In November 2024, Namibians will be heading to the polls for the general election. The citizens will have a chance to elect a president to lead the nation for a period of five years.
The president has appointed the fifth Boundary Delimitation Commission prior to the election, with the aim of altering regional boundaries, establishing new regions, or dividing existing regions into constituencies. The demarcation helps to ensure the country’s effective governance. The current Boundary Delimitation Commission, however, has already sparked concerns among opposition parties and public members about its expected outcome.
Using Keulder and Van Zyl’s 2012 definitions, boundary delimitation refers to the process of drawing electoral district boundaries. In other words, it refers to the creation of polling areas for administrative boundaries such as regional and constituency boundaries. The first Delimitation Commission took place in 1991. Here, the commission undertook the initial task of delineating regional, local authority, and constituency boundaries, leading to the creation of 13 regions. Thereafter, several delimitation commissions followed; the last one was in 2013. The 2013 fourth Delimitation Commission made a significant impact by transforming Caprivi into the Zambezi region and dividing Kavango into two regions (East and West), thereby increasing the number of regions to 14, and other changes made to the Hardap and //Kharas regions.
However, opposition parties have raised several concerns about the outcome of the ongoing fifth delimitation commission. Their main concern regards the gerrymandering of region and constituency boundaries.
According to Netswera and Clapper (2023), gerrymandering is the deliberate redrawing of regional and constituency boundaries to include geographical areas that are believed to hold significant electoral support or to exclude areas of significant opposition, thus improving the chance of winning within a given region or constituency. Although gerrymandering is a political concern, it does not worry the inhabitants of the Zambezi region.
Their primary concern is that since the beginning of the Boundary Delimitation Commission in the 1990s, the Zambezi region has been the only region losing land to either Kavango East or Botswana.
All recent delimitation commissions have shifted the region’s boundaries inward, resulting in a reduction in the region’s geographical size. Cooper also reports in 2024 that the inhabitants want the Caprivi region name back. They claim that the government did not consult them when the region was renamed Zambezi in 2013. Although it is difficult to tell why the boundaries of the Zambezi region have been shifting continuously, Kangumu’s 2008 scholarly work on Caprivi identity contestation offers an important clue. He argues that the Caprivi identity contestation was the main contributing factor to the 1999 Caprivi conflict, which is perceived to have attempted to secede the region from the motherland Namibia. Therefore, the shifting of boundaries and renaming of the region are attempts to dispel the Caprivi identity ideology in order to reduce the political significance of the region, especially among secessionists. However, such a political decision has made the inhabitants lose their ancestral land because not all of them support or entertain the Caprivi identity ideology; 99.9% of the inhabitants regard themselves as Namibians.
In summary, I would like to strongly urge stakeholders to undertake extensive consultations with the inhabitants countrywide before embarking on recommendations that could have future implications. The Boundary Delimitation Commission, therefore, should act as a peacebuilding mechanism for a prosperous Namibia. Namibia belongs to all who live in it.
*Collen Kurana is a DPhil Peace Studies student at DUT, and can be reached at mulifecollen@gmail.com