Namibia’s 2024 Elections: A loud warning bell for liberation movements, a missed opportunity for the opposition

Ntibinyane Ntibinyane | Friday January 10, 2025 12:16

The Namibian elections have come and gone, and while the ruling party, SWAPO, managed to retain power, the cracks in its once-dominant political armor are impossible to ignore. After ruling Namibia since its independence in 1990, SWAPO’s loss of parliamentary seats and its declining public confidence is part of a broader narrative unfolding across Africa: the gradual decline of liberation movements. A few days before the general elections, I presented five possible scenarios of how the elections might unfold and their implications for Namibia’s political trajectory. These scenarios ranged from SWAPO retaining power with a reduced majority to opposition gains and the emergence of new political dynamics. The first scenario, where SWAPO wins both the presidency and a majority in Parliament, ultimately became reality, in the end disappointing many who had hoped for a seismic political shift akin to what happened in Botswana.

However, SWAPO’s victory, which, by the way, was marked by allegations of irregularities, was far from emphatic. In fact, the party’s reduced majority in Parliament and the significant loss of voter confidence highlight a growing dissatisfaction with its leadership and an increasing appetite for change among the electorate. To put things in perspective, at its peak in 2014, the party secured an overwhelming 80% of the vote in the parliamentary election and a supermajority in Parliament, holding 77 out of 96 seats. In 2024, the party went into the elections with 63 parliamentary seats, following a poor showing five years earlier, but emerged with only 51. This means the party managed to retain control of Parliament by only three seats. Even more tellingly, some of SWAPO’s most prominent figures lost their parliamentary seats. According to The Namibian, nine Cabinet ministers failed to secure seats. At the presidential level, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah secured re-election with 58% of the vote to become the first female President of Namibia.

She narrowly improved on SWAPO’s performance in the 2019 presidential elections, where former president Hage Geingob won with 56%, the party’s lowest margin since independence. While her performance outpaced her party’s in parliamentary candidates, the modest two percent improvement is cold comfort. Before anyone sees this as a major win, let us go back to 2014, when Geingob secured an overwhelming 87% of the vote in the presidential election. This, in my view, reflected a near-universal mandate. Not many parties in a democracy can claim such a sweeping level of support. You cannot talk about Namibia’s elections without thinking about Botswana where the ruling party that pride itself as a ‘liberation movement’ suffered a spectacular defeat. Ahead of the elections, many compared Namibia’s political trajectory to that of Botswana, given their shared histories of liberation movements that have dominated post-independence politics. Both SWAPO in Namibia and the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) have long enjoyed near-unchallenged authority, but the comparisons have diverged sharply in recent years.

Botswana’s BDP suffered a historic defeat in 2024, securing only four parliamentary seats, marking a dramatic end to its decades-long dominance. This unprecedented defeat gave many in the region hope that other entrenched liberation movements, like SWAPO in Namibia and ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe, might face a similar reckoning. However, Namibia’s 2024 elections revealed a more complex reality. This divergence begs the question: Since it is clear that SWAPO is losing ground, why did Namibia’s opposition falter where Botswana’s opposition succeeded? I argue here that the answer lies in strategy, unity, experimentation and the ability to tap into public discontent. Before addressing this, I want to explain why this once intractable party is losing ground. SWAPO’s Struggles and the Erosion of Its Stronghold The reasons for SWAPO’s declining dominance are both local and emblematic of broader challenges faced by liberation movements in Africa. First, liberation movements like SWAPO, the ANC in South Africa, and ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe have long relied on their historic role in freeing their nations from colonial or apartheid rule. As some have argued elsewhere, at some point, the so-called liberation credentials became the only narrative they leaned on, overshadowing the need for effective governance, innovation, and responsiveness to contemporary challenges. But the younger people—the “born-frees,” those born after independence—view this narrative with skepticism.

For them, the liberation struggle is a chapter in the history books, not their lived experience. For many, their priorities are rooted in the present and the future. What comes to their minds now is access to quality education, job opportunities, economic stability, and freedom from corruption. So, parties like SWAPO, ZANU-PF, ANC, and even the BDP are no longer attractive to many. Second, according to the Namibian news media and colleagues I have talked to, the country’s economic struggles have fuelled public frustration. High unemployment rates, particularly amongst youth, coupled with rising inequality, have eroded trust in SWAPO’s ability to govern effectively.

According to the Namibia Statistics Agency, in 2023, the national unemployment rate in Namibia was 33.4% and 38% amongst young people. Such high unemployment rates, according to some, heightened public dissatisfaction with the government ahead of the 2024 elections. Third, corruption scandals, such as the infamous “Fishrot” case, which was well exposed by Namibian investigative journalists and whistleblowers, further tarnished SWAPO’s reputation. The scandal, involving high-ranking officials accused of siphoning millions of dollars from the country’s fishing industry through bribery and fraud, became a symbol of systemic corruption within the ruling elites in the country. Finally, like many liberation movements, SWAPO is grappling with factionalism and internal power struggles. These divisions weakened the party’s cohesion and made it vulnerable to opposition challenges. For example, the party has experienced hardened leadership battles, with the old guard engaged in internal conflicts, while the SWAPO Youth League members advocate for populist reforms. Indeed, some may argue that such internal dissonance, which often played out in public, led to reduced parliamentary seats and losses in regional and local government representation a few years ago. Ahead of the elections, these internal conflicts not only distracted SWAPO from effective governance but have also eroded public confidence in the party’s ability to present a unified and visionary leadership. Missed Opportunities and Why Namibia’s Opposition Faltered One of the most important questions to ask is, why didn’t the opposition win the elections? In Professor Jonathan Moyo’s deliberate solecism, ‘If Botswana did it, why can’t Namibia did it?’ This is not to take anything away from the opposition parties, as their performance in the parliamentary elections almost caused an upset.

The main opposition party, Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), which was contesting the parliamentary elections for the first time, secured 20 seats, followed by another newcomer, the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement, which obtained six seats. The former official opposition party in Parliament, the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM), performed so badly that it lost several seats, reducing its representation from the 16 it held after the previous elections to only five. At a presidential level, the IPC leader, Itula Panduleni, failed to lodge a decisive challenge against SWAPO’s candidate, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. Despite his strong performance in the 2019 elections as an independent candidate, where he secured 29% of the vote, Itula’s momentum seemed to falter in 2024, managing only 25%.

Why was this the case? Was it due to a lack of effective campaign messaging that could resonate with a broader electorate? Did his failure to form alliances with other opposition parties fracture the anti-SWAPO vote? Was his inability to make inroads into SWAPO’s rural strongholds a decisive factor? Or was it the absence of a unified opposition strategy that ultimately sealed his fate? Or was it because the opposition did not have its own Madibelatlhopho, to counter vote potential rigging by SWAPO? I would not pretend to have all the answers to these questions. Perhaps Namibians themselves and political analysts with deeper insights into the country’s dynamics will continue to reflect on these issues. However, Botswana offers an interesting comparison and insight. The cooperation model that eventually led to the opposition’s historic victory in Botswana was neither a quick fix nor a straightforward path. It was a model that was tried, tested, and failed multiple times before it was refined into a working strategy. Over the years, Botswana’s opposition parties experimented with various political models, players and alliances, each effort revealing underlying tensions and structural challenges. Bitter rivalries between party leaders, competing political agendas, and complete mistrust amongst key stakeholders often derailed these attempts. Who can forget the prolonged discord between the Botswana National Front (BNF) and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) or the tensions between the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and the BCP? How about the collapse of the Botswana Alliance Movement (BAM) just before the 1999 elections, when the BNF withdrew, claiming it lacked a mandate for a merger?

However, influenced by several factors, including growing voter frustration with the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and mounting pressures to consolidate resources, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) eventually emerged as the winning model. It succeeded not because the path was easy but because the parties involved were willing to persevere through disagreements, recalibrate their strategies, and prioritise the greater goal of unseating the ruling party. In other words, Botswana’s opposition success was not accidental. In fact, it was the culmination of years of trial and error and a willingness to recalibrate in response to changing political dynamics and shifting voter sentiments. Namibia’s opposition, in contrast, has yet to embark on a similar journey. Indeed, in the past, attempts to build alliances among opposition parties have been sporadic and largely ineffective. While the potential for unity exists, the fragmentation among parties like the IPC, AR, and PDM remains a significant obstacle. Yet, the past two elections have revealed a growing appetite for change among Namibians.

The electorate has shown increasing willingness to challenge the status quo, and this shifting sentiment has created fertile ground for political transformation. If Namibian opposition leaders wish to replicate Botswana’s success, they must commit to the difficult, often uncomfortable process of building and sustaining coalitions. If not coalitions, they must at least adopt a coordinated strategy that avoids splitting the anti-SWAPO vote and presents a unified vision for change. Without such efforts, the opposition risks perpetuating its own fragmentation, making it easier for SWAPO to maintain its grip on power. The lessons from Botswana are clear: unity, perseverance, and strategic collaboration are essential for achieving meaningful political shifts. The question is whether Namibia’s opposition can rise to the occasion and seize the moment.

*NTIBINYANE NTIBINYANE, Assistant Professor, Communication Department, MacEwan University, Edmonton, Canada