Namibia’s Presidential Transition

SAM Nujoma was sworn in as the first President of the Republic of Namibia at Independence in 1990.Constitutionally he was obliged to leave office after a maximum of two legislative periods of five years each.

However, the first constitutional amendment provided the exception to the rule: Namibia’s first president was to be entitled to a third term in office. Even then, Nujoma (by now approaching his mid-70s) seemed reluctant to vacate office and indicated his willingness to continue if the people were to ask him.Some people did.But a lot of others did not.This article summarises the background to the presidential transition we would subsequently witness.SOCIAL movements, and even more so anti-colonial mass movements, ought to be a collective effort to contribute to social change (and actually are).But they are also shaped by personal factors and the impact of individuals.The degree of identification and congruence, behind which both the individual and the specific internal dynamics of an organisation tend to fade away, is exemplified and illustrated by Sam Nujoma’s memoirs ‘Where Others Wavered’.This story ends with Namibian Independence and hence the return from exile.It puts emphasis on the years of armed combat and is reduced mainly to a ‘struggle literature’ of an ideologically dubious and thematically narrow focus.As such, these remembrances can be considered a kind of official, ‘nation-building’ history – at least for the time being, in the absence of any counter-claims and challenges to the dominant patterns of ‘patriotic history’ emerging.The historiography on both the man and the movement reveals an interesting view on the mindset of freedom fighters.It offers access to some reasoning and the underlying driving forces, which otherwise might be not understood.The impact of this patriotic history, which at the same time casts the ‘father of the nation’ in a particular mould, should not be underestimated.Sam Nujoma has not only been Swapo, but also the mirror image and figure for identification and admiration of the dominant post-colonial political culture.His story is the story of Swapo.And as the Swapo version of Namibian history, it is at the same time part and parcel of the ideological core composing the official post-colonial Namibia.Nujoma managed to survive all internal power struggles taking place in the movement and hence showed his qualities as a leader, able to remain in charge.But these qualities are not necessarily founded upon democratic convictions as the major priorities for success.In consequence, it is not surprising that the type of statesmanship displayed by President Nujoma did not always respect democratic principles.Nor did it always meet minimum standards of diplomacy.There were increasingly alarming public performances, particularly since the mid-1990s, which revealed growing intolerance with regard to dissenting views and a certain self-righteousness, both at home and in the international arena.One might qualify this (at least rhetorical) radicalisation as an outcome of the arrogance of power, encouraged by general public approval and widespread consent to his role, further supported by the absence of any initiatives towards corrective measures from inside party ranks or the Cabinet.Indeed, from following Nujoma’s career as President and observing his visible behavioural changes during the years in office, it seems no exaggeration to arrive at the conclusion that autocrats are not genetically determined in their personality structure.They seem at least as much created by sycophants and those unable to openly resist dictatorial tendencies and who play along for a variety of reasons, one of which is the fear of losing their own access to green pastures.Hence the idea for a third term in office was supported and implemented by a wide range of stakeholders.These included relevant agents of class and others outside of Swapo, who preferred to keep the ‘devil they knew’ in power rather than opting for an unknown alternative.There emerged, in fact, a broad social consensus on the third-term issue.It included some who were not within or who had even been hostile to Swapo, who concluded that Nujoma had done a decent enough job and should hence remain in power as a known variable.Given this emergent consensus spanning the party and wider Namibian society that Nujoma should remain on as President, the third term in office was never seriously divisive.The formal procedures did not require any legally dubious procedures.Based upon its two-thirds majority, Swapo was authorised and able to pass the necessary amendment without formally offending the Constitution.Nor was this a major dispute in the public sphere, which would have provoked serious tests of acceptability.However, the way the third-term issue was handled by the party internally seemed to suggest that not everybody was in full support.As a result, the modalities employed to seek party consensus over Nujoma’s candidacy were rather dubious.The second Swapo Congress since Independence took place at the end of May 1997.It was at least informally dominated by the issue of the third term.But while everyone had expected an open vote, which would result in favour of Sam Nujoma, the Congress resolved instead to call for an Extraordinary Congress the following year with the aim having delegates make an official decision at that point.While this move was presented by Swapo as a procedural formality, observers agreed that it reflected strong internal differences.Perhaps to take advantage of this postponement of the decision, Nujoma’s opening speech to the Congress had all the features of a mobilisation campaign to rally support behind his drive for another term.Meanwhile, in another move, which in retrospect appears to assume considerable significance, Hifikepunye Pohamba (then Minister for Fisheries and known to be among the closest and most loyal supporters of the President) was in the absence of another candidate appointed to fill the vacant position as the party’s General Secretary.In contrast to the indicated procedure, Swapo’s Central Committee in May 1998 announced its decision to instruct the party’s MPs to change the Constitution for the first time to allow the party president as Head of State a third term in office.The party’s new Secretary-General officially confirmed this intention during a parliamentary debate in the National Assembly in July 1998.The scheduled Extraordinary Swapo Congress, which took place at the end of August the same year, no longer had any reason to discuss the matter.The party leadership reasoned, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that a decision had already been taken at the Congress a year earlier, and that hence there would be no need devote time to the issue.Instead, the delegates were given the task of dealing with a total of 71 amendments to the party’s many remaining anachronistic rules from the ‘struggle days’ with the aim of enhancing internal efficiency.Pohamba went on to justify the constitutional change providing for a third term in a speech televised countrywide in September 1998.Subsequently, Prime Minister Hage Geingob submitted the motion to Parliament in October 1998.Thereafter, Swapo utilised its two-thirds majority in both the National Assembly and the National Council to adopt Namibia’s first constitutional amendment.Signed by the President on December 7, 1998, the Namibian Constitution First Amendment Act, 1998 (Act 34 of 1998), stipulates under sub-article 134(3) that “the first President of Namibia may hold office as President for three terms”.Whether Nujoma was planning to vacate office in March 2005 remained for long an open question: Evidence was actually pointing in another direction.Only towards the end of 2003, on several occasions abroad, did Nujoma state his willingness to retire as Namibia’s President.But State House continued to remain tight lipped on the issue at home.Several events suggested that another term in office was not yet finally off the agenda.At the end of 2003 a demonstration was staged upon the initiative of some local traditional leaders
in Swapo’s Northern stronghold, who demanded that Nujoma should serve another term in office.When asked by a journalist from Reuters news agency if he would consider standing again if asked, Sam Nujoma reportedly responded: “One cannot ignore the call by the people, because the people are the ones who make the final decision.”Subsequently, when addressing the members of the Central Committee of the Swapo Youth League (considered to be among his strongest supporters) during a closed session as late as March 2004, his speech similarly seemed to suggest a willingness to consider a fourth term.And yet again, callers to the local Oshiwambo Language Service of the NBC used the live programme during the same month to mobilise in an obviously organised manner for a march in support of a fourth term.Only when the Swapo Central Committee and its Politburo was about to meet early April for discussing the proposals for a party candidate for the presidential elections in mid-November 2004 did the incumbent declare his decision to stand down.This happened behind closed doors and related directly to the internal opposition from within the inner circle of the Swapo leadership towards another term in office.Nujoma had by then clearly mobilised a core faction willing to support him for own gains and had placed some of these satellites in strategically relevant positions.However, it was increasingly evident that the pushing through of this agenda would come at a high price, putting the party’s cohesion under serious constraint.A reportedly visibly devastated and stressed President hence seemed to accept the party interest as above his personal ambitions at the Central Committee meeting on April 2 and 3, 2004.As a result of this set of events, ‘plan B’ (or more accurately, ‘plan P’) became operational with the determined promotion of Hifikepunye Pohamba as the President’s closest confidante within the party’s inner circle.Rather early during the third term, Nujoma had made strategically relevant recruitments for this.Swapo’s third post-independence Congress held at the end of August 2002 turned out to be of crucial relevance.In his opening speech, President Nujoma addressed the more than 500 delegates with highly personal praise of Pohamba, which was designed to establish from the start why he should be elected as the new Vice-President of the party, a position to which he was duly elected by Congress when no other contender was put forward.By this act, the die was cast.Yet, it was to turn out to be a longer and more winding road to reach this goal than most of those involved had assumed at the time.Those confronted with the much harsher realities of political rivalries and power struggles did certainly include the President himself, who had done his best to play it safe and subsequently had to endure some sobering experiences: On the same occasion, Nujoma had also nominated the new Secretary General to replace Pohamba in this post.In the person of Ngarikutuke Tjiriange, the Minister of Justice since Independence, he had selected another reliable ally and old hand from the inner circle of the exile days.In his place, one of Nujoma’s staunch followers of the younger generation, Albert Kawana, took over the justice portfolio and proceeded to prepare for the eventualities of a national referendum to pave the way for a fourth term.Hence a ‘double strategy’ characterised most of Nujoma’s third term until early April 2004, when he finally gave in to the growing inner-party pressure and signalled his (presumably enforced) willingness to vacate office for the successor of his personal choice – who then had to be pushed through at high costs, which created so far unprecedented rivalries and purges within the governing party.Sam Nujoma defines his retirement as a move to the party headquarters (which arguably is not exactly meeting the definition of retirement and will almost certainly ensure his further influence and control over decisive policy matters).It is therefore another question to what extent his exit from the office as Head of State is indeed a departure from the commanding heights of national politics.The exit of the ‘old man’ was clearly sweetened by a wide range of both material and non-material incentives.This might have contributed to securing the desired ‘happy ending’, which resulted in heaps of praise generously dished out to the President when leaving office on Independence Day in the presence of numerous colleagues, mainly from neighbouring and other African countries, who celebrated him as a role model for democratic Africa.In his last battle in office, waged over the choice of his successor, Nujoma had once again – like on so many other occasions before, during exile and since Independence – kept the upper hand and enjoyed the ultimate say.While he might personally consider his departure from the presidency a defeat, he has retired as the leader of a winning team.Again, he might have vacated the presidential office in March 2005 with an internally divided party, which had been tested to its limits over the issue of the next President and with at best a mixed record in terms of socio-economic achievements.Yet, in contrast, he has clearly mobilised wider support among the electorate for his course.His ultimately own (though not necessarily completely voluntary) decision to retire as Namibia’s first Head of State might provide him with an aura that is denied to other African presidents who have clung on determinedly to power.Sam Nujoma might have chosen the appropriate moment in time to save his reputation and to enter the textbooks used for Namibian generations to come as the elder statesman who had brought about to a large extent the Namibian nation.Given his strategically central role as president of the party, much depends on his further political behaviour.If acting wisely, he could even symbolise parallels to the erstwhile German nation builder and Chancellor Count Bismarck, who managed to consolidate the (still imperial) empire during the second half of the 19th century in a decisive manner.The near future will offer evidence to what extent the famous cartoon of March 1890 of the pilot Bismarck leaving the ship of office (published in Punch one hundred years before Sam Nujoma was sworn into office as President of the Republic of Namibia), drawn in honour of the retiring Chancellor, might be considered similarly relevant to pay tribute and respect to Sam Nujoma.If this indeed would become an applicable analogy (with all limitations such analogies have), the winner would clearly be not only the man, but even more so the people and nation of Namibia.This article summarises a chapter to a book on Presidential Transition and the Role of Ex-Presidents in African Countries, edited by Henning Melber and Roger Southall and published by the South African Human Sciences Research Council.Dr Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.Even then, Nujoma (by now approaching his mid-70s) seemed reluctant to vacate office and indicated his willingness to continue if the people were to ask him.Some people did.But a lot of others did not.This article summarises the background to the presidential transition we would subsequently witness. SOCIAL movements, and even more so anti-colonial mass movements, ought to be a collective effort to contribute to social change (and actually are).But they are also shaped by personal factors and the impact of individuals.The degree of identification and congruence, behind which both the individual and the specific internal dynamics of an organisation tend to fade away, is exemplified and illustrated by Sam Nujoma’s memoirs ‘Where Others Wavered’.This story ends with Namibian Independence and hence the return from exile.It puts emphasis on the years of armed combat and is reduced mainly to a ‘struggle literature’ of an ideologically dubious and thematically narrow focus.As such, these remembrances can be considered a kind of official, ‘nation-building’ history – at least for the time being, in the absence of any counter-claims and challenges to the dominant patterns of ‘patriotic hi
story’ emerging.The historiography on both the man and the movement reveals an interesting view on the mindset of freedom fighters.It offers access to some reasoning and the underlying driving forces, which otherwise might be not understood.The impact of this patriotic history, which at the same time casts the ‘father of the nation’ in a particular mould, should not be underestimated.Sam Nujoma has not only been Swapo, but also the mirror image and figure for identification and admiration of the dominant post-colonial political culture.His story is the story of Swapo.And as the Swapo version of Namibian history, it is at the same time part and parcel of the ideological core composing the official post-colonial Namibia.Nujoma managed to survive all internal power struggles taking place in the movement and hence showed his qualities as a leader, able to remain in charge.But these qualities are not necessarily founded upon democratic convictions as the major priorities for success.In consequence, it is not surprising that the type of statesmanship displayed by President Nujoma did not always respect democratic principles.Nor did it always meet minimum standards of diplomacy.There were increasingly alarming public performances, particularly since the mid-1990s, which revealed growing intolerance with regard to dissenting views and a certain self-righteousness, both at home and in the international arena.One might qualify this (at least rhetorical) radicalisation as an outcome of the arrogance of power, encouraged by general public approval and widespread consent to his role, further supported by the absence of any initiatives towards corrective measures from inside party ranks or the Cabinet.Indeed, from following Nujoma’s career as President and observing his visible behavioural changes during the years in office, it seems no exaggeration to arrive at the conclusion that autocrats are not genetically determined in their personality structure.They seem at least as much created by sycophants and those unable to openly resist dictatorial tendencies and who play along for a variety of reasons, one of which is the fear of losing their own access to green pastures.Hence the idea for a third term in office was supported and implemented by a wide range of stakeholders.These included relevant agents of class and others outside of Swapo, who preferred to keep the ‘devil they knew’ in power rather than opting for an unknown alternative.There emerged, in fact, a broad social consensus on the third-term issue.It included some who were not within or who had even been hostile to Swapo, who concluded that Nujoma had done a decent enough job and should hence remain in power as a known variable.Given this emergent consensus spanning the party and wider Namibian society that Nujoma should remain on as President, the third term in office was never seriously divisive.The formal procedures did not require any legally dubious procedures.Based upon its two-thirds majority, Swapo was authorised and able to pass the necessary amendment without formally offending the Constitution.Nor was this a major dispute in the public sphere, which would have provoked serious tests of acceptability.However, the way the third-term issue was handled by the party internally seemed to suggest that not everybody was in full support.As a result, the modalities employed to seek party consensus over Nujoma’s candidacy were rather dubious.The second Swapo Congress since Independence took place at the end of May 1997.It was at least informally dominated by the issue of the third term.But while everyone had expected an open vote, which would result in favour of Sam Nujoma, the Congress resolved instead to call for an Extraordinary Congress the following year with the aim having delegates make an official decision at that point.While this move was presented by Swapo as a procedural formality, observers agreed that it reflected strong internal differences.Perhaps to take advantage of this postponement of the decision, Nujoma’s opening speech to the Congress had all the features of a mobilisation campaign to rally support behind his drive for another term.Meanwhile, in another move, which in retrospect appears to assume considerable significance, Hifikepunye Pohamba (then Minister for Fisheries and known to be among the closest and most loyal supporters of the President) was in the absence of another candidate appointed to fill the vacant position as the party’s General Secretary.In contrast to the indicated procedure, Swapo’s Central Committee in May 1998 announced its decision to instruct the party’s MPs to change the Constitution for the first time to allow the party president as Head of State a third term in office.The party’s new Secretary-General officially confirmed this intention during a parliamentary debate in the National Assembly in July 1998.The scheduled Extraordinary Swapo Congress, which took place at the end of August the same year, no longer had any reason to discuss the matter.The party leadership reasoned, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that a decision had already been taken at the Congress a year earlier, and that hence there would be no need devote time to the issue.Instead, the delegates were given the task of dealing with a total of 71 amendments to the party’s many remaining anachronistic rules from the ‘struggle days’ with the aim of enhancing internal efficiency.Pohamba went on to justify the constitutional change providing for a third term in a speech televised countrywide in September 1998.Subsequently, Prime Minister Hage Geingob submitted the motion to Parliament in October 1998.Thereafter, Swapo utilised its two-thirds majority in both the National Assembly and the National Council to adopt Namibia’s first constitutional amendment.Signed by the President on December 7, 1998, the Namibian Constitution First Amendment Act, 1998 (Act 34 of 1998), stipulates under sub-article 134(3) that “the first President of Namibia may hold office as President for three terms”.Whether Nujoma was planning to vacate office in March 2005 remained for long an open question: Evidence was actually pointing in another direction.Only towards the end of 2003, on several occasions abroad, did Nujoma state his willingness to retire as Namibia’s President.But State House continued to remain tight lipped on the issue at home.Several events suggested that another term in office was not yet finally off the agenda.At the end of 2003 a demonstration was staged upon the initiative of some local traditional leaders in Swapo’s Northern stronghold, who demanded that Nujoma should serve another term in office.When asked by a journalist from Reuters news agency if he would consider standing again if asked, Sam Nujoma reportedly responded: “One cannot ignore the call by the people, because the people are the ones who make the final decision.”Subsequently, when addressing the members of the Central Committee of the Swapo Youth League (considered to be among his strongest supporters) during a closed session as late as March 2004, his speech similarly seemed to suggest a willingness to consider a fourth term.And yet again, callers to the local Oshiwambo Language Service of the NBC used the live programme during the same month to mobilise in an obviously organised manner for a march in support of a fourth term.Only when the Swapo Central Committee and its Politburo was about to meet early April for discussing the proposals for a party candidate for the presidential elections in mid-November 2004 did the incumbent declare his decision to stand down.This happened behind closed doors and related directly to the internal opposition from within the inner circle of the Swapo leadership towards another term in office.Nujoma had by then clearly mobilised a core faction willing to support him for own gains and had placed some of these satellites in strategically relevant positions.However, it was increasingly evident that the pushing through of this agenda would come at a high price, putting the party’s cohesion under serious constraint.A reportedly visibly devastated and stressed President hence seeme
d to accept the party interest as above his personal ambitions at the Central Committee meeting on April 2 and 3, 2004.As a result of this set of events, ‘plan B’ (or more accurately, ‘plan P’) became operational with the determined promotion of Hifikepunye Pohamba as the President’s closest confidante within the party’s inner circle.Rather early during the third term, Nujoma had made strategically relevant recruitments for this.Swapo’s third post-independence Congress held at the end of August 2002 turned out to be of crucial relevance.In his opening speech, President Nujoma addressed the more than 500 delegates with highly personal praise of Pohamba, which was designed to establish from the start why he should be elected as the new Vice-President of the party, a position to which he was duly elected by Congress when no other contender was put forward.By this act, the die was cast.Yet, it was to turn out to be a longer and more winding road to reach this goal than most of those involved had assumed at the time.Those confronted with the much harsher realities of political rivalries and power struggles did certainly include the President himself, who had done his best to play it safe and subsequently had to endure some sobering experiences: On the same occasion, Nujoma had also nominated the new Secretary General to replace Pohamba in this post.In the person of Ngarikutuke Tjiriange, the Minister of Justice since Independence, he had selected another reliable ally and old hand from the inner circle of the exile days.In his place, one of Nujoma’s staunch followers of the younger generation, Albert Kawana, took over the justice portfolio and proceeded to prepare for the eventualities of a national referendum to pave the way for a fourth term.Hence a ‘double strategy’ characterised most of Nujoma’s third term until early April 2004, when he finally gave in to the growing inner-party pressure and signalled his (presumably enforced) willingness to vacate office for the successor of his personal choice – who then had to be pushed through at high costs, which created so far unprecedented rivalries and purges within the governing party. Sam Nujoma defines his retirement as a move to the party headquarters (which arguably is not exactly meeting the definition of retirement and will almost certainly ensure his further influence and control over decisive policy matters).It is therefore another question to what extent his exit from the office as Head of State is indeed a departure from the commanding heights of national politics.The exit of the ‘old man’ was clearly sweetened by a wide range of both material and non-material incentives.This might have contributed to securing the desired ‘happy ending’, which resulted in heaps of praise generously dished out to the President when leaving office on Independence Day in the presence of numerous colleagues, mainly from neighbouring and other African countries, who celebrated him as a role model for democratic Africa.In his last battle in office, waged over the choice of his successor, Nujoma had once again – like on so many other occasions before, during exile and since Independence – kept the upper hand and enjoyed the ultimate say.While he might personally consider his departure from the presidency a defeat, he has retired as the leader of a winning team.Again, he might have vacated the presidential office in March 2005 with an internally divided party, which had been tested to its limits over the issue of the next President and with at best a mixed record in terms of socio-economic achievements.Yet, in contrast, he has clearly mobilised wider support among the electorate for his course.His ultimately own (though not necessarily completely voluntary) decision to retire as Namibia’s first Head of State might provide him with an aura that is denied to other African presidents who have clung on determinedly to power.Sam Nujoma might have chosen the appropriate moment in time to save his reputation and to enter the textbooks used for Namibian generations to come as the elder statesman who had brought about to a large extent the Namibian nation.Given his strategically central role as president of the party, much depends on his further political behaviour.If acting wisely, he could even symbolise parallels to the erstwhile German nation builder and Chancellor Count Bismarck, who managed to consolidate the (still imperial) empire during the second half of the 19th century in a decisive manner.The near future will offer evidence to what extent the famous cartoon of March 1890 of the pilot Bismarck leaving the ship of office (published in Punch one hundred years before Sam Nujoma was sworn into office as President of the Republic of Namibia), drawn in honour of the retiring Chancellor, might be considered similarly relevant to pay tribute and respect to Sam Nujoma.If this indeed would become an applicable analogy (with all limitations such analogies have), the winner would clearly be not only the man, but even more so the people and nation of Namibia.This article summarises a chapter to a book on Presidential Transition and the Role of Ex-Presidents in African Countries, edited by Henning Melber and Roger Southall and published by the South African Human Sciences Research Council.Dr Henning Melber is Research Director at The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden.