Tangeni Amupadhi reports on the run-up to Namibia’s general election
For the first time since independence 10 years ago, the South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) is not guaranteed a two-thirds majority in Namibia’s election scheduled for November 30 and December 1.
Over the past five years, the ruling Swapo was a virtual monopolist in the political arena, effectively using its 72% of parliamentary seats.
The official opposition, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) – collaborators of the National Party when South Africa colonised Namibia – has steadily been losing support since the first democratic elections in 1989.
But Namibia’s new kid on the political block has added a spark to this year’s election campaign, says political observer Christiaan Keulder, and Swapo appears to be “worried”.
“It seems like the end to harmonious politics in the north,” says Keulder, a political science lecturer at the University of Namibia. “The north was largely uncontested but now …. there is a new party which has put the cat among the pigeons.”
The Congress of Democrats (CoD), which was formed earlier this year and is led by a former Swapo leader, Ben Ulenga, appears to be causing consternation among Swapo’s leadership.
Civil servants have been told they could be fired if they join the new party, and Swapo last month published a 28-page publication outlining government success over the past decade and devoting substantial space to personal attacks on Ulenga.
Ulenga and other CoD leaders, said Swapo, are pawns “lured by an anti-Swapo propaganda campaign” orchestrated by “local newspapers and pseudo-intellectual academics”.
Swapo’s mouthpiece, Namibia Today, accused Ulenga of stealing money from the Mineworkers Union of Namibia when he was its secretary general. Subsequent investigations revealed Ulenga was given a loan by the union 10 years ago, which he says was written off after he repaid half the money. Ulenga is now suing the publication.
Swapo has also branded as a “failure” one its rising stars, Ignatius Shixwameni, who resigned as a deputy minister and from the ruling party last Sunday. A sworn communist, Shixwameni said Swapo was in a state of “political cannibalism characterised by back-biting, gossip, rumour-mongering, growing intolerance of divergent viewpoints, lack of honesty and a growing trend towards tribalism and ethnicity”.
The Swapo election manifesto is content to argue that the government has delivered, particularly to its support base in northern Namibia. Opposition parties need support in the north if they are to whittle away Swapo’s political dominance.
“The key regions are the Four O’s [the Ohangwena, Omusati, Oshana and Oshikoto regions – Swapo’s support base in northern Namibia]. Any opposition party will have to break the Four O’s … to raise the question of a viable opposition,” says Keulder.
Eight political parties are expected to take part in the election. Apart from Swapo, the DTA and the CoD, there are smaller parties such as the United Democratic Front, the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN), the Monitor Action Group, the Federal Coalition of Namibia and the South West Africa National Union Workers Revolutionary Party alliance, which resembles the Azanian People’s Organisation in ideology.
Most analysts believe the smaller parties are unlikely to gain any seats and the test is only whether Swapo’s two- thirds dominance will be reduced.
At least three candidates are planning to challenge the popular support of President Sam Nujoma in the presidential election. They are Katuutira Kaura of the DTA, Ulenga of the CoD and Moses Katjuongua of the DCN.