Namibia elects its first woman President as ruling party keeps power

In a year when election upsets have changed southern Africa’s political landscape, Namibia’s governing party has bucked the trend, winning the mineral-rich country’s general election, the electoral commission there said Tuesday.

For the first time in its history, Namibia has also elected a female president. The winner, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, joins the small number of women who have led countries in Africa.

Nandi-Ndaitwah, 72, served as the country’s deputy prime minister and minister of international relations and cooperation under President Hage G. Geingob, who died in February. An interim president was put in charge but did not run in the election.

Nandi-Ndaitwah, who won 57.3% of the presidential vote, led the South West Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, which has governed Namibia for more than three decades, since independence. SWAPO won 51 of 96 seats in parliament, a decrease from the 63 seats it won in the 2019 election. The lost seats were most likely a reflection of widespread frustration with the country’s stagnant economy.

Panduleni Itula and his Independent Patriots for Change, which was founded in 2020 by a group of politicians who broke away from SWAPO, won second place, with 20 seats. Thirteen other opposition parties shared the rest.

“We have made commitments, and I am saying to you we are going to do what we have told you,” Nandi-Ndaitwah said on Tuesday in Windhoek, the capital. Itula and other opposition leaders boycotted the election commission’s announcement in protest of the results and the commission’s handling of the vote.

This election was expected to be the toughest yet for SWAPO. The party evolved from an underground liberation movement that fought for independence from South Africa to a political party struggling to respond to the frustrations of a new generation of voters.

In the last presidential election, Geingob won 56% of the vote, down from the 87% he garnered when he ran for president in 2014.

The election, which took place on Nov. 27, has been marred by technical glitches resulting in long lines that forced some polling stations to remain open long after polls closed. Some opposition parties tried to stop the count as voting continued, and criticized the election commission’s late-night directive.

The election irregularities were extraordinary in Namibia, which introduced what was considered to be the continent’s first electronic voting a decade ago.

Across southern Africa, political parties that began as liberation movements have suffered electoral losses in recent months as a generation with no direct memory of colonialism or apartheid went to the polls. This is a generation most concerned about joblessness and uneven access to education, analysts said.

In Namibia, more than 40% of the 1.4 million registered voters are 35 or younger, and unemployment is high. The country also has a severe housing shortage, and many are dismayed over what they feel is the government’s failure to make land ownership affordable. Most land is in the hands of wealthy and politically connected elites. Despite being classified as an upper-middle-income country by the World Bank, Namibia also has among the most unequal economies in the world.

The Independent Patriots for Change party promised to overhaul the country’s business sector and invest in infrastructure to stimulate job creation. SWAPO, already in power, promised to set aside a portion of the budget to create projects that would lead to job creation for young people, while also developing mining, tourism and agricultural sectors to create jobs.

In neighboring countries, voters delivered rebukes to parties that they felt had failed to create sufficient jobs and develop their economies. In South Africa, the African National Congress lost its absolute majority this year for the first time since the end of apartheid. A few months later, in neighboring Botswana, the Botswana Democratic Party suffered its first electoral defeat since it came to power nearly six decades ago.

And while Frelimo, the party that has governed Mozambique since its independence in 1975, was declared the winner of the October election, widespread protests have erupted over accusations that the governing party manipulated the result.

Namibia’s governing party also benefited from a fractured opposition. With 14 opposition candidates on the ballot, the opposition vote was splintered in favor of the incumbent party.

Nandi-Ndaitwah joined SWAPO when Namibia was governed by South Africa’s apartheid regime, according to her official biography. She was detained after participating in student protests and later fled into exile, working for the party in Zambia and Tanzania.

Like many African political activists, she was educated in the former Soviet Union, and later earned a postgraduate degree in Britain. She has served in every National Assembly since Namibia gained independence, and held posts in the ministries of women and child welfare, environment and tourism, and the Foreign Ministry.