Namibia (South West Africa)
Apartheid extended under South African rule
South Africa governed South West Africa (now Namibia) after a League of Nations mandate and applied apartheid there, refusing to cede the territory to UN supervision. In 1971 the ICJ held its continued presence illegal and called the racial-separation policy a “flagrant violation” of the UN Charter.
What happened
After the UN terminated South Africa’s mandate (1966) and the Security Council declared its presence illegal (1970), the Council asked the ICJ for an advisory opinion. South Africa argued it needed to supply evidence on the merits of “separate development”; the Court held no such evidence was needed to judge the policy against South Africa’s obligations.
It is undisputed that the official governmental policy pursued by South Africa in Namibia is to achieve a complete physical separation of races and ethnic groups… This the Court views as a flagrant violation of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. (ICJ Advisory Opinion, 1971)
Under each definition
The 1973 Convention targets “similar policies … as practised in southern Africa,” which includes South African rule in the territory.
The conduct fits the definition, but the 1998 Statute is not retroactive and there was no ICC prosecution.
The same government applied the same apartheid laws in the territory.
Universally described as apartheid extended into Namibia.
The case that the label applies
A principal UN judicial organ found, on undisputed facts, that South Africa’s racial-separation policy was a “flagrant violation” of the Charter — apartheid applied to a whole territory.
The case against
The 1971 opinion predates the 1973 Convention and the Rome Statute, so it did not use the later term “crime of apartheid”; it framed the wrong as a Charter/human-rights violation. A temporal caveat, not a dispute that the system was apartheid.
In their words
This the Court views as a flagrant violation of the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
The verdicts above are how each definition would most likely classify this situation — illustrative guidance, not court rulings. Only South Africa is beyond dispute; every other legal characterization is attributed to the body that made it. The lenses diverge most on the treaties’ phrase “racial group” and on the difference between a legal finding and a moral analogy. See the Definition tab for each definition’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.