The world's newest nation celebrated its birth Wednesday with parties, tribal dancing and parades, and ex-guerrilla leaders were sworn in as ministers of the new government.
About 25,000 Namibians cheered wildly at a sports stadium as the South African flag was lowered in Africa's last colony just after midnight, replaced by the red, green and blue banner of newly independent Namibia.Tens of thousands lined the main street of Windhoek, the capital, for a three-mile parade.
"Africa's last colony is from this hour liberated," President Sam Nujoma said in his inaugural address after U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar swore in the former guerrilla leader. Nujoma led the 23-year fight to end rule by neighboring South Africa.
Meanwhile, South African black nationalist leader Nelson Mandela met with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Secretary of State James Baker and expressed appreciation for superpower efforts to ease tension in the world.
The separate meetings represent the highest-level contact by the two nations with Mandela since his release after 27 years imprisonment as part of South African President F.W. de Klerk's racial reform package. The three were in Windhoek to join in celebrations.
Mandela and Baker both said they were looking forward to Mandela visiting the United States. Upon Mandela's release, President Bush invited Mandela and de Klerk to make separate visits to the United States. No dates have been set.
As a fireworks display lit up the sky, Namibians began impromptu parties throughout the capital of Windhoek and car horns blared through the night.
"This is beautiful. We are all thrilled. We have waited so long for this day," said Olga Basson as she watched gold and red fireworks ripping through the night sky.
De Klerk, who held his hand across his heart as he watched his nation's flag being lowered, called for an end to violence in southern Africa.
"I stand here tonight as an advocate for peace. The season for violence has passed for Namibia and the whole of southern Africa," de Klerk said.
"It is above all a moment for hope. Hope that the future of this vast and beautiful land will bring peace."
As thousands watched the parade, middle-aged black women from the Herero tribe, wearing colorful ankle-length Victorian dresses and two-pointed headdresses, marched in front of white teen-age baton twirlers. Floats depicted the country's ethnic diversity, including the primitive Bushmen, and modern bands rode flatbed trucks to the stadium.
Many young blacks cheered loudly when Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, his car blocked by the parade, stepped out and walked a few paces along the side of the parade before slipping into a hotel.
Later, the National Assembly was sworn in, and it adopted a coat of arms with the Namibian motto: "Unity, Liberty, Justice."
Forty-one of the 72 members belong to the South-West Africa People's Organization, the guerrilla movement that fought South African rule then captured U.N.-supervised elections in November.
Seven parties, ranging from black Marxists to right-wing whites, are represented in the assembly, which wrote a democratic, Western-style constitution that has earned praise both inside the country and from abroad.
De Klerk has pledged to end South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation and the date chosen for the ceremony was rich in symbolic meaning for his country.
It marked the 30th anniversary of the "Sharpeville Massacre," when 69 demonstrators were shot and killed in South Africa while protesting racial segregation laws in a black township south of Johannesburg.