Prime
Netumbo, freedom fighter who’d be Namibia's president
President-elect Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah attends a rally in Namibia on November 24, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Namibia’s president-elect Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah won more than 57 percent of the votes cast with her close rival Panduleni Itula of the IPC getting 26 percent.
Namibia’s president-elect Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah this week made history after she became the first woman to be elected to the highest office of that country, but she is a hardened political operator who learned the ropes at a young age.
Ms Nandi-Ndatwah, the current Vice-President and long-serving Foreign minister, defied odds to lead the governing South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) to a sweeping victory in the November 27 election.
Ahead of the polls, political analysts had predicted that Swapo would be swept aside by the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) after the opposition’s strong showing in recent local government elections.
There were also doubts that the conservative Southern African country was ready to elect a female leader when Swapo selected the daughter of an Anglican priest to succeed president Hage Geingob, who died last year.
On Tuesday, Namibia’s electoral commission said Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah had won more than 57 percent of the votes cast with her close rival Panduleni Itula of the IPC getting 26 percent.
Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan is the only other current female head of state on the African continent, and she will stand for an election next year.
Samia became president by virtue of the constitutional provision that allows the vice-president to complete the term of the president when President John Pombe Magufuli died in 2021.
In Africa, Malawi and Mauritius are the other countries to produce female presidents at the ballot in the past, while the Ethiopian Parliament also elected a ceremonial female president, Sahle-Work Zewde, who served from 2019 until October this year.
Southern African countries tend to create a favourable political environment for female politicians to rise. In Namibia, Tanzania and South Africa, for instance, the youth leagues are very strong in the ruling political parties, creating a safe corridor for women to compete for the top posts.
“The Namibian nation has voted for peace and stability,” Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah said after being declared president-elect.
The election, which was extended by three days, was marred by logistical problems and the opposition has vowed to challenge the outcome in court.
Swapo has been in power since leading the sparsely populated and natural resource-rich country to independence from South Africa in 1990.
After years in influential government positions, including that of Foreign Affairs and Information minister, Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah was seen as Swapo’s best foot forward as they sought a reversal of fortunes in the polls.
The liberation movement had been suffering a sharp decline, particularly because of frustrations at the high level of unemployment and government corruption, which resulted in an unusually competitive election campaign.
The President-elect became part of Swapo’s youth leadership structure, as Swapo Youth League leader in the Owamboland region in 1996.
She had left the country in 1974 for exile and was based in Zambia between 1978 and 1980, and served as Swapo deputy chief representative, and later as the chief representative.
Between 1980 and 1986, Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah was the Swapo chief representative for Eastern Africa and to the Organisation of the African Union (now African Union) coordinating committee.
She returned home from exile in 1989 and became the first Foreign Affairs deputy minister in independent Namibia before becoming director-general of the Department of Women Affairs in the Office of the President between 1996 and 2000.
By 1996, she had risen to Swapo’s deputy secretary-general and was Women Affairs and Child Welfare minister between 2000 and 2005.
She was appointed Information and Broadcasting Services minister (2005 to 2008), Environment and Tourism minister and Foreign Affairs minister from 2012.
She became Deputy Prime Minister and International Affairs minister in 2015, dual roles she held until becoming the President-elect.
She has been a Swapo Member of Parliament since 1990, and has been part of the party’s top decision-making bodies, the Swapo Political Bureau and Central Committee, since independence.
Political analyst Rakkel Andreas told Reuters that she managed to unite different factions within Swapo and her victory was aided by her reputation of not being tarnished by corruption allegations.
“She is a stateswoman,” Ms Andreas said. “She has been in some form of leadership since we gained independence. She understands the system.”
After being declared winner of the disputed polls, Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah said her presidency would be about unity, diversity, resource beneficiation, youth empowerment and sustainable development.
“Today, I’m saying to the Namibian people, as we have been telling you throughout the campaign, for us in the Swapo party and the team that I am going to lead, we have made commitments,” she said. “And I am saying to you, we are going to do what we have told you. Thank you for your trust and confidence in us.”
Rui Tyitende, a political analyst, said Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah’s biggest challenge would be to unite the country after an electioncharacterised by allegations of vote rigging and the logistical challenges, which saw a huge portion of the 1.5 million registered voters fail to cast their votes.
“No voter who wanted to cast their vote on November 27 should have been turned away on account of the incompetence and ill-preparedness of the Electoral Commission of Namibia,” Mr Tyitende told The Namibian. “Therefore, is it possible to restart this process or serious reforms need to take place? You do not want to address the Namibian public, especially those who did not vote for you and they think of you as being illegitimate. We do not want to be the next Zimbabwe.”
The incoming president will have a clear mandate after Swapo won 51 of the 96 elected seats while the IPC got 20 seats, which means it becomes the official opposition.
In the 2019 elections, Swapo lost its two-thirds majority in Parliament and then president Geingob was elected with the worst result yet, at 56 percent, from 87 percent in 2014.
Ms Nandi-Ndaitwah has bettered her predecessor’s performance by one percentage point and helped her party to buck the trend in a region where liberation movements have been facing huge electoral setbacks this year.
In neighbouring Botswana, the ruling party lost power for the first since the country’s independence in 1966 following the October elections while South Africa’s African National Congress was forced to form a power sharing government following a very poor showing in the May elections.
The President-elect, 72, is married to Epaphras Denga Ndaitwah, a former chief of the Namibian Defence Forces.
