On December 3, the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) announced that Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of the ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) party, has emerged victorious in the disputed presidential election conducted from November 27 to 30.
It said Nandi-Ndaitwah won 57 percent of the votes, comfortably defeating her main rival, Panduleni Itula from the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) party, who received around 26 percent. As such, Nandi-Ndaitwah, a former freedom fighter and current vice president, is now on the verge of making history as Namibia’s first female leader.
In the meantime, however, her party SWAPO disappointed in the parliamentary elections, barely holding on to its majority by winning 51 of the available 96 seats. By comparison, the party had secured 63 seats and a comfortable majority in the 2019 election.
Despite holding on to the presidency, SWAPO, the former liberation movement which has ruled Namibia since it achieved independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, is clearly losing its electoral appeal. The party achieved its best-ever result in the 2014 election, securing 80 percent of the vote and a supermajority with 77 seats, but has been on a downward trajectory ever since.
There are many reasons why Namibians appear to be slowly moving away from the movement that secured their liberation.
Thirty-four years after independence, SWAPO is struggling to tackle a multidimensional poverty rate of 43 percent, address high unemployment levels, and provide essential services such as water and sanitation to long-marginalised communities. While the World Bank classifies Namibia as an upper middle-income country, it simultaneously identifies it as the second most unequal country in the world, as per the Gini index.
Through the years, Namibia has established a dual economy that has negatively impacted the socioeconomic aspirations of the poor and unemployed: an economic structure that features a highly developed modern sector, alongside an informal sector that mostly emphasises subsistence.
This, coupled with an apparent rise of corruption at the governmental level – which became evident in the $650m Fishrot scandal implicating senior figures within SWAPO – has turned many Namibians, and especially poor, young people most affected by high unemployment and lack of upward mobility, against the ruling party.
SWAPO, once seen by many in Namibia as electorally undefeatable and synonymous with the Namibian state, is now in rapid, possibly irreversible decline.
And in the Southern African region, Namibia’s liberation movement turned political party is not alone in this predicament.
In fact, one liberation movement in the region has already been ousted from power.
In October 30 elections, the citizens of Botswana consigned the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) – the former liberation movement that had ruled the country since it achieved independence in September 1966 – to the opposition benches. After 58 uninterrupted years in power, the party managed to win only four seats in this year’s election.
The BDP’s defeat came on the back of years of poor economic growth and a 26.7 percent unemployment rate that turned the population against the government. The growing allegations of corruption directed at the BDP’s Mokgweetsi Masisi, who served as Botswana’s 5th president between 2018-24, did not help the party’s electoral chances, either.
In South Africa, meanwhile, the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of white minority rule in April 1994. In this year’s May general election, the liberation movement turned governing party’s vote share fell to a little over 40 percent, a sharp decline from the 57 percent they secured in 2019. Twenty years ago, in 2004, the party had the support of a whopping 69.9 percent of South African voters.
Just as for the BDP in Botswana, the ANC’s gradual fall from favour is tied to its inability to tackle unemployment, shortcomings in service delivery, and charges of corruption directed at its high-ranking members. Throughout the 2010s, corruption involving senior ANC leaders dented the party’s longstanding credibility and crippled state-owned enterprises, causing losses of approximately $100bn – equal to a third of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).
Over the years, millions of voters have distanced themselves from the ANC, as the party repeatedly failed to ensure ethical governance and to navigate the complex and evolving socioeconomic challenges of contemporary South African society.
In other countries across the region, similar failures are plaguing long-governing former liberation movements, and making them turn to oppressive and undemocratic methods to maintain their grip on power.
Take the case of Mozambique.
On October 24, Mozambique’s election commission declared Daniel Chapo and his ruling party, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), victors of the October 9 general elections. Nevertheless, the electoral process was fundamentally flawed, marked by political killings, widespread irregularities and punitive restrictions on the rights to free expression and assembly.
Frelimo has been in power in Mozambique since the country gained independence from Portugal in June 1975, following a 10-year war for freedom. However, it has failed to meet the expectations and maintain the support of the people of Mozambique after governing the independent nation.
Today, only 40 percent of the population has access to grid electricity. Between 2014/15 and 2019/20, the national poverty rate escalated from 48.4 percent to 62.8 percent, with at least 95 percent of rural households falling into multidimensional poverty. To compound matters, more than 80 percent of the labour force works in the informal sector, leaving millions of everyday Mozambicans without access to social protection.
Corruption is also widespread among top members of Frelimo. In 2022, 11 senior government officials, including Armando Ndambi Guebuza, the son of former president Armando Guebuza, were found guilty of offences linked to a $2bn “hidden debt” scandal that caused the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in government-guaranteed loans and sparked an economic meltdown in the country.
As a result, Frelimo appears to have no expectation of winning the majorities it has grown accustomed to over the years in free and fair elections. Thus it continuously attempts to cover up its failings in governance through political violence and attacks on the electoral process.
In Tanzania, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) ruling party secured a staggering 98 percent of the seats in the November 27 local polls. Nevertheless, this electoral process was also characterised by arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, restrictions on freedom of expression, and extrajudicial killings, including the assassination of Ali Mohamed Kibao, a member of the opposition Chadema party.
In Zimbabwe, too, the ruling ZANU-PF, another former-liberation movement, has established a highly securitised state to maintain its fragile grip on power. Since the nation became independent in April 1980, ZANU-PF has constantly repressed opposition voices and executed a succession of fraudulent elections, such as the shambolic harmonised elections of August 2023, primarily to evade responsibility for its overwhelming incompetence.
Meanwhile, in Angola, the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) went to great lengths to silence dissent and ensure its success in the August 2022 elections. While through these efforts the MPLA managed to extend its decades-long governance, it did so with the slimmest margin of victory ever, implying that a seismic political change might be looming.
The times have certainly shifted, and it is clear that the former freedom fighters in Southern Africa are falling short of the noble ideals of liberty envisioned in the colonial days.
A state of freedom that restricts the full expression of core civic rights and disregards the right to life reflects a shallow achievement.
Liberation that does not provide equitable and sufficient access to basic services, employment opportunities and economic empowerment is as degrading as the old reality of colonial subjugation.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras’ editorial stance.