THE start of the Madlanga Commission of inquiry into the relationship between law enforcement, business, politics and the criminal underworld of South Africa should be seen as a warning to Namibia’s ruling party and the manner in which it raises funds for campaigns.
The party’s current system of raising funds appears to be the most obvious and lethal threat to Namibia’s sovereignty and Swapo’s own survival should the liberation movement not arrest the situation.
The central figures in the two major corruption cases currently before the courts, Fishrot and Namcor, were at some point celebrated within the party primarily because of their generosity towards it.
A quick survey of media reports on corruption allegations, especially about shadowy businesspeople leeching State contracts, also shows that the majority of the personalities being named are known donors to the ruling party.
Even the alleged spat between Swapo president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and secretary general Sophia Shaningwa, a few months ago, has its roots in the party’s 2017 and 2022 elective congresses.
Media reports indicate that the animosity between Swapo’s two most powerful figures comes from the fact that Shaningwa is not ‘paid what is owed to her’ after delivering Nandi-Ndaitwah at the 2022 congress and paving the way for her march to State House.
At the heart of this preordained destruction is Swapo’s unregulated funding of candidates in the party’s internal electoral contests, like congresses and electoral colleges (The Pot). These have become breeding grounds for unscrupulous characters to effect state capture, for their own personal expediency, be it political or economic. The situation is slowly turning Namibia into a failed state.
The pervasiveness of money in internal campaigns also removes the ability of real grassroots party members to rise through the ranks organically. If the status quo is allowed to continue, the party’s top echelons might be made up largely of careerists with no constituency, only in it for themselves.
Only political party funding at the national level is regulated in Namibia. However, the ruling party’s internal contests, which are supposed to be democratic, have become proxy platforms for business personalities to take over the running of the country vicariously through the politicians they finance and end up remote controlling.
This control appears to be influencing government agency decisions. It is so bad that ministries and agencies are reluctant to take action in cases where the law has been broken but the culprits cannot be dealt with because they allegedly contributed to the funding of a particular politician’s campaign.
Swapo insiders have complained to The Issue that Swapo internal contests have become a cesspool of corruption, characterised by vote buying and brown envelopes, and voting is no longer based on substance.
The 2022 congress, which saw current Swapo and State president, Nandi-Ndaitwah triumph as Geingob’s heir apparent, took allegations of vote buying and the party’s internal contests to a whole new level.
The alleged bribing of congress delegates was not enough; the delegates had to be quarantined on farms, secret locations, with their phones confiscated weeks before the main event. Apparently, the fear was that delegates would be called and convinced not to vote the way they initially intended. The other fear was that the candidate’s or slate’s opponent might offer the delegates more money than what their ‘captors’ promised. The solution was to keep people in captivity to protect them from the outside influence until they vote.
This has also led to allegations that the party’s regional coordinators are manipulating the party’s structure, restructuring contests and processes, to suit a specific candidate, at the congress. Those who emerge from the restructuring processes end up attending congress and the electoral college.
Transporting, holding people in captivity and paying for the votes costs millions of dollars. This money comes from the ‘hard-working black businesspeople’ who curiously hang around at those marathon Swapo events, such as congresses and electoral colleges.
Are they perhaps there to look after their investments and ensure they have a handsome return?
The question needing answering is why should an internal contest require millions, while the party can simply allow candidates to present and plead their case once at congress and let the delegates vote? Now the party has to deal with long, drawn-out internal campaigns in 14 regions, which require money from the contesting candidates to fund the logistical demands.
IN THE BEGINNING
In 2004, Swapo held an extraordinary congress to elect who was going to be the party’s presidential candidate during that year’s national assembly and presidential elections. The party’s then president, Sam Nujoma, had served 15 years as the country’s president and was not eligible to stand again.
Three candidates emerged in Hifikepunye Pohamba, Nahas Angula and Hidipo Hamutenya. Nujoma backed Pohamba at the extraordinary congress. This comes after media reports, at the time, stated that the Swapo politburo overruled Nujoma’s motion to have Pohamba endorsed as the party’s candidate unopposed. The politburo at the time deemed Nujoma’s motion as incompatible with the party’s democratic ideals. Nujoma then conceded to the politburo’s wishes.
Pohamba eventually emerged victorious in a run-off with Hamutenya. Those in the know say it took a behind-the-scenes deal with Nahas Angula’s camp to back Pohamba in the run-off. As a result, Angula was rewarded with the Prime Minister’s role in the Pohamba administration of 2005. Angula was largely seen as the people’s choice, with many neutrals supporting him, and had it not been for Nujoma’s backing of Pohamba, ‘Katusha’, as he is known, was set for victory.
STRONG-ARM TACTICS
Pohamba’s victory set in motion events that would change Swapo forever. The party would come to the brink of implosion, and a splinter party, the Rally for Democracy and Change (RDP), was formed after Swapo’s ordinary congress in 2007.
Nujoma was blamed for the breakaway, and his detractors accused him of heavy-handed tactics to ensure that his candidate won in 2004. Nujoma was accused of using state machinery, patronage appointments and plain old intimidation to secure Pohamba’s victory. Some also accused him of playing regional and tribal politics. Terms like Omusati and Ohangwena clique surfaced to imply that Nujoma and his supporters had it in for Hamutenya, who was from the Ohangwena region. The irony is that Pohamba, Nujoma’s pick, is also from Ohangwena.
MONEY POLITICS
Nujoma was not accused of buying votes for Pohamba, and during his tenure as Swapo president and the business people close to him were not known to be active participants in party activities.
Then came 2012.
That year saw an ordinary elective congress re-elect Hage Geingob as party vice president and Pohamba’s replacement as Swapo’s presidential candidate in the 2014 National Assembly and Presidential Elections.
The period between 2012 and 2017 saw an influx of businesspeople entering the Swapo internal contests fray.
Business people were all of a sudden a permanent fixture at congress and central committee openings. They were clear and open about funding specific candidates at congresses and electoral colleges.
The emergence of businesspeople in party activities at the time was linked to Geingob and allegations that his campaigns were funded by them.
Allegations of vote buying started surfacing. Some of the stories, about the 2012 congress, were that delegates from regions were entertained with braai meat and alcohol. They also received ‘pocket money’, while others also got Black Friday shopping vouchers. The amounts vary between N$1 500 to N$10 000. The money did not come from the party but from those individual candidates participating in congress. This is the period when slates or block voting started taking root within the party.
The period between Geingob’s victory at the 2012 congress and his being sworn in as president in 2015 saw Swapo in turmoil. There was strong opposition, from within the party ranks, against Geingob’s businessman friends and their involvement in party activities.
Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) MP Immanuel Nashinge, at the time a Swapo Party Youth League leader, went as far as authoring a newspaper opinion piece where he said State House was turned into a “club house”.
The question of vote buying was also discussed at the 2020 Swapo introspection meeting, as one of the factors destroying the party. The postmortem meeting was held after the party’s poor showing in the 2019 National Assembly and Presidential Elections, where Geingob’s popularity took a nosedive from 87% in 2014 to 56% in 2019, and Swapo lost 14 seats and its two-thirds majority in the National Assembly.
Media reports accused Geingob’s businessman friends of influencing the appointment of ministers and permanent secretaries (now executive directors) with the ultimate aim of forcing for appointment of people who will facilitate the award of lucrative tenders to the said group of business people.
The 2017 congress also saw similar allegations of vote buying and influence peddling, coupled with claims that Fishrot money was used to sway voters at that congress. In the final analysis, Swapo’s internal turmoil and its ability to bring the government into paralysis will not go away until the party changes its approach to internal party contests.
