Southwest Africa Becomes Namibia

In 1989 the Southwest African Peoples Party's candidate for the presidency, Sam Nujoma, defeated the Democratic Turnhalle Coaltion, a party of dutch settlers. This SWAPO victory brought blacks to power for the first time in this country, in which the victors renamed Namibia. The Republic of Southwest Africa was a colony of the Republic of South Africa, and had imposed the same system of racial separation on blacks, known as apartheid.