Yearbook 2010
Namibia. In March, a court ruled on the outcome of the
2009 parliamentary elections. Nine opposition parties had
questioned the ruling party SWAPO's (South West Africa
People's Organization) victory with close to three-quarters
of the votes and got a recalculation and re-examination of
the voting lengths. On the basis of these results, they had
appealed to the Election Commission for a court ruling,
which however rejected the case. In November, local and
regional elections were conducted, which also resulted in
smashing victories for SWAPO. However, turnout was only 40
percent.
According to
COUNTRYAAH, a suspected corruption deal with a loose link with the
Chinese state leadership was this year's big news follow in
Namibia. Two local businessmen and a representative of the
Chinese company Nuctech had been arrested at the end of 2009
on suspicion of shooting at an order to Nuctech for delivery
of advanced scanning equipment to Namibian customs. On a
visit to Namibia in 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao had
promised to grant soft loans to finance the $ 55.3 million
order, provided the equipment was delivered by Nuctech,
which was then headed by his son Hu Haifeng. According to
the Namibian Anti-Corruption Authority, $ 12.8 million of
the payment had been transferred to a "consulting firm",
where the three people had shared the money. Their assets
were frozen on court orders, but pending trial they were
released free of bail.
Dry and sparsely populated, the Kalahari desert was not
very attractive to European colonization. It was not until
the 19th century when Bismarck's Second Reich in Germany
began its colonization of the remaining "empty areas" in
Africa that one of the objectives was Namibia. The area was
declared a German colony in the mid-1880s. However, the
country was not "empty" and the cruelest genocide methods
were used to defeat local resistance and control the
interior. It was particularly hard on the gentlemen, who in
a short time were reduced from 80,000 to 15,000. Out of the
20,000 from the Nama people, less than half survived the
German "pacification".
However, the country gained strategic importance as large
deposits of iron, lead, zinc, copper, diamonds and a number
of metals of military importance were discovered: manganese,
tungsten, vanadium, cadmium and uranium.
At the outbreak of World War I, the British invaded the
country from South Africa. When the world war was over, the
country was assigned to the League of Nations as a mandate
that left the concrete administration to the South African
Union.
After facing a number of initial disagreements, the South
African peasants and the German settlers in Namibia quickly
found a common interest: the hard plundering of the black
population in the country whose "welfare" they should take
care of, according to the League of Nations. Among the
settlers was also the Nazi leader Göring's father.
In 1974, South Africa officially declared its intention
to annex the area to the UN. The UN, which had inherited
Namibia from the League of Nations, rejected South Africa's
claim, citing: "The African people of South West Africa have
not yet achieved political autonomy". Until 1961, the UN had
demanded this every year, and it had just as systematically
been ignored by the racist governments in South Africa.
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