Non-Namibian votes in Swakop

A 41-YEAR-OLD South African, who is a permanent resident of Namibia, voted in the general elections last year as well as in the Swakopmund constituency by-elections in May.

The Namibian brought this to the attention of the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) last week, questioning how a non-Namibian managed to register as a voter and participate in the elections.

Both ECN director Paul Isaak and legal adviser Heidi Jacobs were not aware of the incident, nor, according to their knowledge, is there a record of non-Namibians voting or being found voting in local elections.

Both were straight to the point though that only Namibian citizens with proof of citizenship qualify to vote in any national elections and that there were no exceptions to the rule, even if a person has been living in the country for over 25 years, before or after independence, and is registered as a permanent resident.

“There are no loopholes in the law. There are conditions that need to be met for persons to prove they are Namibian citizens. We will have to investigate this matter and see how this person managed to get through. Maybe someone was not doing their work properly,” Jacobs said.

Isaak said there are no “grey areas” in the law and that a non-Namibian will not be able to vote, unless he slipped through under false pretenses.

“One cannot stop people that managed to slip through dishonestly. If such matters are identified, it must be reported to the ECN. It is a criminal offence,” said Isaak.

Ambrosius Marsh is a community leader in Swakopmund DRC informal settlement who has been active in pressurising the Swakopmund council to formalise the shanty town. He lives in a shack with his Namibian wife, to whom he has been married for 16 years.

Marsh told this newspaper that he came to former South West Africa in 1976. He was born in Upington and moved with his mother to Swakopmund when he was two years old. She worked as a nurse at a clinic in Kuisebmond at Walvis Bay but they lived in Swakopmund where he also attended primary school. He started secondary school but dropped out in Grade 8. During this time he got permanent residency.

He got work as a mechanic in Swakopmund and also did a three-year course at a Bible school in Durban, South Africa. He returned to Namibia where he was involved in church and community work.

Marsh married a Namibian woman in 1999 and eventually decided to apply for Namibian citizenship in 2011, which was eventually approved by the home affairs ministry in February this year. He is required to get a letter from the South African government accepting his renunciation of his SA citizenship, then present it to the Namibian government and he will receive a Namibian citizenship certificate.

The Namibian saw the letter of approval from home affairs but even this letter does not qualify a person as a Namibian citizen, nor give them a right to vote, according to Jacobs.

“You must have Namibian citizenship. A person applying for citizenship will only become a citizen once they get the certificate,” she said.

Last year though Marsh went to register as a voter at the registration office in the DRC informal settlement. He used a pink ‘non-Namibian’ marked ID instead of the blue Namibian ID.

“I took my ID to be registered before the last presidential elections. I registered like everyone else and they accepted my registration. No one questioned or stopped me,” he said.

The Namibian has his voters registration number and confirmation from ECN sources that he had in fact voted at the general elections and this year’s Swakopmund by-election.

Asked why he only voted now and not at previous general elections, he simply said: “I don’t know. I guess it was my own stupidity.”

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