Namibia: Africa's Last Colony

Namibia, the former German colony of South West Africa, was given to South Africa as a League of Nations mandate in 1920. After 1945 South Africa refused to place it under UN trusteeship and extended apartheid there. The UN General Assembly ended the mandate in 1966, and the International Court of Justice ruled in 1971 that South Africa's presence was illegal.

SWAPO, founded in 1960 and led by Sam Nujoma, began an armed struggle in 1966, based largely in Angola after 1975. In 1978 UN Security Council Resolution 435 set out a plan for elections, but it stalled for a decade, partly because South Africa and the United States linked Namibian independence to the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola.

After heavy fighting in southern Angola in 1987–88, the New York Accords of December 1988 linked the two. UN-supervised elections in 1989 brought SWAPO to power, and Namibia became independent on 21 March 1990, closing what is often seen as the era of formal colonial rule on the African mainland, although Western Sahara's status was left unsettled by Spain's withdrawal in 1976.