Namibia’s ‘shambolic’ poll leaves citizens shaken and traumatised to the core

Trust in electoral authorities is in decline and the way the Namibian elections of 27 November were handled arguably demonstrates why and how trust has been undermined.

According to the Round 10 results for Namibia in the influential Afrobarometer survey, released earlier in 2024, over 50% of Namibian respondents indicated that they had little or no trust in the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN).

This sentiment reflects a general loss of trust in government institutions over the years, as measured by Afrobarometer.

Namibia’s return to a ballot paper-based voting system for the 2024 presidential and National Assembly elections has laid bare just how fragile electoral management remains in a country long considered among the leading lights on the African continent in terms of democratic processes and practice.

The 27 November elections were marred by a range of administrative, organisational, technical and logistical hiccups that have cast a dark cloud over the integrity of electoral systems and processes, the credibility of elections and the ECN itself.

These hiccups necessitated the extension of the voting day beyond the one-day legal norm, to two extra days, which have now become a basis for an electoral challenge of the official results announced almost a week after the elections, in early December.

The Body Shock

For many Namibians, including this writer, the experience on polling day was both frustrating and politically traumatising.

As an indication of just how frustrating the experience was, I joined a polling station queue at a shopping mall at Swakopmund, in the Erongo region, with my wife and two small children at 06h30am, expecting to have cast my vote by 09h00 or 10h00, given my experience of previous elections.

By then the queue was already a few hundred strong and by the time the polling station was to have opened, at 07h00, there were at least another 100 people already behind us.

That said, my wife and I voted and exited the polling station only at 20h05, nearly 14 hours after having joined the queue.
This experience played out at polling stations across many parts of the country, but mostly in those regions where opposition support is perceived to be strong.

What stoked the political trauma was the growing suspicion, voiced by people in the queue and increasingly by commentators throughout the day, that voter suppression was being attempted as word got around that the same issues were being experienced at polling stations in various parts of the country.

These issues were mainly: poor polling station planning and allocation per constituencies and regions; many polling stations not opening on time; long, slow-moving queues; election material deficiencies and shortages; ballot paper shortages; internet and election device malfunctioning; mobile polling stations opening late; mobile polling teams not arriving at some polling points; mobile polling teams leaving points before all people in the queues had cast their votes; poorly prepared polling teams; poor queue management; lack of clear, continuous communication and information on the developing situation; and inconsistent polling procedures in some polling stations.

The frustration and trauma were exacerbated with the announcement late on 28 November that voting would be extended, but controversially only in some places and regions, to 29 and 30 November.

By that point, misinformation, political smear campaigns and conspiracy theories had already thoroughly permeated the electoral information landscape, compounded by and filling a vacuum created by the long silences and communication missteps of the ECN.

Not only that, the elections day mess was playing out in a climate of suspicion surrounding the ECN’s apparent mishandling of the procurement of ballot paper printing services – a situation that introduced the viral notion that Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF was involved in efforts to rig the Namibian elections – by awarding the printing contract to a Johannesburg-based print company, Ren-Form CC, that has been implicated in procurement irregularities around the 2023 Zimbabwean elections.

The view that there might have been Zimbabwe ruling party involvement in an attempted rigging scheme has only grown stronger on the back of how the electoral processes played out on 27 November, as the list of issues experienced and observed were almost exactly what had transpired during the 2023 Zimbabwean elections, which have been roundly criticised and branded as not having been credible.

Suffice it to say, the experience of 27 November has been a body shock to Namibian society, which appears to have been shaken to the core by the realisation that Namibia’s electoral framework and infrastructure are easily susceptible to corruption.

ECN Failures Challenged

At the time of writing, the criticisms of the ECN had yet to abate.

On 9 December, political analyst Christiaan Keulder aptly noted what many have been voicing in the week since the conclusion of the elections: “Never in its democratic history has Namibia’s election management been this shambolic, and never before have citizens had to endure so much physical and emotional distress just to cast a vote. These elections have brought the nation to a crossroads, requiring it to reflect on the pathway of its democratic dispensation. It is simply impossible to have democracy without credible, free and fair elections.”

In the wake of 27 November, Keulder and others are calling for thorough investigation and reform of Namibia’s electoral framework and practices.

And, unsurprisingly, this call includes the sentiment that “it may take a court to decide whether or not the 2024 election was free and fair”.

It is a call that this writer supports.

That said, on 9 December, the new official opposition political party, the Independent Patriots for Change, filed an urgent application in the Electoral Court in the High Court of Namibia, to be granted access to “inspect the contents of the electoral materials pertaining to the 2024 National Assembly Election”, which would enable it to lodge an electoral challenge at some point.

This urgent application is set to be heard today.

While the outcome of this application remained unclear at the time of publication of this piece, what is clear is that Namibians’ belief, whatever it was, in the robustness of democratic processes and practices, such as elections, has been severely and irrevocably damaged.

We truly have reached a watershed moment.

It is what we do and allow to happen now that will determine the quality of our democracy going forward. – DM

• • Frederico Links is a Namibian journalist, policy researcher and freedom of expression and access to information advocate. This article was written for Intelwatch, an organisation dedicated to strengthening public oversight of state and private intelligence agencies in southern Africa and around the world.