One of the biggest losers at the polls was the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) fronted by McHenry Venaani, which lost 11 seats and the pleasure of being the official opposition.
At the same time, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) and others will not be returning to parliament. Venaani will return with only four other party members, while the ruling Swapo was hit with the loss of 12 seats.
This has claimed the heads of nine ministers who will not return to the parliament. They include ministers of mines and energy, higher education, technology and innovation international relations and cooperation defence and veterans affairs, presidential affairs minister, industrial relations and employment creation, urban and rural development, education, arts and culture and National Planning Commission director general.
Political analyst Henning Melber describes these results as a reflection of the electorate’s desire for alternatives, although Swapo retained dominance in its northern strongholds.
“The election results, as disputed as they are, have confirmed that the electorate in tendency realigns. The new kids on the block made inroads, albeit not so much in Swapo’s northern strongholds, while the previous official opposition is now replaced by new parties,” he says.
This shift comes as older opposition parties, like the PDM, suffered a dramatic decline from 16 parliamentary seats to five, and smaller parties such as the Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters (NEFF), the National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo), the All People’s Party (APP), and the Republican Party (RP) of Namibia now hold only one seat each.
Meanwhile, the Christian Democratic Voice Party failed to secure any parliamentary representation.
“The PDM has reached an expiry date, while Swapo needs to eat humble pie despite having survived a similar fate as the ANC. Politics will enter a new stage. Interestingly, while the AR scored well, Job Amupanda did not.
“But Itula did better than the IPC. This seems to suggest that voters opted for the best alternative in terms of standing chances to win rather than to align parties and presidential candidates in their votes. The same applies to Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, who scored better than the party,” Melber says.
The results are highly contested, with the IPC leading a group of parties aiming to fight the results in court. “All now depends on what the court has to say. There are sufficient reasons to wait and see,” Melber says.
The IPC and AR are the major winners of this year’s elections, claiming 20 and six seats, respectively. Their victory is expected to usher in a new dawn of robust debate, keeping the ruling party on its toes.
The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) managed to garner one additional seat, bringing its total number of seats to five. The National Democratic Party (NDP), led by Martin Lukato, and the Body of Christ party, led by Festus Thomas, also made their debut in parliament with one seat each.
Meanwhile, the NEFF said it doesn’t make sense for the party to obtain one parliamentary seat only. The party, which currently holds two seats in the National Assembly, lost one seat, results from the 2024 presidential and National Assembly elections show.
“Our party was deregistered, and we registered and we worked hard. We campaigned hard across the country, and we even had many people who said they would vote for us. “It doesn’t make sense that we only got one seat,” NEFF president Epafras Mukwiilongo said.
He added that the party would support the IPC-led legal challenge against the outcome of the elections. “We are not going to accept it. We are standing with the other parties to fight this,” Mukwiilongo said.
Meanwhile, the NEFF’s sister party in South Africa, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) raised concerns over irregularities such as long queues, ballot shortages, technical glitches, and logistical failures reported during the elections. The party said such reports make it hard to welcome and congratulate Nandi-Ndaitwah.
“The reported suppression of voters and blatant logistical failures reflect a dangerous trend where ruling parties, particularly former liberation movements, resort to undemocratic tactics to cling to power,” an EFF statement reads.
Henk Mudge, the president of the RP said he doesn’t care about the outcome of the elections. “I don’t even care what the results look like. This election was a sham. It was rigged. I think out of the nine elections I have been involved with since independence, this was the worst ever. We had rigging before, but not on the scale that happened now,” he said.
The RP, which is also part of the group of parties taking the Electoral Commission of Namibia to court, is confident that they will win the case and that there will be a re-election. “And then that one is going to be free and fair, which I want to believe it will be, because certain measures will be put in place to ensure it’s free and fair.