South Africa and Namibia

While the debate over the future direction of political change in South Africa heats up, the appearance of these two works on Namibia serve to remind us of a longstanding issue that has once again been shunted into the background. This is regretable not only for the long suffering people of Namibia but also for those specialists and others who are wont to speculate about or attempt to predict the probable course of political development within South Africa itself. Most South African specialists, it seems, choose to ignore the important lesson to be gleaned from the recent history of European decolonization, namely, that we can often learn as much from it about the patterns or parameters of political change with the decolonizing metropoles as we can about those within the colonies themselves. Were South Africanists to reflect on this, they would realize that a careful consideration of Pretoria's policy towards Namibia in recent years can offer very useful insights into the possible parameters of political change within South Africa. Strange as it may seem, the view from Namibia may actually help to dispell some of the cloudy thinking that has abounded of late concerning the likely direction and pace of political change within South Africa itself in the near future. This is surely the case with one of the volumes under consideration In Search of Namibian Independence by Geisa Maria Rochas. Although the primary purpose of this work by the former Secretary to the UN Commissioner for Namibia is to examine the failure of the United Nations to effect a settlement of the Namibian independence question, this book is far more interesting for the intriguing insights it offers into the political

Decolonization · Development economics · Geography · Independence (probability theory) · Pace · Political change · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Law · Legal Issues in South Africa · Linguistic research and analysis · Transport and Economic Policies

• The Myth of the White Farmer

  Wolfe W Schmokel•The International Journal of…•1985

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