Namibia Elects Its First Female Leader
New President of Namibia, Dec 2024 Photo: @africanewsfr
December 4, 2024 Hour: 6:49 pm
Namibia elected its first female leader as Vice President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was declared the winner on Tuesday of a presidential election held last week, which was marred by technical glitches that caused a three-day extension to allow votes to be cast and was rejected as illegal by opposition parties.
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The 72-year-old candidate won with 57% of the vote, defying predictions that she might be forced into a runoff. Her ruling SWAPO party also retained its parliamentary majority, albeit by a very narrow margin, extending its 34-year hold on power since the southern African country gained independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990.
Namibia, a sparsely populated country of around 3 million on the southwestern coast of Africa, has a reputation for being one of the continent’s more stable democracies, and the problems surrounding the election have caused consternation. Last Wednesday’s vote was marred by shortages of ballot papers and other issues that led election officials to extend voting until Saturday.
Opposition parties have claimed that this extension is unconstitutional, and some have pledged to join together in a legal appeal to have the election invalidated. The Electoral Commission of Namibia, which ran the election, rejected opposition calls for a redo of the vote.
This has undermined Nandi-Ndaitwah’s place in history. She is set to become her country’s fifth president since independence and a rare female leader in Africa. She was a member of Namibia’s underground independence movement in the 1970s and received part of her higher education in the then-Soviet Union. She was promoted to vice president in February after President Hage Geingob died while in office. Nangolo Mbumba, who became president after Geingob’s death, did not run in the election.
The ruling SWAPO party won 51 seats in the parliamentary vote, just surpassing the 49 it needed to keep its majority and narrowly avoiding becoming another long-ruling party rejected in southern Africa this year. This was SWAPO’s worst parliamentary election result. A mood of change has swept across the region, with parties that led their countries out of white minority or colonial rule in neighboring South Africa and Botswana both losing their long-held political dominance.
South Africa’s African National Congress (ANC), which freed the country from the racist system of apartheid, lost its 30-year majority in an election in May and had to form a coalition. Botswana’s ruling party was stunningly removed in a landslide defeat in October after governing for 58 years since independence from Britain. Mozambique’s long-ruling Frelimo has been accused of rigging an October election and has faced weeks of violent protests against its rule.
SWAPO faces similar challenges as those countries, with frustration over high unemployment and economic hardship—especially among young people—driving a desire for significant change. In a brief speech after the results were announced late Tuesday night, Nandi-Ndaitwah said Namibians had voted for peace, stability, and youth empowerment. “We are going to do what we promised you during the campaigns. Thank you for your confidence and trust in us,” she stated.
Nandi-Ndaitwah was also scheduled to address the nation on Wednesday morning. “SWAPO Wins. Netumbo Wins. Namibia Wins. Now Hard Work,” posted the ruling party on its official account on social media site X (formerly Twitter). Some opposition parties boycotted the announcement made by the Electoral Commission of Namibia at its results center in the capital Windhoek. The commission has been widely criticized for how it conducted the vote, with many angry Namibians complaining they had to wait hours and sometimes multiple days for their chance to vote.
According to the electoral commission, just over 1 million votes were cast out of 1.4 million registered voters. Panduleni Itula, the leading opposition candidate from the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) party, came second in the presidential election with 25% of the vote. His party won the second-largest number of seats in Parliament behind SWAPO. Itula and his party have led criticism of the vote and said they will lodge their appeal against it this week; other opposition parties have indicated they will join that legal challenge.
Itula has stated that thousands of voters may have been prevented from voting as only some polling stations allowed an extension for voting. “This election has violated the very tenets of our Electoral Act. Namibians deserve the right to choose their leaders freely and fairly, not through a rigged process,” he said.
Namibia is a former German colony that came under South African control after World War I, and its Black majority was later subjected to some of South Africa’s apartheid policies. SWAPO was at the forefront of the battle for independence from South Africa. While the country has vast desert areas running through it, it possesses diamond and uranium resources as well as untapped oil and gas off its coast that are being explored by international companies and could make it a major producer of both.
Autor: OSG
Fuente: EFE-Africanews
