Paul T. Shipale
Peter Fabricius, a consultant at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), wrote in the Daily Maverick an opinion piece that appeared in the local Newspapers on 12 November 2024, titled; “SWAPO could be the next former liberation movement to lose its grip on power.” Fabricius quoted Henning Melber, Professor Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria, who also doubles and calls himself “A member of SWAPO since 1974”. Melber said “SWAPO might face defeat for the first time since independence in 1990.”
He said the above in an opinion piece titled; “Namibia’s game-changing 2024 elections,” published on November 4, 2024 in the Conversation, which is funded by the National Research Foundation and eight universities in South Africa. I don’t subscribe to such views as they only serve to raise expectations and when those expectations are not met, this may result in violence instigated by the so-called ‘political analysts’ working under the guise of the agenda of regime change to dislodge Former Liberation Movements (FLMs) from power in the name of media freedom.
Let us not forget what the South African Communist Party’s (SACP) Secretary General, Solly Mapaila, revealed when he said the South African 2024 elections were discussed in Poland last year in June in a Conference called “Conference against Totalitarianism and in Defence of Democracy” in which many prominent South Africans participated.
Among the participants were the current President of Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the leader of UNITA in Angola, the leader RENAMO in Mozambique, Tendai Biti the leader of the opposition party MDC in Zimbabwe, and probably other leaders of opposition parties in the SADC region. The Conference was also attended by the former editor of the Sunday Times, the former editor of Sowetan Newspaper and the editor of the Daily Maverick, which is been funded by the State Department of the USA. I will therefore not be surprised to hear that the so-called ‘political analysts’ are in cahoots with the media for the opposition parties to take over government.
In any case, I don’t believe the narrative of Coalition Government or Co-habitation been peddled by Henning Melber and Peter Fabricius of the Daily Maverick, when they said that the National Assembly and Presidential elections of 27 November 2024 in Namibia signify a new political scenario, as for the first time a clear victory for SWAPO seems less certain. Melber arrived at that conclusion by using the 2019 election results when Late President Hage Geingob was re-elected with only 56% – down from 87% in 2014 – while Panduleni Itula, who was running as an independent candidate, amassed 30% of the vote from Geingob’s 87%.
Henning Melber and Peter Fabricius of the Daily Maverick do not say that the 30% for Itula in 2019 represents the urban areas and the born-free vote. The opposition parties could not gain a single percentage from the ruling party, except from each other. Graham Hopwood, the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research in Windhoek, rightly diagnosed that Itula’s support in 2019 and 2020 was just a protest vote, especially after numerous corruption scandals were revealed.
Hopwood in an article titled; “The Changing Political Landscape,” published on 13 December 2020 by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), further said the 2020 Local and Regional elections produced few surprises. SWAPO would have been hoping to maintain the 65% of the popular vote they achieved in 2019’s National Assembly elections. But with a year of more Fishrot revelations and an already battered economy coming under further pressure, due to what the Minister in the Presidency, Honourable Christine //Hoebes, likes to call ‘independent intervening variables’ of the global economic downturn, compounded by a period of relentless and devastating drought, which was further exacerbated by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prospect of stabilising the SWAPO vote share seemed like a forlorn hope.
In addition, the party made little effort in 2020 to allay voter fears about corruption while adopting one of the lamest election slogans ever – “We have heard you.” As a result, the party dropped to 57% support in the regional elections and 40% in the local authority poll.
This time around, the ruling party seems to have done its homework by mobilising the youth and nipping in the bud factional in-fighting. The usual slate politics, which has gouged deep cuts through the party in the past, seems to have loosened its grip and Nandi-Ndaitwah’s call for unity, ahead of the upcoming elections, has yielded positive results and SWAPO still has the momentum that came from the Electoral College, where it came up with a generational mix list.
Furthermore, Hopwood said “it’s not true that SWAPO has been reduced to a ‘village party’ – as claimed by some opponents – but there is no doubt that the results made for grim reading among ruling party adherents. Some comfort could be claimed – much of the north and the two Kavango regions remained loyal to the ruling party. An expected challenge by the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) did not materialise in the main northern towns of Oshakati, Ongwediva, and Ondangwa. And most constituencies in Windhoek elected SWAPO regional councillors, although this steady support in the capital was not enough for the ruling party to maintain its majority on the City Council but only on the much less important Khomas Regional Council.”
I agree with Melber when he said that Namibia’s opposition parties are marred by political promiscuity, factionalism, internal conflicts and a perennial struggle for power. Similarly, Melber said authoritarian leadership in the opposition parties and factional in-fighting provide no hope of alternative policies or political culture. Their political coalitions ended in disarray.
In an article that appeared in the Namibian Newspaper on 10 November 2024, Envaalde Matheus was quoted saying “Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) president Panduleni Itula has hit back at criticism about him being married to a white woman.” Speaking at the IPC’s star rally in Windhoek on Saturday, 09 November 2024, Itula said “Yes, for many who didn’t know me, perhaps they also started ridiculing me, calling me an ompompolume (bachelor) [sic] (which may be translated as a childless man).”
It seems he was responding to Affirmative Repositioning (AR) Movement Chief Activist, Job Amupanda, who uttered the words ompompolume in one of his videos on social media. The tug-of- war between AR of Amupanda and IPC of Itula started 3 years ago when we read in an article written in the Windhoek Observer by Eba Kandovazu saying “Affirmative Repositioning (AR) Movement Chief Activist, Job Amupanda, says the ‘over-involvement of Independent Patriots of Change (IPC) President, Panduleni Itula,’ in the City of Windhoek Council matters has been problematic.”
“How can a councillor operate like that?,” Amupanda remarked askingly when he was addressing a media conference reacting to talks on the Landless People’s Movement (LPM) coalescing with the IPC. “Itula thinks he is popular, that he is known by everyone. We are not in competition with him, an old man,” Amupanda tiraded.
I therefore do not see the scenario of a Coalition Government between the ruling party and the opposition parties as it happened in South Africa when the ANC was forced to form a Government of National Unity (GNU) with the main opposition party of the DA and ten other smaller parties.
Even Henning Melber’s scenario of a Co-habitation between a Presidency from a different political party, in this case Panduleni Itula of IPC, as Melber revealed in an interview with a South African Television network, with the Majority of the members of Parliament, in this case from the ruling party SWAPO, is not workable.
Melber said such a constellation would complicate governance and risks making a non-SWAPO President a lame duck and that would be the biggest test for Namibia’s constitutional democracy and rule of law since independence.
“An unlikely but possible scenario would be an elected president coming from outside SWAPO, while SWAPO dominates the national assembly,” Melber said and arrived at such conclusion when he hypothetically thought that if none of the presidential candidates win with an outright majority of 50+1 in the first round, then there would be a second round where the opposition parties may coalesce and vote for a single candidate to oppose the ruling party’s candidate.
What makes such a scenario of a second round of voting for the presidential candidates impossible is the number of people who are behind the ruling party’s presidential candidate, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, including the born-frees, the Veterans of the Liberation Struggle, Leaders of Traditional Authorities, the Business fraternity and prominent members who defected from the opposition parties due to internal conflicts and a perennial struggle for power as well as factional in-fighting and authoritarian leadership in the opposition parties, as Melber rightly said.
That is why I neither believe in the scenario of a coalition government nor a cohabitation between the ruling party and the opposition parties as it happened in South Africa, where there are strong opposition parties such as the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK party) of former President Jacob Zuma, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of Julius Malema and the Democratic Alliance (DA), a remnant of the former National Party also known as the Nasionale Party, NP, in Afrikaans, which was a political party in South Africa from 1914 to 1997, responsible for the implementation of apartheid rule.
Let us not forget that Africa had to deal with two rounds of independence movements. The first wave was founded to liberate Africans from European colonial powers and post-colonial settler states’ political, economic, and military dominance. These include the Front for National Liberation (FNL) of Algeria, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Angola’s Movimento Popular de Libertaçᾶo de Angola (MPLA), the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) of Namibia, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Mozambique’s Frente de Libertaçᾶ de Moçambique (FRELIMO), the Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde (PAIGC), are the only six Former Liberation Movements that waged armed struggles for independence.
The second-wave of liberation movements arose from widespread dissatisfaction with the governments that inherited the colonial state infrastructure and failed to deliver on their promises. The former are in a Committee referred to as the Former Liberation Movements (FLM), regardless of whether they are in power or not. The FLM has, at least so far, comprised of six Former Liberation Movements that were part of the Pan-African Freedom Movement of East, Central and Southern Africa (PAFMECSA), formed by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and his Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) – or, in English, Party of the Revolution.
All the above six parties are still very much in power and people should therefore not confuse them with what happened in Zambia and Botswana, which were only Frontline States but did not wage armed liberation struggles to gain independence. Of course, so did not Tanzania’s Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) but it was in Tanzania, at Kongwa and Morogoro, where the Liberation Movements were trained.
In Botswana, Khama controversially appointed Mokgweetsi Masisi as Vice-President after the 2014 election. Masisi became President in 2018, after Khama retired at the expiry of his second term of five years. Masisi reversed many of Khama’s policies. Soon, the two men fell out and their relationship became acrimonious. Just before the 2019 election, Khama formed a breakaway party, Botswana Patriotic Front. Both Khama and Masisi used tribalism in their campaigns for the 2019 election. Umbrella for Democratic Change embraced Khama and the rest is history.
So, let us not compare apples with oranges and let us be vigilant against the “regime change” agenda to dislodge Former Liberation Movements (FLMs) from power. All I can say is; let the best men or women win or should I say, let the best woman or man win? Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
