These Are The Key Faces Shaping Namibia’s Upcoming Elections

The issues

According to the Afrobarometer report, three-quarters of the population feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction, the optimism that things will improve has dipped to 38 percent, and two-thirds of citizens surveyed describe their country’s economic condition as “fairly bad” or “very bad.”

As Namibia heads to the polls, voters are prioritizing pressing issues such as unemployment, inadequate water supply and widespread corruption. Youth unemployment remains a critical concern, with the latest figures showing a staggering 38 percent unemployment rate.

“We have been ruled by SWAPO, which won independence. Even though they got us here, they have also failed us. People are not happy. Corruption is bad,” Michael Kayunde, a journalist with Namibian Star, tells OkayAfrica.

Kayunde says that the ongoing Fishrot scandal is a prime example of government corruption. Prominent politicians and government officials are accused of diverting fishing quotas, including those from the state-owned Fishcor, to an Icelandic company, in exchange for kickbacks. “That one was so bad that people lost their jobs in the fishing industry,” adds Kayunde.

The candidates

Namibia’s current vice president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, 72, is the leading candidate in the election. Nandi-Ndaitwah made headlines in 2022 when she was elected as SWAPO’s vice president, effectively putting her in line to become the party’s first female presidential candidate. Nandi-Ndaitwah joined SWAPO as a young woman, getting actively involved in the fight for her country’s independence from apartheid-era South Africa. Going into the polls, SWAPO is promising to improve housing, create more jobs and be accountable to the people, and ensure sustainable development.

The leading opposition candidate looking to oust SWAPO at the polls is Panduleni Itula, 67, the founder and leader of Independent Patriots for Change (IPC). Itula, a former SWAPO Party Youth League leader, ran as an independent candidate in 2019. His candidacy, endorsed by the Namibian Economic Freedom Fighters and the Republican Party, earned him second position in that election with 29 percent of the vote. IPC’s campaign is promising to get 90 percent of young people in school, employment, or training by 2028 as well as encourage their participation in politics and governments.

Looking to prevail over Nandi-Ndaitwah and Itula is 47-year-old McHenry Venaani, the leader of the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), the largest opposition party in the Namibian National Assembly with 16 seats. A lawyer, he became the youngest member in parliament in 2003. PDM evolved from the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance, which was established in 1977 and supported by the apartheid government of South Africa to become an official SWAPO opposition. With this smear on its legacy, the party rebranded to PDM in 2017, with Venaani at the helm. It is campaigning with the promise to reduce unemployment, cut government spending and eradicate corruption, as well as allocate more resources to boost agriculture.

In a recent interview with SABC, Bernadus Swartbooi, 47, the candidate of the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), said only his party’s manifesto deals with young people’s concerns. The party says its mandate is to address landlessness, poverty, and social injustice. Swartbooi formed the LPM after getting expelled from SWAPO in 2017. LPM won three percent of the vote in 2019.

Regional political shift

As dissatisfaction with their governments continues to rise among Africans, one region that has seen this translate into political shifts is Southern Africa. Countries such as South Africa and Botswana have witnessed drastic changes in leadership, with opposition ousting a ruling party that had been in power since the country’s independence in 1966. In South Africa, the African National Congress, for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994, failed to secure majority votes to lead the government. It had to rely on opposition to form a government of national unity. In Mozambique, post-election protests have been going on for weeks, following the announcement of the ruling party’s candidate as the winner of the election.

There are over 1.4 million Namibians who have registered for the elections, with 42 percent of them being 34 years old or younger. It remains to be seen whether Namibian voters will follow their Southern African counterparts or stick to the familiar.

-