to US/Western business and military interests. British and South African extractors had made hay in the years of control from Pretoria (1).
Namibian “independence” was also – and this is crucial to understanding the stakes underpinning the Lockerbie atrocity - but a prelude to the even bigger prize of South African. The introduction of Namibian self-governance could not, therefore, be allowed to set “unfortunate” precedents for, or create obstacles to, the planned full, smooth re-integration of South Africa, complete with new veneer of black enfranchisement and nominal political control, into the Western economic order.
The major threat to the continuation of business as usual in Namibia was the genuine commitment of the non-CIA controlled elements of SWAPO’s leadership to a programme of extensive nationalisation. The party’s 1989 independence election manifesto brimmed “with the language of Marx and class struggle” (2). That programme’s implementation depended on SWAPO clearing an obstacle erected by the US, Britain, and the former’s regional proxy-in-chief, South Africa – it had to obtain a “two-thirds majority necessary to write the new constitution on its own” (3). SWAPO’s success in obtaining that two-thirds majority hinged upon the extent to which it could mobilize support not merely in its heartland, Ovamboland, home to just over a third of the electorate, but beyond, among other tribes such as the Damaras and Namas.
Carlsson’s murder removed a potentially formidable obstacle to the panoply of dirty tricks deployed by Washington, London and Pretoria, to minimise SWAPO’s electoral victory. He was a protégé of Olaf Palme, and his career embodied Swedish social democracy’s commitment to the Third World democratization (4).
Quote:(1) David Pallister, “British and SA mining companies accused of plundering Namibia,” The Guardian, 29 September 1988.
(2) Scott Peterson, “Grizzled rebel Nujoma takes statesman’s role,” The Sunday Telegraph, 29 October 1989.
(3) Ibid. See David Beresford, “Namibia tinderbox awaits a spark,” The Guardian, 3 November 1989, for the Anglo-American insistence on preserving this requirement, even to the extent of threatening to use their Security Council veto, in the face of tentative UN calls for flexibility.
(4) Dan van der Vat, “Obituary: Bernt Carlsson: Key figure in Namibian peace process,” The Guardian, 23 December 1988.
Lumbar region permitting, I'll add a brief sketch of those dirty tricks measures later today or tomorrow.