Namibian elections: Over before it began - But where are the fruits of liberation?

It does not require any prophetic magic to predict the obvious results of Namibia’s Parliamentary and Presidential Elections held on Monday and Tuesday: SWAPO of Namibia, the national liberation movement in power since Independence 1990, will retain its two-third majority and will continue to govern in an absolutist and authoritarian fashion within a de facto one party state. The question is only, with which qualitative margin and on which quantitative support base in terms of voters’ participation SWAPO has the continued mandate to cultivate its equation that the party is the government and the government is the state.

The opposition parties, both internally and among each other more divided than ever before, will compete for the remaining bits and pieces. With a new ethnically based Herero party (NUDO), which separated from the ranks of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) a new stakeholder might appear in the political arena. The number of votes it achieves might change the composition of the National Assembly, which had parliamentarians from five different parties before the elections. The same is true for the newly competing Republican Party (RP), which seeks to gather votes also from the original DTA clientele. We will have to wait and see what at the end of the counting is still left for the “old” DTA opposition, which was the first opposition party at Independence and since then has been in steady decline, and to what extent in particular the Herero faction in NUDO will seek new power sharing arrangements with SWAPO. There might still be some surprises in the kitty.

The so far relatively successful new kid on the block, the Congress of Democrats (CoD), will have to see if it maintains the second rank within the party landscape. It had emerged partly from the ranks of dissenting SWAPO activists, who were joined by other relatively intellectual, critically minded non-conformists. They established a political counter force, not cursed by the Apartheid legacy (as the DTA), but only managed to catch half of the DTA’s support base within the anti-SWAPO camp during the elections in December 1999.

CoD and DTA were subsequently represented both with just below ten per cent of the votes in the current National Assembly, whose term ends in March 2005, when the new Parliament, President and Cabinet will be sworn in. But CoD has also been battling with internal rivalries and differences – just the opposite of what one would like to show to potential voters prior to elections and not a confidence building measure by any standard.

There are two other questions, which will remain until the counting of votes comes to an end. If the United Democratic Front (UDF) - another ethnically oriented interest group mainly rooted in the Damara communities - will maintain its position as fourth strongest party, and if the one-person-party MAG (Monitor Action Group), representing the most conservative white element in post-colonial Namibia, manages to keep its seat and continue to contribute with at times even refreshing interventions to the otherwise often pretty boring debates where decisions are a foregone conclusion on the basis of SWAPO’s two-third majority.

In any case and whatever the proportional distribution of seats will ultimately be: the different party programmes showed little to no substantive differences. SWAPO was as much “mainstream” as most of the pseudo-alternatives.

The overwhelming dominance by SWAPO, which is in firm control of most institutions and agencies (with the exception of the economy, still dominated to a large extent by those class interests and agencies which benefited from settler colonialism) will remain unchallenged. Notwithstanding the fact, that the former liberation movement has been internally divided more obviously than ever before, it has not to be afraid (yet) that any meaningful alternative might pose a threat. Such an alternative simply does not exist at present.

Hence the most exciting shifts in the current power structure already took place prior to the elections when SWAPO’s President Sam Nujoma was denied another (fourth) term despite his obvious appetite to stay in office. Instead, the “leader maximo” was made to understand that he will not get away with another constitutional change in his favour, but received a golden handshake, which leaves him without any need to worry about the material well-being for his retirement period, during which time close to thirty civil servants will satisfy his needs.

Reluctant to abandon power, Nujoma had finally made his choice for a successor by selecting his closest confidante from the struggle days, considered to be a loyal servant to his master’s voice. But his crown prince Hifikepunye Pohamba denied appointment as the sole candidate by the party. Instead the SWAPO Central Committee nominated three candidates as potential successors. Delegates to an Extraordinary SWAPO Congress end of May were then tasked to make a choice, and in the internal campaign period the factional fight turned ugly.

What was praised widely as a sign of practised democracy was ultimately an in-fight over power and control. To minimise the risks, Nujoma did not shy away from tough measures, disclosing his authoritarian mindset and character, to push through his candidate at any costs. Hidipo Hamutenya, the strongest contender and rival, already frustrated from the President’s third term in office (which was made possible at the end of the 1990s by changing Namibia’s Constitution for the first time with the two-third SWAPO-majority in Parliament), was ousted from his post as Foreign Minister. This was a clear sign that those in support of his candidacy would meet the old man’s disapproval and have to face the consequences. Nonetheless, almost a third of the Extraordinary Congress was prepared to vote for Hamutenya and thereby pointed to the deep rift within the party.

To add insult to injury, in the subsequent selection process over the ranking of candidates on the party list, Hamutenya ended at a rank that makes his political survival as a Member of Parliament critically dependent upon the actual amount of votes gained. If SWAPO does not maintain the same degree of dominance, Hamutenya will be out by a narrow margin. This is quite a humiliating experience for someone considered for years to be the most likely candidate to succeed the old man. The same fate which looms over Hamutenya will happen to many among those who were (rightly or wrongly so) considered active within his camp. They were punished by being ranked even lower on the party list and will almost certainly loose their status as Honourables.

To what extent that might trigger another split within and ultimately from the party (as was partly the case with the creation of the CoD), is too early to speculate. It will also depend upon the strategy followed by the new Head of State, when appointing his Cabinet in March 2005. Until then, Namibia’s political office bearers will be almost paralysed and anxiously wait to see if they survive in lucrative ministerial ranks.

The return of the former Prime Minister Hage Geingob into Namibian politics has also provoked curiosity. Ousted from office by means of a humiliating demotion offered to him by President Nujoma half way through the third legislature, Geingob resigned from offices and accepted a good salary with a World Bank affiliated lobby agency for Africa in Washington. Obviously with the blessing of Nujoma, he has now made a successful return into Namibian politics. He has resigned from the employment of the international financial institution and returns to anti-imperialist rhetoric (which also characterises his PhD thesis just accepted, in which he discloses the neo-colonial conspiracy in the decolonisation process of Namibia - a deal to which actually and strictly speaking SWAPO and Geingob as team leader of the election campaign for his movement were part and parcel of).

While the majority of Namibians seem to be rather satisfied with the new President to come, the question will remain as to how many votes he is able to draw in approval. Sam Nujoma, SWAPO’s so far only President since its establishment in 1960, has managed as “father of the nation” to receive so far always more votes than the party (a record three quarters in 1999). Pohamba will find this difficult to achieve, though he has asked for a similar degree of support.

Instead, it is likely that some voters within the SWAPO rank and file might wish to indicate their disagreement with the choice by not supporting the new President with their vote. He will then have to see if and to what extent he tries to mend the torn sheets with those factions, who were viciously fighting each other during 2004 over access to political power in the party. It will also remain an interesting question as to what extent Pohamba will in the process indeed turn out to be “Nujoma no. 2”.

Observers do not deny the possibility that once in office the new President might find increasingly less time to listen to the old man while taking care of the daily tasks of running the government. That Nujoma remains the party boss, however, ensures a certain degree of continued close collaboration between the two comrades of almost fifty years. It also suggests, in biological terms, that Pohamba might turn out to be a transitional, one-term President for the Republic of Namibia. The competition for his succession might start the day the new Cabinet has resumed office, on Namibia’s Independence Day on 21st March 2005.

Most, though not all of the questions raised above, will be answered on the basis of the empirical results. Results, which beyond any serious doubt - at least by standards of Florida and Ohio respectively - will meet the label of being by and large free and fair (as questionable as some of the smaller tricks might be).

The more important questions will however remain to be answered. They relate to the fragile fundament of the post-colonial project of a political elite, which has not achieved to deliver the fruits of independence promised to the majority of the previously colonised.

The populist radical rhetoric of those in power might increasingly follow the temptation to cover up for the lack of commitment towards meaningful fundamental transformation of society in terms of the re-distribution of material wealth. Under the slogan of “national reconciliation” and “black economic empowerment” and/or “affirmative action”, this transformation had been applied only selectively to the benefit of a privileged post-colonial political elite. The majority remained poor. It might be a matter of time that their patience runs out. And to cover up the failures of the last 15 years by means of a policy on land would only bring temporary relief for those in power, as Zimbabwe demonstrates, and be at the expense of even higher costs for the population in whose interest the previous liberation movement claims to act.

* Dr. Henning Melber is the Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden.

* Please send comments to

ABOUT NAMIBIA:

Namibia has one of the most unequal societies in the world. The Human Development Report (1998) shows that the richest 10 percent of the population receives 65 percent of the income, while about half of the population survives on about 10 percent of the average income. The 2000 Namibia Labour Force survey estimated the unemployment rate at 34 percent.
The economy of the country relies heavily on extraction and processing of minerals as well as on processed fish for export. Between 1990 and 1993 real GDP growth averaged 5 percent, but since then has slowed to an average of about 3.2 percent, according to the World Bank website.
Namibia became a German protectorate in 1884. The country was occupied by South Africa in World War One. It was declared a mandated territory by the League of Nations and administered by South Africa. South Africa later refused to withdraw under United Nations instructions. In the 1950s the Ovamboland People's Congress, which later became the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) emerged and led the struggle against South African occupation. The territory won independence in 1990. SWAPO leader Sam Nujoma became president following victory in UN-supervised polls.

NAMIBIA LINKS:

Norwegian Council for Africa Namibia Page
http://afrika.no/index/Countries/Namibia/index.html
Africa South of the Sahara: Namibia Page
http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/namibia.html
Republic of Namibia official web site
http://www.grnnet.gov.na/
Namibia Economist
http://www.economist.com.na/
University of Namibia
http://www.unam.na/
The Namibian Daily Newspaper
http://www.namibian.com.na/
Namibian Parliament
http://www.parliament.gov.na/