Namibia election set to go
2009-11-24 15:06
Windhoek - As Namibians head to the polls this weekend, 20 years to the month they first got a vote, political parties and candidates in the country's fifth presidential and parliamentary elections have little to offer women, the youth and the unemployed.
"And that is really why we will see much of the same," says Joe Diescho, a Namibian professor of international relations at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. "People will maintain the status quo because they don't know any better and there is no real alternative on offer."
In the second week of November 1989, days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, citizens of the former German colony in south-west Africa voted in the country's first multi-racial elections, paving the way for independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990.
Two decades on, Namibia remains a peaceful, stable, but extremely poor country, which survives largely on mining, fishing, agriculture and tourism.
Stability and the role of "liberator" are the trump cards of the South West African People's Organization (Swapo), the ruling party of 20 years, which fought a 22-year guerrilla war between 1966 and 1988 against the apartheid state.
Battling rising crime
But cracks are beginning to show in Swapo's legacy.
Not only has the country, where 28% of people live on less than 30 cents a day, just been labeled "extremely corrupt" by a Transparency International survey, it is also battling rising crime and unemployment.
The most recent unemployment statistics, dating back to 2004, showed 36% are jobless, a figure people in industry believe has since risen. Among young people, the unemployment rate is put at 60%.
Bank of Namibia chief Tom Alweendo earlier this month admitted the country was far short of meeting its development goals.
"At the current rate we project that by 2030, our per capita income will be $10 000 per year. This is nowhere near the required level of $17,000."
Despite the success of a German-backed pilot project in Otjivero, a village of 1 000 people in central Namibia, the government has poured scorn on the idea of a Basic Income Grant that would provide every citizen under 60 years with "dignity money" of $14 monthly.
Recent revelations about the children of senior government officials being given scholarships to study in China and a traditional leader being sent to the US for medical treatment at significant expense to taxpayers have sent ripples of indignation through the electorate.
Little to fear
Yet incumbent president and Swapo leader Hifikepunye Pohamba, who succeeded three-term founding president Sam Nujoma in 2004, has little to fear from his 11 opponents in the presidential race.
"He has done well for us by keeping the peace," a young security guard in Windhoek who said he would vote for Pohamba, told the German Press Agency dpa.
The 13 opposition parties aiming to break Swapo's three-quarters majority in parliament in the election are characterised by tribalism, opportunism and infighting.
All eyes are on the new Rally for Democracy and Progress, a party formed by breakaway former Swapo stalwart Hidipo Hamutenya last year in protest over what he called the ruling party's "autocratic" leadership style.
"The problem with democracy is that people thought they attained it in 1990 and that was the end of it," says Diescho.
Real change in Namibia, he says, will only come when the "old guard from the liberation struggle will have retired come elections in 2014".
Polls open Saturday to allow some 960 000 registered voters to cast their ballots within two days in the synchronised elections. Results are expected to be announced on December 4.
- SAPA