Paul T. Shipale
Namibia Media Trust director, Zoé Titus, says the increase of misinformation and disinformation during elections are tactics aimed at eroding trust, creating confusion and influencing voter behaviour. This should not be a surprise as we come closer to election day to hear different stories about contesting presidential candidates and political opponents fabricating lies, distributing fake news and artificial intelligence (AI) pictures to tarnish the integrity of their opponents instead of engaging in mature political campaigns and comply with the code of conduct signed with ECN rather than engaging in name-calling, especially during the last stretch to the election day.
Against this background, Thomas Zeitzoff, Associate Professor, School of Public Affairs, American University, published online, on 18 May 2023, and in print, on 22 August 2023, a book titled; “Nasty Politics: The Logic of Insults, Threats, and Incitement,” which was published in the United States of America by the Oxford University Press in 2023.
According to Zeitzoff, nasty politics is an umbrella term for a set of tactics that politicians can use to insult, accuse, denigrate, threaten, and in rare cases, physically harm their political opponents. These occur at campaign rallies, speeches, via social media, or face-to-face in debates and actual violent confrontations. We can think about nasty politics as capturing a broad set of tactics that vary in their intensity.
Indeed, different tactics of nasty politics may vary in their underlying aggression and threat, but they all are designed to hurt their target. To psychologists yelling in somebody’s face versus punching them in the face are behaviours with different levels of hostility, but both are manifestations of aggression (Buss and Perry 1992). Likewise, while calling someone a “scumbag” (which is an insult) is less threatening than telling them that they should be “put down like an animal” (incitement), they both are hostile and manifestations of nasty politics, says Zeitzoff .
With the above in mind, allow me to examine the model of nasty politics as identified by Zeitzoff and give practical examples in the context of recent elections in the SADC region, especially in Mozambique and Botswana, and make a comparative analysis to see where we are at in Namibia.
A-NAME-CALLING AND INSULTS; Are at the lowest of threat. Name-calling can be relatively mild such as when a politician refers to opponents as “liars” or “idiots” or it can be a much more serious charge, such as saying their opponent is guilty of “treasonous” crime.
Many insults are implicit, with politicians using frames and extended metaphors to disparage or describe targeted groups or individuals. These nasty metaphors influence how people make judgments and interpret situations (Kalmoe 2014, 2017; Kalmoe, Gubler, and Wood 2018; Lakoff and Johnson 2008). Fortunately, Namibia could be ranked at the least threatening and lowest step on the scale tactic according to Zeitzoff’s model of nasty politics.
B-ACCUSATIONS AND CONSPIRACY THEORIES; includes accusing opponents of doing something illegal, corrupt, shady, or of engaging generally in bad behaviour. It also includes accusing opponents of stoking partisan hatred or violence. Promulgating conspiracy theories about opponents, such as saying they are secretly engaged in voters’ fraud or committing serious treason fall into this category as well (Douglas et al. 2019; Radnitz 2021; Uscinski and Parent 2014).
We all remember when IPC’s supporters were seen carrying a fake coffin with SWAPO’s colours, alleging that they were preparing a funeral to bury SWAPO. This is similar to when SWAPO Parliamentarian and Works and Transport Deputy Minister, Veikko Nekundi, called on supporters to show him ‘the political graves of opposition leaders McHenry Venaani and Panduleni Itula after the November election’.
On that occasion, ‘Political analyst’ Henning Melber labelled Nekundi’s comments as shockingly irresponsible and requiring undeserved condemnation. He said “One cannot condemn the slapping of a SWAPO campaigner and remain silent when it comes to this abhorrence”. I just wish to ask Melber; where was he when, in 2004, some were calling others ‘sycophants’ and ‘bootlickers’?
Most voters have incentives to view their side as correct, they don’t closely follow politics, and, in general, people have a low opinion of politicians (“they are all liars”) (Nyhan 2020; Swire-Thompson et al. 2020; Walter and Murphy 2018). So when they see allegations or accusations many times it gets viewed through the lens of political mud-slinging. Moreover, the media is not unbiased in how they report on accusations. Thus, for the purposes of classifying nasty politics, they only care about the fact that an accusation or conspiracy was levelled, rather than whether it was true or not.
C-INCITEMENT; is the most threatening rhetorical category before actual physical violence. Incitement is defined as instances where politicians actively threaten or encourage violence against their political opponents and, if the statement were followed, it would result in physical harm to opponents (Wilson 2017). This threat of violence is the key difference between incitement and intimidating statements, such as veiled threats. Incitement includes explicit threats of violence which are very rare, such as saying an opponent “should be beaten up” or that supporters “should come armed and ready to throw down.”
D-ACTUAL PHYSICAL VIOLENCE; According to Thomas Zeitzoff, violence can include a politician directly orchestrating violent protests, having their bodyguards or supporters beat or kill someone, or throwing punches or engaging in violence themselves.
In Mozambique, elections have sparked weeks of protests and a violent crackdown by police. Indeed, thousands protested in Mozambique’s capital on Thursday, 07 November 2024 and security forces responded by firing tear gas and rubber bullets, as weeks of post-election unrest continued in the Southern African country.
It is reported that the candidate for the ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), Daniel Chapo, was declared the winner of the presidential election on Oct. 24. Even before the results were announced, opposition parties claimed fraud, accusing the ruling party FRELIMO of ballot stuffing, manipulating voter lists and staffing polling stations with officials loyal to it.
Independent candidate Venancio Mondlane, who was second behind Chapo in the official results, has led criticism of the vote. He called for a national strike and for people to stay at home in the days after the election in protest at the alleged tampering. But the mood changed when two senior opposition figures were killed in their car in a late-night shooting by unidentified gunmen on Oct. 18.
The men who were killed were the lawyer for Mondlane and the official spokesperson for the political party that supported Mondlane in the election. Mondlane said they were assassinated and he and opposition supporters gathered near the site of the killings the day after to protest. Police fired tear gas canisters, forcing them to flee. Since then, there have been waves of protests across the country.
One can clearly see that violence in Mozambique came as a result of the opposition party Independent candidate Venancio Mondlane, when he called for people to stay at home in protest at the alleged ‘tampering’, allegedly because the elections were rigged, even before the election results were announced.
It is like when IPC presidential candidate, Panduleni Itula, was heard telling his supporters that he will be sworn in as the new president of the country on 21st March 2025. Such statements only serve to raise expectations and incite supporters because when those expectations are not met, supporters will then suspect that something dubious, like vote rigging, took place and may turn to violence as it happened in Mozambique.
This is particularly so when some so-called ‘political analysts’ are peddling a regime change agenda to dislodge from power former liberation movements and ruling parties in the SADC region with the narrative of ‘coalition’ or ‘co-habitation’ governments.
For instance, Henning Melber says “It might be an unlikely but possible scenario that Itula will be the next elected head of state. In this case, it is as likely that the National Assembly might retain a significant number of SWAPO members of Parliament (MPs) and also have several more parties,” Melber said. He suggests that an absolute parliamentary majority for the IPC is not possible, making collaboration between a non-SWAPO president and SWAPO MPs essential.
More interesting than this approach is the question of whether in such a hypothetical constellation SWAPO would be willing to cooperate with a non-SWAPO president. For this, Melber cautions that if SWAPO refuses to cooperate with a non-SWAPO president, it could lead to governance paralysis. What these analysts don’t address is the issue whether IPC and its presidential candidate Itula are British-funded? After all, Dr Itula spent more than 30 years in the UK from the early 1980s to 2013, and only returned to Namibia ten years ago but already declared himself as an ‘independent candidate’ after only five years upon his return from the UK.
In 2004, there were allegations of a party being an American funded entity, with money going through London, Helsinki, Pretoria and Gaborone before reaching Windhoek and T-shirts being printed in neighbouring Botswana but none of these ‘political analysts’, including those who were fighting to get SWAPO’s membership cards, were nowhere near the scene to refute those allegations.
By the way, talking about SWAPO’s membership cards, was Itula not heard saying he was expelled from a party where he did not have a membership card as he only had SWAPO as a liberation movement membership card but not the SWAPO Party’s membership card? Is SWAPO now divided in two? Unless Itula wants to talk about SWAPO-D of Shipanga. Was Itula not heard telling SWAPO supporters that he has a SWAPO membership card and the leadership can never expel him from the party?
Was Itula one of those posing as bona fide members of SWAPO? Is this why, after spending more than 30 years in the UK, he came back quoting chapters and articles of the constitution, including that of SWAPO Party, left, right and centre as if that is all what he was studying in the UK and now wants to be given the country on a silver platter by recruiting the Gen Z to vote for him as they do not know the history of this country?
Why can’t Itula listen to his ‘political analyst’ Henning Melber to own up to his SWAPO past instead of his denial which borders on amnesia? This only goes to show that Itula cannot be trusted as a leader with integrity to tell the truth, including who gave him the money to hire all those white pick-up vehicles for his campaign, as he embarrassingly suffers from memory loss and appears like a spineless opportunist.
Why should the people vote for him and his party when he even admitted that he will not be able to form a full Cabinet unless SWAPO parliamentarians are included in it in order to avoid a governance paralysis? In that case, why not just vote for a tried and tested experienced leader, like the country’s Vice President, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, especially with the discovery of oil and gas, in order to implement the bankable idea of mineral resources beneficiation, as contained in the SWAPO Party 2025-2030 election manifesto?
The point is, for politicians, going nasty can be a way to grab attention. This is particularly helpful for outsider politicians who are looking to disrupt the status quo, opposition politicians trying to make their voice heard, or incumbents losing power. However, the flip-side or other side of the coin here is that the potential for actual violence from nasty rhetoric is always lurking in the background. Let us therefore do away with insult driven politics and engage in mature political campaigns as well as comply with the code of conduct signed with ECN. On 27th November, let’s go and vote in this defining moment to shape the future of the country we want to leave behind. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer and this newspaper but solely my personal views as a citizen.
