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Windhoek, Namibia | AFP | Namibia voted in a general election on Wednesday with the ruling party facing a rare challenge to its dominance, after a recession and a corruption scandal fuelled popular discontent.
President Hage Geingob’s bid for re-election has been hit by growing anger at his South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), which has ruled the sparsely populated nation since independence from South Africa in 1990.
But analysts believe the opposition remains too weak and ethnically divided to put up a credible fight in the presidential and parliamentary vote.
SWAPO continues to bask in the legacy of the liberation struggle in the mineral-rich country, where the Namib desert stretches along 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) of Atlantic coastline.
However a SWAPO member standing as Namibia’s first independent candidate, ex-dentist Panduleni Itula, 62, has rallied support among unemployed young people.
Geingob is still widely expected to win, but not with the dominant 87 percent of votes he garnered in 2014.
The president was the first to vote at Mandume primary school in the capital Windhoek on Wednesday morning.
“Let (Namibians) come out and peacefully participate in their democratic right,” Geingob told reporters.
While the incumbent was confident of victory, he promised he would accept defeat if he lost.
“This is not the war, this is not the end of the world. We are just exercising our democratic right,” he added.
– ‘I really want my vote to count’ –
As polls closed, voters were still lined up to cast their ballot at some polling stations, despite the use of electronic voting machines.
Namibia was the first country in Africa to introduce electronic voting machines in 2014.
The machines — meant to speed up voting — have been heavily criticised by the opposition, which claims the absence of paper records raises the prospect of fraud.
But the electoral tribunal threw out an application by Itula to ban the machines.
First time voter Kaino Mbeeli bemoaned the slow pace of queues, saying the line had hardly moved since he arrived.
“I am not willing to go home without voting… Because I really want my vote to count so I’m just going to stay here until my vote is heard,” said the 25-year-old medical graduate.
– ‘Fish rot’ scandal –
The SWAPO government took another hit this month when Wikileaks released documents alleging corruption in the fishing industry — its second most important sector after mining.
The “fish rot” files suggested that government officials took bribes from an Icelandic firm in exchange for continued access to Namibia’s fishing grounds.
Two ministers resigned over the scandal, which allegedly involved 150 million Namibian dollars (US$10 million). A former fisheries minister was briefly detained over the weekend.
Geingob has denied any involvement and said the timing was intended to damage his campaign.
The president has also come under fire for pumping money into a bloated administration and granting contracts to foreign companies rather than boosting the local economy.
“We want to remove corruption out of our society so that everyone gets a little share from the resources we have in our country,” 40-year old pastor John Nanub told AFP.
– Weakened opposition –
SWAPO’s historic challenger, the Popular Democratic Party (PDM), has been hurt by its affiliation with apartheid South Africa before independence, a legacy that continues to deter voters.
PDM presidential candidate and 2014 runner-up McHenry Venaani said the results were likely to be very close.
“Ten years ago I wouldn’t have dared voting here, people would have stoned me,” he told reporters after voting in Katutura, an impoverished Windhoek suburb.
Venaani came second in 2014 with less than five percent of the vote. Despite doubling its support base, the PDM won only five of 96 seats at the National Assembly.
SWAPO meanwhile has enjoyed a two-thirds majority in parliament since 1994.
“This one (election) is slightly different,” Graham Hopwood, director at Namibia’s Institute for Public Policy Research told AFP.
“Although I think SWAPO is still in a dominant position, we have had a three-year recession now since 2016, and we have very high unemployment, high inequality, so one would think that would affect the voting patterns and the election in general.”
Around 1.4 million of the desert nation’s 2.45 million population were registered to vote. Half are younger than 37 and many were born after independence.
In 2014, results were released the day after polling.
