Election of the Day: Namibia

Before diving in, a few updates from this weekend’s elections. In Uruguay, polling proved accurate and the normal, boring center-left candidate defeats the normal, boring center-right candidate by about 4%. In Romania, things took a rather different route. The polls suggested the center-left social democrat Marcel Ciolacu would be at the top, and would likely face reactionary Putin stooge George Simion. In fact, those two candidates finished 3rd and 4th. Our Ciolacu finished just a couple thousand votes behind “normal” conservative Elena Lasconi, both just over 19%. The winner, at 23%, is a completely different conspiratorial reactionary Putinist, Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling around 5% and campaigned almost entirely on tik-tok. Should be….interesting to see how this Sunday’s legislative election, not to mention the runoff a week later. Another Sunday election I didn’t cover: Switzerland voted on four national referendums. It appears the “left” option won in all cases. I don’t know enough about the current state of landlord-tenant law or the structure of the Swiss health care system to have strong feelings on three of the four referenda, but I’m never going to miss a chance to celebrate an electoral defeat for a massive road expansion project. Rejection of this bit of climate arson doesn’t automatically lead to a greater investment in public transit options, of course, but it at minimum strengthens the hand of those pushing for it.

But onto the next election. On Wednesday, Sub-Saharan Africa’s driest and most sparsely populated country, Namibia, will hold it’s 7th general election since obtaining independence from South Africa in 1990. Namibians will elect both a president and a new National Assembly. This will be the first election in the post-Hage Geingob era. President since 2015, Geingob succumbed to an aggressive case of colon cancer in February. Prior to the presidency, had been Prime Minister for a majority of Namibia’s first quarter-century of independence.

96 seats in the National Assembly will be selected via closed list proportional representation in 14 multimember districts. (The final eight members of this legislative body will be appointed by the winner of the presidential contest.) This is a first round vote for the presidency; if no candidate gets to 50% there will be a top-2 runoff in the near future. A runoff has never been necessary, but it’s not entirely out of the question this time.

Geingob was, until his demise, the leader of the SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation), a party borne of a revolutionary anti-apartheid movement that has dominated Namibian politics ever since the independence they fought for was achieved. His 2019 electoral victory was not close (56%, second place candidate was just under 30%), but it showed a marked erosion in SWAPO’s dominance; it was the first time a SWAPO presidential candidate received less than 75% of the vote. 2019’s election also returned a National Assembly in which SWAPO has less than a 2/3 majority for the first time.

Why is SWAPO on the decline? I’d be lying if I said I knew, although the rise of younger urban voters with no personal connection to their heroic fight against South African colonization and apartheid is probably a non-trivial part of the story. The primary opposition to SWAPO is the PDM (Popular Democratic Movement), before 2017 known as Democratic Turnhalle Alliance. The primary opposition party for much of Namibia’s independence, they do not appear to be the most likely beneficiaries of SWAPO’s decline. That would fall to the Independent Patriots for Change, led by former SWAPO politician and British-trained dentist Panduleni Itula. Itula had been a member of SWAPO since 1971, but had been increasingly critical of a number of party leaders and decided to run as an independent against Geingob in 2019. His 29% is easily the strongest showing for a non SWAPO presidential candidate in Namibia’s history, and he seeks to build on it against Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, Geingob’s hand-picked successor and fellow youthful revolutionary-turned-aging-establishment politician.

To the best of my knowledge there has been no public polling on this race. Expectations from informed observers (or people successfully impersonating informed observers; I’m in no position to make that distinction) range from “SWAPO will win of course but it’ll be closer than usual” to “SWAPO could actually lose.” Itula and the IPC are running on pro-market reforms and anti-corruption, a message that has had some resonance with younger urban voters, for whom SWAPO’s revolutionary bona fides are not so impressive. Given their dominant electoral history, should SWAPO succumb to the current anti-incumbent wave it would be one of the more impressive and surprising incumbent losses in a year with no shortage of them.