Paul T. Shipale
“In accordance with Section 109 of the Electoral Act…I, Elsie Tuleingepo Nghikembua, Chairperson of the Electoral Commission of Namibia, do declare Her Excellency Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of the SWAPO party as the winner and president-elect of the 2024 presidential elections,” Nghikembua said in the capital, Windhoek, in a declaration of the poll results.
African leaders congratulated the President-elect as she etched her name in the annals of history by becoming Namibia’s first woman President and Africa’s second elected female Head of State. Leading those who congratulated her was the Chairperson of the AU, the Presidents of Zimbabwe, Tanzania and South Africa. President Cyril Ramaphosa extended his congratulations to Nandi-Ndaitwah saying “Your election as fifth President of the Republic and the first woman in our region to hold this high office is a testament to democracy and its ability to transform our societies,” his statement read.
President-elect, Her Excellency Madame Netumbo Ndemupelila Nandi-Ndaitwah, performed better than the late former President Geingob’s 56% as she got 57.31%. She is widely viewed as a steady hand, a seasoned diplomat not tainted by the corruption scandals that had engulfed others. Her triumph also means that Namibia bucks a trend of incumbent liberation movements being punished by restive younger voters in Southern Africa, when SWAPO secured 51 seats, more than the 49 needed to have a simple majority in Parliament.
Our newly President-elect Netumbo Ndemupelila Nandi-Ndaitwah seems to have been destined to become Namibia’s first woman President and Africa’s second elected female Head of State as the initial N in Netumbo Ndemupelila Nandi-Ndaitwah rhyme with N in Namibia. In fact, the name Ndemupelila in Oshiwambo means ‘the trendsetter’ or ‘trailblazer’ and if literally translated, it means ‘the one paving the way for others to follow’.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf won a landslide victory in late 2005 making her Africa’s first elected woman President followed by Joyce Banda in Malawi, who assumed the presidency after the sudden death of President Bingu wa Mutharika in 2012. After Banda, Samia Suluhu Hassan ascended to the presidency of the United Republic of Tanzania following the death of her predecessor, John Magufuli in 2021. Nevertheless, both Banda and Hassan became the second and third Africa’s female Presidents without being elected unlike our President-elect Nandi-Ndaitwah who was elected as Africa’s second female President following in the footsteps of Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.
Thus, Nandi-Ndaitwah has joined an exclusive club and Namibia has made history by choosing the country’s fifth Head of State and the first female President in the person of Netumbo Ndemupelila Nandi-Ndaitwah, who won the Presidency despite all kinds of hurdles and spanners thrown in her way and defeated fourteen other candidates. Allow me therefore to heartily congratulate Madame Netumbo Ndemupelila Nandi-Ndaitwah as Namibia’s President-elect.
I agree with those who are saying that her rise to the highest office in Namibia will contribute to the erosion of gender stereotypes and could be a catalyst for a significant change in political culture, not only in Namibia but also in the SADC region as a whole, where males have dominated the echelons of power since the collapse of colonial and apartheid rule. Nandi-Ndaitwah’s rise to the highest office in Namibia is very progressive and a novel case that other political parties in the region will use to gauge how competitive a female electoral candidate would be and how they would fare against a traditionally male list of political opponents. Despite some political pundits who were even predicting a second round of voting as a possibility, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and SWAPO Party swept to a large majority in most of the regions except in Erongo and //Kharas Regions who are now under the ‘patriots’ of IPC and the ‘landless people’ of LPM as well as the ‘activists’ of AR, which are all breakaway parties from the SWAPO Party.
Graham Hopwood, the Executive Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in an article titled; “The Changing Political Landscape,” published on 13 December 2020, said “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” Hopwood concluded.
Indeed, the much ‘anticipated’ and expected challenge by IPC to dislodge SWAPO from power did not materialize, despite IPC surging to second place with 20 seats and toppling PDM as the official opposition. PDM could only muster 5 seats dropping from the 16 seats it won in 2019. On its part, the SWAPO Party secured 51 seats, losing 12 of its seats in the National Assembly, down from the 63 the party won in 2019. However, if one counts the 14 seats SWAPO lost in 2019, plus the 12 seats the party lost this year, the total is 26 seats in 10 years and this decline means an overwhelming number of Cabinet Ministers are ineligible to enter Parliament and will hope to be included in the President’s 8 non-voting nominees.
The affected Ministers who will pin their hopes on President-elect Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah to consider them among her eight presidential appointees include Obeth Kandjoze, the Director-General of the National Planning Commission, who is currently in charge of the green hydrogen project, Peya Mushelenga, the Minister of International Relations who came in at 53 position, Tom Alweendo, the Minister of Mines in the 55th position, Itah Kandjii-Murangi, the Minister of Higher Education, at 58. Deputy Ministers Heather Sibungo came in at 54 with Bernadette Jagger at 60. Minister Frans Kapofi did not make the cut at 67 with Deputy Minister Faustina Caley at 70.
Others affected Ministers include Christine //Hoebes, in the Presidency, Erastus Uutoni, Urban and Rural Development, Utoni Nujoma, Labour, Anna Nghipondoka, Basic Education, Agnes Tjongarero, Youth and Sports and Yvonne Dausab, Minister of Justice. Five other Ministers, including John Mutorwa, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Works and Transport, Kalumbi Shangula, Health, Doreen Sioka, Gender, Albert Kawana, Home Affairs and Calle Schlettwein, Minister of Agriculture, had announced before elections to exit Cabinet voluntarily and go into retirement.
I already said I will not be surprised to see Dr Kaire Mbuende making his come-back among the eight non-voting members appointed by the President, as he is being linked and touted to the country’s Vice President position as he was part of the campaign team for the President-elect with people such as James Sankwasa, Dr Haufiku and Lieutenant General (Rtd) Shalli. But before we talk about Cabinet positions, let us not forget that the election itself was marred by logistical and technical problems such as malfunctioning voter identification tablets and insufficient ballot papers, causing long queues.
Following complaints from opposition parties, the ECN announced a further extension of voting hours for 29 and 30 November at 36 selected polling locations in Khomas Region, Kunene, Oshana and Oshikoto Regions. Representatives of the opposition parties expressed dissatisfaction with the limited selection of polling locations for the voting extension while legal experts have called into question the legality of the voting extension.
Despite rejecting the election results, the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) and Landless People’s Movement (LPM) have decided not to join the coalition of opposition parties planning to sue the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) over the disputed national elections. Job Amupanda, at a press conference in Windhoek, said the AR has decided to ‘explore other avenues’ in terms of its next steps as it will not act impulsively without thorough analysis. LPM also decided to embark on what they termed “good litigation process”.
This comes after the IPC wrote a letter to the ECN to inform the commission of their intention to launch an urgent application to the Supreme Court to challenge the conduct of the 2024 Presidential and National Assembly elections.One can deduct from the above that the opposition parties in Namibia are fragmented and this frosty relationship between them stems from the meltdown of the coalition’s experiment dubbed ‘the progressive forces’ at the City of Windhoek with Itula being described by others as dictatorial and autocratic.
This was alleged by the AR ‘Chief Activist’, Job Amupanda, when he said ‘the over-involvement of IPC President, Panduleni Itula in the City of Windhoek Council matters has been problematic’. “Itula thinks he is popular, that he is known by everyone. We are not in competition with him, an old man,” Amupanda tiraded.
As it stands, those who want to challenge the election results have two options, namely; on one hand, gather sufficient evidence to convince the court to declare the election null and void or set it aside because of a substantial amount of administrative errors and technical glitches that had a material impact on the election outcome, including due to voter suppression. On the other hand, they may challenge the proclamation by the President to extend the parameters of the enabling Act by two extra days.
I doubt very much if the court will declare the election null and void or set it aside willy-nilly and randomly without much evidence that the mistakes and non-compliance with the principles enshrined in the Electoral Act were substantive and material enough to affect the outcome of the election, according to section 115 of the Electoral Act.
The second ground for a legal challenge deals with President Mbumba’s proclamation to extend the parameters of the enabling Act by two extra days. That may be interpreted as unlawful because subordinate legislation may not extend the scope and application of the enabling Act. In that case, the court may declare the voting that took place on 29 and 30 November null and void and set those results aside but will neither set aside the entire electoral process nor call for a rerun.
I agree with the ECN Commissioner Pius Ikwambi when he said that the legality of the voting extension was justified by the Electoral Act of Namibia (Act 5 of 2014), together with the relevant legal framework in the country. Indeed, Namibia’s legal system is hybrid and displays pluralism as it combines African customary laws and post-Independence state laws with elements of Roman-Dutch common law, English and South African law. Overall, Namibia belongs to the family of common law legal systems known as Roman-Dutch law, which Namibia shares with South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Zimbabwe, and to a lesser extent Sri Lanka.
Apart from the formal sources of law, doctrinal writings play a second-fiddle role as a source of Namibian law as Namibia inherited the English doctrine of precedent. Therefore some legal experts are saying the jurisprudence since the Interpretation of Laws Proclamation 37 of 1920 stipulates that only the person who issued a proclamation can amend such proclamation. Thus, it seems the legality of the voting extension is justified by the fact that it is the President who issued the proclamation as it was gazetted and has full right to extend the voting process based on the legal frameworks in Namibia, including the country’s Supreme Law.
President Dr Nangolo Mbumba when he congratulated the President-Elect said that he extended the voting period, on the recommendation of the ECN, to defend the hard-earned fundamental right of Namibians above the age of 18 to elect the leaders and parties of their choice as enshrined and entrenched in Chapter 3, on fundamental human rights and freedom, Article 17 of the Namibian Constitution. In fact, the ECN admitted to failures in the organisation of the votes and ballot shortages but denied any allegations of fraud.
In her acceptance speech, President-elect Nandi-Ndaitwah said “Today, I say to the Namibian people, as we have been emphasising throughout the campaign, for us in the SWAPO Party and the team I will lead, we have made commitments. We are going to do what we have promised during the campaign. Thank you for your confidence and trust in us,” she said.
Let us therefore accept the outcome of the election which I deem to have been credible and reflect the sovereign will of the Namibian people. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
