Southern African liberation movements have lost their political mojo | opinions

On December 3, the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) announced that Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah of the ruling South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) party has emerged victorious from the disputed presidential election held from 27 to 30 November.

He said Nandi-Ndaitwah won 57% of the vote, comfortably defeating his main rival, Panduleni Itula of the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) party, who received about 26%. As such, Nandi-Ndaitwah, a former freedom fighter and current Vice President, is now poised to make history as Namibia’s first female leader.

Meanwhile, however, his SWAPO party disappointed in the parliamentary elections, barely holding onto its majority by winning 51 of the 96 available seats. In comparison, the party had won 63 seats and a comfortable majority in the 2019 elections.

Despite retaining the presidency, SWAPO, the former liberation movement that has ruled Namibia since it gained independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, is clearly losing its electoral appeal. The party achieved its best result in the 2014 election, securing 80 percent of the vote and a supermajority with 77 seats, but has been on a downward trajectory since then.

There are many reasons why Namibians seem to be slowly drifting away from the movement that secured their liberation.

Thirty-four years after independence, SWAPO is struggling to tackle a multidimensional poverty rate of 43%, address high levels of unemployment and provide essential services such as water and sanitation to long-marginalized communities. Although the World Bank classifies Namibia as an upper-middle-income country, it simultaneously identifies it as the second most unequal country in the world, according to the Gini index.

Over the years, Namibia has established a dual economy that has adversely affected the socio-economic aspirations of the poor and the unemployed: an economic structure that has a highly developed modern sector alongside an informal sector that emphasizes mainly subsistence .

This, along with an apparent increase in corruption at the government level, which became evident in the $650 Million Fishrot Scandal involving high-ranking officials within SWAPO, has turned many Namibians, and especially poor youth, most affected by high unemployment and lack of upward mobility, against the ruling party.

SWAPO, once seen by many in Namibia as electorally invincible and synonymous with the Namibian state, is now in rapid and possibly irreversible decline.

And in the Southern African region, the Namibian Liberation Movement turned political party is not alone in this situation.

In fact, a liberation movement in the region has already been removed from power.

In the October 30 elections, the citizens of Botswana consigned the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) – the former liberation movement that had ruled the country since independence in September 1966 – to the polls. the opposition After 58 uninterrupted years in power, the party won just four seats in this year’s elections.

The BDP’s defeat came because of years of poor economic growth and an unemployment rate of 26.7 percent that turned the population against the government. Growing allegations of corruption targeting the BDP’s Mokgweetsi Masisi, who served as Botswana’s fifth president from 2018 to 2024, also did not help the party’s electoral chances.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of white minority rule in April 1994. In the general election in May this year, the liberation movement turned the ruling party’s vote share fell to just over 40 percent, a sharp decline from the 57 percent they achieved in 2019. Twenty years ago, in The 2004, the party had the support of 69.9% of South African voters.

As with the BDP in Botswana, the gradual decline of the ANC is linked to its inability to deal with unemployment, shortcomings in service delivery and allegations of corruption directed at its high-ranking members. Throughout the 2010s, corruption involving senior ANC leaders damaged the party’s credibility and crippled state-owned enterprises, leading to losses of approximately $100 billion, equivalent to a third of gross domestic product ( GDP) of the country.

Over the years, millions of voters have distanced themselves from the ANC as the party has failed to ensure ethical governance and navigate the complex and evolving socio-economic challenges of contemporary South African society.

In other countries in the region, similar failures are plaguing former liberation movements that have long ruled and are turning to oppressive and undemocratic methods to maintain power.

Take the case of Mozambique.

On October 24, the Electoral Commission of Mozambique declared Daniel Chapo and his ruling party, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), the winners of the October 9 general elections. However, the electoral process was fundamentally flawed, marked by political assassinations, widespread irregularities and punitive restrictions on the right to freedom of expression and assembly.

Frelimo has been in power in Mozambique since the country gained independence from Portugal in June 1975, following a 10-year war for independence. However, he has not lived up to expectations and has retained the support of the Mozambican people after ruling the independent nation.

Today, only 40% of the population has access to the electricity grid. Between 2014/15 and 2019/20, the national poverty rate increased from 48.4% to 62.8%, with at least 95% of rural households falling into multidimensional poverty. To make matters worse, more than 80% of the workforce works in the informal sector, leaving millions of everyday Mozambicans without access to social protection.

Corruption is also widespread among the main members of Frelimo. In 2022, 11 senior government officials, including Armando Ndambi Guebuza, son of former President Armando Guebuza, were found guilty of a crime related to a $2 billion “hidden debt” scandal that resulted in the loss of hundreds of of millions of dollars in government guarantee. loans and caused an economic crisis in the country.

As a result, Frelimo appears to have no expectation of winning the majorities it has become accustomed to over the years in free and fair elections. Thus, it continuously tries to cover up its governance deficiencies through political violence and attacks on the electoral process.

In Tanzania, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party won an astonishing 98 percent of the seats in local elections on November 27. However, this electoral process was also characterized by arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, restrictions on freedom of expression and extrajudicial killings, including the killing of Ali Mohamed Kibaomember of the opposition Chadema party.

In Zimbabwe, too, the ruling ZANU-PF, another former liberation movement, has established a highly securitized state to maintain its tenuous grip on power. Since the nation gained independence in April 1980, ZANU-PF has consistently suppressed opposition voices and executed a succession of fraudulent elections, such as the harmonized elections in August 2023, mainly to circumvent the responsibility for their overwhelming incompetence.

Meanwhile, in Angola, the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) did everything possible to silence dissent and ensure its success in the August 2022 elections. Although these efforts , the MPLA managed to extend its decades governancehe did so by the narrowest margin of victory in history, implying that a seismic political shift could be around the corner.

Times have certainly changed, and it is clear that the former freedom fighters of southern Africa are not living up to the noble ideals of freedom imagined in colonial times.

A state of freedom that restricts the full expression of basic civic rights and disregards the right to life reflects shallow achievement.

Liberation that does not provide equitable and sufficient access to basic services, employment opportunities and economic empowerment is as degrading as the old reality of colonial subjugation.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.