Search for Geingob’s replacement starts

TOIVO NDJEBELA

WINDHOEK

Temperatures are set to spike within the ruling party Swapo this year, as it seeks to elect, at this year’s elective congress, a candidate to replace President Hage Geingob as head of state in 2025.

Proverbially, throats will be cut all year. After all, one man's death is another man's bread – especially in the political arena.

Internally, succession politics is Swapo’s Achilles heel. In 2004, the first time when the opportunity arose to democratically replace a sitting president – Sam Nujoma – skirmishes claimed Hidipo Hamutenya’s ministerial position just days before the congress.

His deputy in the foreign affairs ministry at the time, Kaire Mbuende, was ushered through the exit door with him.

When Hifikepunye Pohamba, a product of the fractious 2004 extraordinary congress left the Swapo presidency in 2015, ostensibly as a condition to receive his N$50 million from Mo Ibrahim for good leadership, another ordinary elective congress was held in 2017.

Pohamba donated the party presidency to Geingob in 2015, and the acting president consolidated his position ahead of 2017.

The aftermath of the 2017 congress saw the events of 2004 repeating themselves, when winner Geingob, who was already state president at the time, kicked Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana and Jerry Ekandjo out of his cabinet as soon as they were soundly beaten at congress where they sought to dislodge him.

It’s survival of the fittest stuff. The weak will fall by the wayside – with bloodied noses and licking their political wounds. The soap opera will play itself out again – perhaps this time with a blend of the usual suspects and new actors.

Power of incumbency

Although Geingob is in the twilight of his reign as state president, the power that organically comes with his position cannot be undermined.

Pohamba limped out of the 2004 congress victorious – after a tight second bout of voting – because he had the support of Nujoma, the state and party president at the time.

Without the president, Pohamba was persona non grata when juxtaposed with his rival at the time, Hidipo Hamutenya.

“This was the first succession of a presidential race in Swapo. Nujoma had been president since the founding of Swapo. It was divisive and it was explosive in the history of Swapo,” a party functionary recalled.

As it were, Pohamba became the party’s official candidate to contest as Swapo’s presidential candidate in the 2004 national election, but the party was left profusely bleeding internally like a sole survivor in a fatal road accident.

Hamutenya hanged around a bit, to overcome the shock of his unpredicted defeat, but later pulled himself together, packed up his bags and quit Swapo to form the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP).

Divisive congresses

At the ordinary elective congress in 2007, where Nujoma was to quit the party presidency after 47 years at the helm, Swapo needed to avoid repeating the destructive nature of the 2004 extraordinary congress.

“The same [2004 events] were nearly to be repeated if it was not for the infamous guided democracy concept pushed by the Swapo Party Youth League at the time,” a Swapo official said.

With Pohamba only in his second year of state presidency, there was no succession urgency at the 2007 congress, and Pohamba was duly elected as party president while Nujoma sailed off into relative obscurity.

In 2017, incumbent Geingob’s Harambee slate won everything on offer, before the Fishrot allegations exploded two years later.

Although records, in black and white, showed the movement of millions of dollars in relation to funding campaign activities, Geingob has flatly denied having benefited from the scandal that has landed some of his cronies, including his once blue-eyed boy Sacky Shanghala, behind bars.

Harambee fallout

Swapo did not use the five-year break to stitch the visible wounds sustained from the 2017 pound-for-pound battles. Both the victorious Team Harambee and their nemeses Team Swapo remain visible in spheres of Swapo politics – despite declarations after the congress that they would both cease existing.

Internal strife within the ruling Harambee faction did not help matters. The removal of Kunene governor Marius Sheya from the SPYL national executive committee towards the tail-end of 2021 was the most glaring evidence of that fallout.

Talk is also rife that Geingob’s support for his deputy in the party, Vice-President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, has progressively waned.

“He does not support Netumbo to succeed him the same way Pohamba did for him. It is being said that Geingob prefers Frans Kapofi for the presidency,” a Team Harambee source said, although Kapofi had previously dismissed having such ambitions.

“On the other hand, supporters of Netumbo feel that she is the only one with a foot in the door and therefore she should succeed Geingob. Others like Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila also feel let down. How to reconcile all these factors will determine whether Swapo can survive the skirmishes or press a button of self-destruction.

Now largely a rural party after losing key urban centres to the opposition, Swapo knows the outcome of this year’s congress will make or break its spinal cord. If individual interest precedes that of the party itself, Swapo will - to borrow from Geingob’s own words while addressing the party central committee in October last year - go to hell.