Asser Ntinda
Of all the aspiring Swapo presidential hopefuls since Sam Nujoma ended his reign as president in 2007, none has attracted media, legal and political scrutiny as well as challenges as much as Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.
She was re-elected as Swapo vice president in November 2022, a position she has held since 2017.
In keeping with the constitution of Swapo, she automatically became Swapo’s presidential candidate in the 2024 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
Surprisingly, however, there are some people within and without Swapo who think it is not the case.
What a closer look at Swapo’s legal documents reveal is that they are simply opportunistic.
Some of those questioning her legal legitimacy harbour presidential
ambitions as well. Racing against their age, for them, it is either now or never. Hence, the spirited dirty campaign.
Aligned against such walls, the onslaught against Nandi-Ndaitwah
since the 2022 ordinary congress has catapulted her into the VP position has not been an easy wave to swim
against.
But Nandi-Ndaitwah is swimming through. Her resilience has been
inspiring, shifting boundaries in how to overcome dirty campaigns mounted by those she thought were her own
comrades.
When Swapo started preparing to hold its congress in 2022, Swapo leaders and members knew that whoever would emerge as vice president of Swapo would
be Swapo’s presidential candidate in
2024. The late president Hage Geingob was serving his last term.
He was thus not available. Delegates attended the congress well-prepared and informed accordingly.
Three candidates contested the VP position. These were incumbent Nandi-Ndaitwah, Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila and Environment and Tourism minister Pohamba Shifeta.
Over 700 delegates attended the congress.
The results were both stunning and telling. Nandi-Ndaitwah got 491 votes, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila 270 and Shifeta 91. The battle and doubts could have
ended there with her overwhelming victory. They did not.
While the congress had ended, vicious battles were being hatched in darkrooms, weaved by her own comrades within Swapo, while media gurus and political pundits clapped hands in the public
gallery, sharpening their pens to write Nandi-Ndaitwah off.
Suddenly, an extraordinary congress must be held to endorse her.
Some even suggested she resigns – and someone else neutral should chair that extraordinary congress. This
was laughable. There is no such neutral nonsense in the constitution of Swapo.
The president or the vice president always chairs congresses.
To take the debate further, they cite the 2004 extraordinary congress as an example. That congress, however, does not fit the picture they seek to vindicate. It is all about stretching facts.
When Swapo held its elective congress in 2002, everybody knew whoever emerged from that congress as VP would lead Swapo into the 2004 elections as its presidential candidate.
It was perhaps the hottest congress
I ever witnessed as editor of Namibia
Today. That congress and a central committee meeting that preceded it almost ruined Swapo. The discussions were divisive.
President Nujoma was adamant that his preferred candidate, Hifikepunye Pohamba, should sail through
unopposed.
Others in the leadership held strong views against such a move, arguing that Nujoma could not just bulldoze his candidate because there were other
leaders who were equally capable, and should thus be given a chance to
compete. Nujoma also wanted Marlene
Mungunda to come in as secretary
general. For some long-serving CC members, this was just too much to swallow. Nujoma’s overbearing powers, they thought, had to be clipped somewhere.
There were nasty exchanges.
Some sessions had to be adjourned for hours on end to iron out deep-cutting disagreements.
In the end, confidence-building consensuses were reached. Pohamba was elected unopposed. As a compromise, Nujoma dropped Mungunda, giving other leaders a chance to elect the secretary general, the third-most powerful position in Swapo.
Ngarikutuke Tjiriange emerged as that SG.
To ease and arrest further tensions and divisions, the central committee meeting that preceded the 2002 congress recommended that the ordinary
congress should pass a special resolution calling for an extraordinary congress so that whoever was opposed to Pohamba as presidential candidate in the 2004 elections, could do so.
That was the genesis of extraordinary congresses.
As a result, the 2002 congress passed Resolution 42, which, in part, reads as follows: “…Resolved to confirm the decision of the central committee to hold an extraordinary congress in 2004 with a view to addressing the question of succession”.
Nujoma was not amused with
the outcome. He agreed against his
will. But never the one to be outfoxed by the people he had groomed, he rarely forgives and forgets easily.
As prime minister since independence, Hage Geingob had always presented himself in the leadership as the automatic successor to Nujoma.
If he missed this chance to be VP, it would never come again. He was the most vocal and outspoken at both the CC meeting and the congress in opposition to Pohamba.
Like Oxford University professors, both Geingob and the late Hidipo Hamutenya put up strong arguments about why there should be an extraordinary congress to challenge Pohamba.
They scored when the congress agreed to call for an extraordinary congress in 2004. With that victory, they then thought they had kept Nujoma in check.
But they awfully forgot that for Nujoma, politics was an art of the possible – not a theatre of academic acrobatics.
Late Theo-Ben Gurirab, always the coolest, watched in disbelief as they argued their case to make Swapo more democratic in independent Namibia. The congress ended. Swapo was back to its form, and content – or so it seemed.
On the day the congress ended, 26 August 2002, Nujoma was scheduled to inaugurate Heroes Acre in the afternoon. He invited all the delegates to join him at the inauguration.
Nujoma was in an unusual jovial mood that day. Given the heated congress that blocked some of the leadership moves he had wanted to push through, he would not have been that jovial.
Something was up his sleeve.
A day after the inauguration of Heroes Acre, Geingob was sacked as prime minister, and moved to regional and local government and housing. The jovial mood at Heroes Acre came into context.
Geingob declined the offer, and resigned. Hamutenya, who also eyed the vice president position, danced and pranced at the fall of Geingob, whom he had long feared as a potential rival candidate for the position at the 2004 extraordinary congress.
Hamutenya celebrated too early, as time would tell later.
From 2 to 3 April 2004, the central committee met to thrash out details on the extraordinary congress. The committee also endorsed three candidates.
These were Pohamba, Hamutenya and Nahas Angula. Before that meeting, clandestine campaigns had already been taking place around the country.
When the 2004 extraordinary congress met from 28 to 29 May, Pohamba was vulnerable.
Hamutenya had a competitive advantage over Pohamba.
Sensing the danger, Nujoma sacked Hamutenya as minister of foreign affairs on 26 May, two days before the extraordinary congress.
Hamutenya’s campaign was paralysed. Delegates went to the congress shocked.
Through that sacking, however, they learned where Nujoma stood.
Sure enough, when the congress took place, Hamutenya lost to Pohamba after a re-run.
Angula fell out in the first round.
The 2004 congress was messy. The leadership had to go back to the drawing board to amend the rules to ensure what happened in 2002 and 2004 never repeated itself.
There should never be extraordinary congresses to elect a presidential candidate.
To preserve the cardinal principles of Swapo Party unity, “A candidate who qualifies to be on the Swapo Party ticket for the candidature of the president of the republic should come from the most senior Swapo Party members – that is the president, the vice president, the secretary general and the deputy secretary,” reads Rule 8.
It further states: “In the event such a person (sitting president) is barred from standing by the Namibian Constitution on account of having served two terms, then automatically the vice president becomes a candidate”.
When Geingob retained his VP position in 2012, there was never an extraordinary congress to endorse him or re-elect a new presidential candidate.
Even those who are calling for an extraordinary congress today did not do so when Geingob was in the race.
It therefore follows that when Nandi-Ndaitwah retained her position in 2022, she constitutionally, legally and procedurally became Swapo’s presidential candidate in the 2024 elections.
About that, there is no doubt – and against facts, there are no arguments. There is, therefore, nothing unconstitutional about how she was re-elected at the 2022 congress.
Her legal legitimacy is above board. She will, therefore, never be a victim of this latest political jamboree.
In fact, the real victims of this unholy alliance against Nandi-Ndaitwah will be the faceless characters conducting the orchestra behind Reinhold Shipwikineni and company – certainly not Nandi-Ndaitwah.
*Asser Ntinda is the former editor-in-chief of Namibia Today, the official organ of Swapo Party.