November 2009 is election year in Namibia and contrary to the typical trend in Africa; it will be a peaceful and successful one. The South West Africa Peoples Organization (SWAPO) Party has the unquestioned support of the majority of the Namibian people and is the only party in Namibia that offers a good plan for progress. Most Namibians are loyal and confident in SWAPO party’s ability and determination to improve Namibia and will demonstrate so in the upcoming election.
Five years ago, a historic election took place in Namibia. The Founding President of the country, President Sam Nujoma had fulfilled the constitutional limit of two terms as President and SWAPO party had chosen Hifikepunye Pohamba to stand as the party’s candidate for President. It was a moment unprecedented in African history as there was a successful transition of power from the Founding President to his successor.
According to statistics of the election, out of 977,742 registered voters 85.2% actually turned out to vote. Hifikepunye Pohamba won 76.44% of the vote with his nearest challenger Ben Ulenga winning just 7.28%. In the elections for the National Assembly (Parliament) of Namibia SWAPO party won 75.83% of the available seats with the Congress of Democrats winning 7.27%. SWAPO won comfortably in both elections and seeing as the elections were peaceful and successful in the sense that all political parties were able to campaign freely; there is no reason to believe that SWAPO party will not have similar success in the upcoming elections.
This reality of a SWAPO landslide victory can be attributed to many factors of which a few will be highlighted here. To begin with, SWAPO party is the party that fought for and brought independence to Namibia in 1990 and thusly is still deeply respected and trusted by the Namibian people. From it’s founding in 1960 till the present SWAPO has been present in the minds of Namibians as the fighter for their rights and this is something the people value highly.
Furthermore, SWAPO party does have a comprehensive and clear plan on how to develop the country through projects such as Vision 2030 and the National Development Plan 3 to name the more important ones. There are indeed problems facing the implementations of these development plans and how to best achieve them but they are at least goals SWAPO party is trying to achieve.
In addition to this, SWAPO party is truly a national movement. Namibia has thirteen different ethnic groups and although the Ovambo tribe is slightly less than 2/3 of the population, SWAPO has support from all of the tribes. Most of the other political parties such as RDP, COD, DTA, and NUDO are formed primarily on tribal foundations and have yet to create a message that the Namibian people as a whole can rally around.
Finally, the weakness, ineffectiveness, and incompetence of the opposition parties make any of their elections to power a dream only they entertain. As mentioned before, COD, RDP, DTA and all the others have formed primarily on tribal lines rather than national lines and thus don’t appeal to the Namibian people. These parties also don’t have any plan for what they will do for the country when they get to power; all of their campaign rhetoric consists of critiquing SWAPO party but yet offering no alternative to supposed “ineffective policies”. Moreover, many of these opposition groups were founded by unhappy SWAPO members who broke from the party because they believed when independence came they should have been given higher positions of power in government or government run businesses. They didn’t form these groups to serve the Namibian people but to satisfy their own desires for power and thusly they will not gain any meaningful votes in the upcoming election.
With this as the case, coupled with SWAPO’s determination to run a strong and effective campaign, expect SWAPO to win the upcoming election. Presdent Pohamba, who is standing for re-election recently, spoke about what SWAPO had to do to ensure victory at the upcoming election and concluded his speech with these words, “We must also work harder and always consistently so that the voters can turn out in large numbers to exercise their democratic right and vote… While the track record of our Party speaks for itself, we must work to convince the populace that we can do better.” So as was stated earlier, expect SWAPO to handily win the November elections not because of corruption, voter intimidation or opposition intimidation, but because they are the party that the Namibian people wish to follow.
