Paul T. Shipale

“The pessimism of the intellect; the optimism of the will”.

I wanted to start this article with the above quote by the Italian Marxist philosopher, Antonio Francesco Gramsci, to say that between the pessimism of the mind and the optimism of the heart, only those with clarity of vision will admit failure and change course.

Triggered by the television programme, ‘The Agenda’, hosted by Toivo Ndjebela, unpacking the build-up to the Swapo elective congress that is taking place in November 2022, I wanted to talk about the fact that every major scholar of democracy has recognised there must be a “system of mutual security”, in which competing political forces commit to tolerating the other and playing peacefully by the rules of the democratic game.  

For this reason, there is a fundamental need in a democracy for competitors to 1) accept the legitimacy of their political rivals, and their right to compete; 2) trust that their rivals will not seek to eliminate them if they come to power, and 3) accept the consequences of fairly administered elections. 

This all requires, as scholars Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt note, not just ‘mutual toleration’ but also political ‘forbearance’ – self-restraint in the exercise of power, rejection of violence, and respect for democracy’s unwritten rules and limits. 

I, therefore, agree with the succinct analysis of the Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Graham Hopwood, when he said in The Namibian newspaper on Monday, 24 October 2022, that “any election needs to be rule-based to ensure its outcome is accepted and if the party (Swapo) is seen to be acting arbitrarily it could result in a loss of credibility and possible legal disputes”.  

Hopwood said Swapo is in danger of creating a legitimacy crisis for itself ahead of the November congress, by creating confusion over which rules it is following. This comes after the party used a legal opinion by Albert Kawana to block Jerry Ekandjo’s demand to run for the vice president position at the upcoming ruling party congress.

There is a perception in the public out there that there have been simmering divisions within Swapo which have become more pronounced since the 2012 congress while Swapo is playing denialist politics in this regard.

Some are arguing that since the 2012 elective congress, Swapo’s leadership has been vindictive and is not following the party’s ideals but simply following self-serving politics of the belly.

The same leadership is accused of bending the rules of the party at its behest as there has been a lot of controversy on who qualifies to be elected as the party’s internal mechanisms are lacking.

Similarly, the same leadership is alleged to have created the monster of mudslinging and character assassination, through the so-called Swapo Party defence league, as a mercenary type of vigilante group, to vilify others on social media.  

This is the vicious and heartless animal that creeps out whenever there is contestation and rules are bent to favour certain individuals. That is why the endorsement issue is seen as a convenient political tool used by some against others due to a fallout between them.

It is against this background that the public perception there is that the current crop of leaders left is not credible as they are all tainted with some sort of corruption scandal or benefited from it.  

I am in no way here suggesting that I prefer the candidacy of one person over another but merely sending warning signals against the backlash of a leadership and legitimacy crisis that will ensue if all are not allowed to exercise their democratic rights as set out in the constitution which allows them to participate in the contest.

If we look at the issue of Jerry Ekandjo, Kawana is quoted to have said “Comrade Jerry Ekandjo was lawfully and legitimately eliminated during the candidates’ identification process… he has no right to be presented to the congress as one of the high-scoring members, even when the number of four candidates has since been reduced to three because of a withdrawal. It has already been pointed out above that he does not have the right to take the position of the candidate who withdrew from the list”.  

Kawana, relying on transitional clauses, which state that anyone who was a party member for 10 years before the amendments took effect will be eligible to run for a top-four position, also said that Ekandjo was not affected by the Helmut Amendments as he met the requirement and that Frans Kapofi and Tom Alweendo met the requirement too because they have been party members for longer than 10 years before the Helmut Amendments took effect in 2018.

Meanwhile, former Swapo secretary general Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana said in the New Era newspaper on Monday, 24 October 2022, that the Helmut Amendments cannot pass the legal test as no Swapo member can serve “10 persistent and consistent years in the central committee… (because) at each congress, the leadership is dissolved and all the positions become vacant”.

Helmut Angula, who is said to be the amendments’ godfather, said “it has been a practice that if a person on the list dies or walks out, the next person in line replaces him. I don’t know what type of administration and provision they are using to keep Jerry out”.

In this regard, like former President Thabo Mbeki, who recently reflected on the democratic recession in the context of the electoral law, on the occasion of the Association of World Electoral Bodies 5th General Assembly, allow me to look at the article, titled ‘Democracy’s Arc: From Resurgent to Imperiled’, published in January 2022 by Professor Larry Diamond in The Journal of Democracy. 

Indeed, we have recently entered a more ominous phase of the democratic recession, evocative of Huntington’s reverse waves. Stoking this worldwide backsliding has been the steady, shocking decline of democracy in the United States. 

Gripped by many underlying stresses - economic dislocation, rising inequality, immigration pressures, identity divisions, and explosive inflammation of these by social media - US democracy has decayed.  

Partisan polarisation, skillfully exploited by demagogic forces, has followed the same toxic downward spiral that has undermined democracy in some countries. 

As Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer explain, polarising social forces and political strategies generate a deep societal rift, an “us versus them” intergroup logic, and the collapse of cross-cutting social ties, which Seymour Martin Lipset and many other scholars have viewed as crucial to the health of democracy.

As the boundaries of in-group loyalty and interaction harden, mutual respect and tolerance give way to distrust, stereotyping, prejudice, and enmity between members of deeply hostile political camps. Each side comes to view the other as an existential threat, straining and then rupturing respect for democratic norms and rules. 

It is not just political behaviour that has taken the United States to the brink of a constitutional crisis. A growing number of politicians and elected officials in the United States have been willing to bend or abandon democratic norms in the quest to achieve or retain power and in retaining power, to barricade their party in the kind of permanent right, through restrictions on voting, the politicisation of electoral administration, and increasingly audacious and scientific gerrymandering that seeks to foreclose electoral alternation. 

Even in the wake of the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the U.S Capitol, most Americans has still not come to grips with how far the country has strayed from the minimum elements of normative and behavioural consensus that sustain democracy, what Robert A. Dahl called the “system of mutual security,” in which competing political forces commit to tolerating the other and playing peacefully by the rules of the democratic game. 

In conclusion, let us not create a leadership and legitimacy crisis but ensure that the electoral outcome is accepted by all and that everybody accepts the legitimacy of political rivals and their right to compete.  

Let us see, to be fair to everyone, if not, as some people were asking, let the next elective congress be postponed until further notice while we put our house in order as only those with clarity of vision will admit failure and change course.