Forging the Fifth Province

The period after the end of the Second World War was, literally, a defining moment in Namibian history. The future status of the territory was debated during some of the earliest meetings of the United Nations in 1945–1946. On the one hand, the South Africans argued that they had forged Namibia into a de facto fifth province of the South African nation, and that ‘consultations’ held with both black and white residents of the territory showed that the vast majority embraced absorption within the Union of South Africa. Critics argued that the ‘consultations’ had been an elaborate deception and that the claims of consensus were a forgery. Both these readings, however, reflect nationalist perspectives that oversimplify the conceptual contest. A closer look at four different contemporary interventions suggests a range of alternative perspectives, but also suggests that the notion of a liberation struggle was grounded in the failure to export South African identity and the persistence of perceptions of empire and foreign occupation.