<P> Led by newly elected Afrikaner nationalist Daniel François Malan, the South African government rejected this opinion and refused to recognise the competence of the UN to interfere with South - West African affairs . In 1960 Ethiopia and Liberia, the only two other former League of Nations member states in Africa, petitioned the Hague to rule in a binding decision that the league mandate was still in force and to hold South Africa responsible for failure to provide the highest material and moral welfare of black South - West Africans . It was pointed out that nonwhite residents were subject to all the restrictive apartheid legislation affecting nonwhites in South Africa, including confinement to reserves, colour bars in employment, pass laws, and influx control over urban migrants . A South African attempt to scupper proceedings by arguing that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the case was rejected; conversely, however, the court itself ruled that Ethiopia and Liberia did not possess the necessary legal interest entitling them to bring the case . </P> <P> In October 1966 the General Assembly declared that South Africa had failed to fulfill its obligations as the mandatory power and had in fact disavowed them . The mandate was unilaterally terminated on the grounds that the UN would now assume direct responsibility for South - West Africa . In 1967 and 1969 the UN called for South Africa's disengagement and requested the Security Council to take measures to oust the South African Defence Force from the territory that the General Assembly, at the request of black leaders in exile, had officially renamed Namibia . One of the greatest aggravating obstacles to eventual independence occurred when the UN also agreed to recognise the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO), then an almost exclusively Ovambo body, as the sole authentic representative of the Namibian population . South Africa was offended by the General Assembly's simultaneous dismissal of its various internal Namibian parties as puppets of the occupying power . Furthermore, SWAPO espoused a militant platform which called for independence through UN activity, including military intervention . </P> <P> By 1965 SWAPO's morale had been elevated by the formation of a guerrilla wing, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), which forced the deployment of South African Police troops along the long and remote northern frontier . The first armed clashes between PLAN cadres and local security forces took place in August 1966 . </P>

When did independence movements in africa become widespread