Elections in Namibia: danger for the historic ruling party

Nearly 1.5 million voters in this arid, uranium-rich country elect Parliament and president, invariably coming for 34 years from the South West African People’s Organization (Swapo), the former struggle movement for liberation.

In the absence of polls, the year 2024 has nothing to reassure its candidate Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. At 72, “NNN” aspires to become one of the rare female presidents on the continent, and the first in Namibia.

But the decline of the ANC, deprived of an absolute majority in South Africa, the recent debacle of the BDP in Botswana and the contestation of the proclaimed victory of Frelimo in Mozambique make Swapo fear a “clear” contagion.

These precedents in the region can reverse the trend of “apathy among many voters,” according to independent analyst Marisa Lourenço. “If they realize that change is possible”, then “voter participation could increase”, she explains to AFP.

Particularly among young people, overwhelmed by unemployment: 46% of 15-34 year olds were unemployed when the figures were last released in 2018, before the Covid-19 pandemic, which further darkened the general opinion picture.

“They criticize the government for not offering them job opportunities,” observes Henning Melber, researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala (Sweden).

Read also: In southern Africa, disengagement hits the historic parties in power

“We have piles of minerals, even oil now, but only a minority benefits from them,” fumes Jonas Kambanza, 38, a street photographer in Windhoek, the Namibian capital.

“We need change,” he professes between two portraits sold for 10 Namibian dollars (0.5 euros). “And if the new leaders don’t do better, we will change them too. It’s like that all over the world, we saw it in the United States. Why not with us?”

After three decades of rule by Swapo, a Marxist-inspired movement from the time of the struggle, Namibia remains, after South Africa, the second most unequal country on the planet, according to the World Bank.

Whites descended from South Africans and German settlers, a very small minority in the population, own the vast majority of arable land.

“Based on the ideology of guaranteeing land to blacks,” Swapo “did not answer this question,” said Tendai Mbanje, a researcher at the African Center for Governance, to AFP.

Second round “fairly realistic”

A new generation of Namibians does not feel indebted to Swapo, which liberated the country from the rule of apartheid-era South Africa.

Like Wilhelm Titus, 76-year-old retiree, who calls to “vote to conserve the land” and “maintain those who fought to offer freedom”.

Read also: Elections in Botswana: the president admits defeat

From now on, “a decisive part of the voters were not born” at the time of independence, reports Henning Melber to AFP. These “born free” have “no debt of loyalty to Swapo” and a second round in the presidential election is therefore for the first time a “fairly realistic option”, according to him.

With in the role of the competitor the lawyer Panduleni Itula, 67 years old, who founded the Independent Patriots Party (IPC) in 2020.

Dissident candidate from Swapo in 2019, he gathered, without a party, 29.4% of the votes. When President Hage Geingob, who died in February, was only re-elected with 56% of the vote, compared to nearly 87% in 2014.

“The popularity of Swapo has declined further,” analyzes Marisa Lourenço. “It’s a deadline that she fears because she has never been so close to losing a vote.”

The IPC won Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, two of the country’s main towns, in the 2020 local elections, showing that alternation was possible.

But there is no excitement in the capital Windhoek, where only the posters adorning the wide avenues recall Wednesday’s vote.

High school proms and traditional inter-mine football tournament punctuated the weekend. Before another event next weekend: the publication of the election results. “If Swapo wins,” predicts Tendai Mbanje, “it will be by a very slim margin.”