Namibia: Political Parties Material
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- Creator
- Institute of Commonwealth Studies
TitleNamibia: Political Parties Material
Reference codePP.SX
Date1965-
Scope and ContentConstitutions, manifestos, leaflets, pamphlets, press statements, letters, programmes, conference reports, posters, badges, rosettes and miscellaneous election materials from 1965 onwards, issued by the Congress of Democrats, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (Namibia), the Directorate of Elections (Namibia), the Independence Celebration Committee (Namibia), the Namibian National Democratic Party, the National Patriotic Front of Namibia, the South West Africa National Union, SWAPO, the SWAPO-Democrats and the United Democratic Front of Namibia.
NotesNamibia (South West Africa) was administered by South Africa under a League of Nations mandate from 1920 to 1946, but as the apartheid regime consolidated itself so the idea of the mandate as something to be eventually relinquished faded, with South Africa refusing to convert the mandate into a UN trusteeship arrangement. The history of Namibia until 1990 was therefore characterised by increasing international disapproval of South African occupation (as shown by the withdrawal of the mandate in 1966 and the International Court of Justice ruling in 1971 that the South African presence was illegal), attempts by the Pretoria regime to give this occupation some legitimacy and the growth of organisations opposed to it. The largest of these were the South West Africa National Union (SWANU) and the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO). The recognition of the latter by the UN in 1976 as the sole representative of the will of the Namibian people demonstrated how international events affected organisations resisting the occupation as well as those enforcing it. After the 1978 elections the South-African backed Democratic Turnhalle Alliance formed the territory's government in defiance of UN Resolution 435 and was boycotted by SWAPO among others. Bound as ever to political developments in its more powerful neighbour, Namibia achieved its independence in 1990 following a transitional period overseen by the UN, and has been governed by SWAPO ever since.
Conditions governing accessAccess to this collection is unrestricted for the purpose of private study and personal research within the supervised environment of the library.
Extent2 boxes
System of ArrangementAlphabetically by party or organization, and then in rough chronological order.
Finding aidsItem-level descriptions are available on the library catalogue: http://catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/search~S17/
Related files
See also Namibia: Pressure Groups Material (PG.SX), and Political Party, Trades Unions and Pressure Group Materials for other Commonwealth countries and material in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies library's main classified sequence.
Level of descriptionfonds