NAMIBIA: A Right Start That Could Go Wrong

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Under the peace plan, both the South Africans and SWAPO would have to release all their Namibian political prisoners. South Africa has been holding about 400 nationalists in its jails, and some 700 SWAPO dissidents, held by Tanzania and Zambia as a favor to Nujoma, have recently been set free. In both groups, there are men who pose serious threats to the inarticulate and unpredictable Nujoma, 49, who has failed to excite either Western or African leaders. Among them: Andreas Shipanga, a former SWAPO Information Officer released from a Tanzanian prison, who formed the SWAPO Democrats in opposition to Nujoma last month, and Herman Toivo Ya Toivo, one of SWAPO's founders, who has been in the South African maximum security prison on Robben Island for the past ten years. Toivo, popular with the Ovambo tribesmen who constitute the bulk of SWAPO membership; is no friend of Nujoma's. "His big problem is that he is no longer a major force within the country," says Shipanga. "He has been too long on the outside and too reluctant to go back except at the end of a gun. He's afraid now of fighting an election because he knows he will lose."

That pessimistic appraisal of Nujoma's prospects is shared by some U.S. diplomats, who believe that fast-moving developments have "outstripped" the guerrilla leader's capacity to deal with them. Indeed, virtually every Namibian political group is now so ridden with factions that, in the words of a U.S. official, "you'd have to be a fool to predict the outcome" of any future election.

Nevertheless, an air of cautious optimism prevailed in Washington last week. Buoyed by the recent agreement between Zaire and Angola to re-establish formal relations and cease their border fighting, U.S. officials are still hoping that a peaceful solution in Namibia could have some direct influence in pointing the way to a resolution of the Rhodesian crisis. "The situation is just about as good as could be expected," a State Department specialist remarked last week. "In fact, we've made more progress than we thought possible 15 months ago." Those who favor an end to the strife in Namibia were hoping that progress would continue. -