Namibian voters go to the polls next weekend for national and presidential elections from which a new official opposition is expected to emerge.
At the same time the politics of the belly will see the ruling Swapo party hang on to power, albeit with less than its current 72% majority.
Although 12 opposition parties will contest the poll, it is fast turning into a two-horse race between Swapo and the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP). Swapo is adamant that it is on track to get 100% of the vote, according to the party’s publicity secretary, Jerry Ekandjo.
The RDP is the only party that stands any chance of breaking Swapo’s political stranglehold over the voter-rich central northern regions and in particular in the most densely populated region of Ohangwena.
Its staging of rallies, especially in Outapi in the neighbouring Omusati region, the political heartland of former president Sam Nujoma, has seen violence break out, in which Swapo supporters have reportedly attacked those they view as political heretics.
Like the Congress of Democrats (CoD), the RDP is a breakaway faction of Swapo members, formed into a political party in 2007 under former Swapo stalwarts Hidipo Hamutenya and Jesaya Nyamu.
The party has borrowed heavily from United States President Barack Obama’s campaigning methods, with its door-to-door campaigning eliciting outrage from Swapo, seemingly frustrated at the lack of a stationary target.
This election promises to be different in some material respects: unlike previous elections, this time votes will be counted at the polling stations, with results to be posted outside the same venue. This in itself is expected to curtail any election rigging, which opposition parties allege happened in 2004.
The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has backed down from handing the tender to print the ballots to a Swapo-owned company. The ballots will now be supplied by a South African printing firm instead.
At the same time the ECN has revised its claimed figures of registered voters down from 1.36-million to a more modest 960 000 voters — a difference of 400 000 voters. But even this figure remains questionable: informed sources suggest that the real number of registered voters is closer to 820 000.
More significantly, perhaps, Swapo is on the defensive over high-level corruption, including a recent scandal in which the local Chinese embassy handed over 22 bursaries to children of President Hifikepunye Pohamba and a slew of key ministers.
This came shortly after another Chinese-linked scandal: in July three people were arrested in connection with an alleged kick-back scheme that was to pay them R120-million in ”consultancy fees” on a R550-million deal to supply Chinese-made scanners to Namibia’s customs and excise directorate.
The education ministry has made several efforts to explain the bursary fiasco away, but appears to have failed to convince especially the so-called ”born-frees” (first-time voters born after 1990), with students at the local polytech and University of Namibia publicly slamming this as blatant nepotism and corruption.
For Pohamba, who came to power in 2005 pledging to stamp out corruption, this week brought more bad news: not only had his good intentions shrivelled to nothing in the face of vested interests in his own party, but Transparency International also ranked Namibia among the world’s ”highly corrupt” countries.
Urban voters most often cite corruption as the main issue, but none of the opposition parties appear to have seized upon this as an election issue, said Graham Hopwood of the Institute of Public Policy Research.
For rural voters, basic needs such as healthcare, education and food security are still lacking in most areas, apart from Swapo’s favoured constituencies of the central north. According to the Labour Resource and Research Institute, an estimated 28% of Namibians live in absolute poverty.
How this will impact on voting is hard to say, but unofficial results from preliminary voting showed that barely 10% of an eligible 13 600 voters cast their ballots last week.
The results for early voting by fishermen and Namibians living abroad strongly suggested, however, that the current official opposition, the CoD, was about to be replaced by the RDP.
Although Swapo retained its overwhelming support among the fishermen (who hail mostly from Omusati), in some places such as Cape Town and New York, the opposition parties got more votes than Swapo, most of those for the RDP.
A low turnout, especially among neglected rural voters, could favour the opposition parties, analysts suggested. But Swapo is taking every possible advantage from its position of incumbency and is vastly better funded than its opposition.
The key will be the born-free vote. Swapo could be in trouble in urban areas as unemployment among the youth stands at a shocking 60%. They are not impressed with the Chinese bursaries — but it remains to be seen whether they will vote, or whether apathy will win the day.
The main contenders
Swapo Party (South West Africa People’s Organisation)
Formed in April 1960 from the former Ovamboland People’s Organisation and Ovamboland People’s Congress, Swapo has dominated Namibian politics ever since.
Swapo came to power after UN Security Council Resolution 435 was implemented on April 1 1989 (it had been adopted by the UN in 1978), winning with 54% of the vote in the UN-supervised elections.
In 1994 Swapo gained a two-thirds majority, which it increased to 72% in the 1999 elections when Sam Nujoma ran for a controversial third term (the Namibian Constitution limits presidential terms to two consecutive five-year terms).
In 2004, in a closely fought battle, Swapo chose Hifikepunye Pohamba, deputy president of the party, as its presidential candidate; the opponent, Hidipo Hamutenya, and his followers were soon ousted from all party and government positions.
Swapo and Pohamba won the 2004 election with 72% of the vote.
Swapo presidential candidate Hifikepunye Pohamba
A founding member of Swapo, Pohamba has always been Sam Nujoma’s most trusted confidant and was widely seen as a safe pair of hands for Nujoma to hand over the reins to in 2005.
In contrast to Nujoma’s often abrasive style Pohamba comes across as a reconciler and peacemaker in the party, where competing ambitions have seen much innocent blood spilled in the past 40 years.
Upon assuming the presidency (a position he allegedly repeatedly declined) in 2005, he pledged to eliminate the scourge of corruption and set up the Anti-Corruption Commission in 2006, four years after the relevant legislation was passed.
His presidency has, however, been bedevilled by a near-constant stream of corruption scandals, most of which had their origin during Nujoma’s 2000 to 2004 tenure. Pohamba is still popular among party cadres, but is seen as a Nujoma puppet by his critics.
Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP)
The new kid on the block, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) was born from the conflict between those who wanted to reform Swapo from within and those who preferred the status quo to remain.
It is led by former Swapo politburo members Hidipo Hamutenya (”HH”) and Jesaya Nyamu, who have attracted disillusioned ruling party members who were increasingly falling foul of a powerful clique close to Nujoma.
The RDP has deliberately pitched itself at younger voters, especially in the rural north where unemployment among the youth is more than 60%. After rallies were repeatedly disrupted by Swapo supporters, the RDP switched tactics and started to campaign door-to-door, àla Barack Obama.
The RDP is sure to take over as official opposition and will hope to exploit resentment of rampant corruption, especially among educated urban voters. Its policies are middle-of-the-road and market-oriented.
Hidipo Hamutenya (”HH”)
A political scientist by training (he has an MA from McGill University in Canada), Hidipo Hamutenya’s 30-year political career in Swapo came to an abrupt end in May 2004 when Sam Nujoma summarily fired him as Namibia’s foreign affairs minister for rejecting Nujoma’s ordained choice of successor.
HH, as he is commonly known, had been a Swapo politburo member since 1976. A clever strategist, he was considered one of the intellectuals of the ruling party.
He made it back to Parliament after youth leader Paulus Kapia was suspended over a corruption scandal, but resigned after a few months to form the RDP with former comrade Jesaya Nyamu and other like-minded Swapo dissidents. Although he is not expected to beat Pohamba in the presidential stakes, he will be a serious contender in the future.