2024: Annus mirabilis or annus horribilis?

The year 2024 will be a watershed one – for a multitude of reasons.

For many, any mention of 2024 invokes the euphoria of elections – and a new president. Possibly a female president.

Murmurs within Swapo questioning Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s path towards being declared the party’s presidential candidate will persist in 2024, perhaps even in louder decibels.

However, for many in the party, that ship has sailed – not even the captain’s voice of defiance can be heard through radio communication.

No force on earth can stop an idea whose time has come, the party diehards say –quoting Victor Hugo.

But the pleasurable excitement of elections aside, there will be another orgasmic show in the offing: the Fishrot trial. The nation is bracing itself for its biggest legal showdown – a court soap opera to be streamed live on television – but only if the judiciary relaxes its inflexible stance displayed towards the end of 2023 regarding media coverage of this specific matter.

Fishrot is not just a criminal matter. It’s political too. It had a bearing on the 2019 general elections, and history could repeat itself again five years later, when the country heads to the polls again.

Swapo’s fingerprints are all over the crime scene. Whether this was by design or by default is a debate for another day. The ruling party can run, but it cannot hide from Fishrot – not even with the excuse that the alleged crime was committed by individuals who happen to be card-carrying members of the party. It’s a cock-and-bull story that not even a third-grader munching on his lunch pack during break time would swallow hook, line and sinker.

The alleged stolen money has funded official party events – an irrefutable, indefensible and indelible fact of history whose trail is evident for all to see.

When issues surrounding Judge Moses Chinhengo’s impartiality are ironed out – he has been asked to recuse himself – the biggest corruption trial in our republican history will kick off.

The objections regarding a lack of legal representation, which have been used as cannon fodder to secure a postponement, will not stand the test of time.

Not while accused persons may, in law, turn to the government for legal aid. This has happened historically to everyone in a similar situation. The rules cannot be bent now.

Going into this election, Swapo is also haunted by another ghost.

Here, you have to pity the ruling party because it has been thrust – by powers of the universe – between a rock and a hard place. The issue of same-sex marriages is a difficult one, and the party’s adversaries know they can exploit this. As a ruling party, do you respect the constitutional obligation of not discriminating against anyone on the basis of their sex, or do you trample upon that provision in order to secure votes from the predominantly conservative Namibian electorate?

Another significant event in 2024 could be the verdict in Job Amupanda’s legal attack on the so-called red line. His bare-fisted fight against the beef bosses south of the red line might have started with his meat being tossed out like garbage at Oshivelo some years ago, but there’s a huge population of Namibians enduring this treatment daily. Add to this the commercial exclusion of farmers north of the fence, and you have a discrimination calamity on your hands – in a free republic.

Electoral rent-seeking

This year, the government will over-cuddle us. They want everyone to feel the warmth of its generosity – at a level that’s experienced once in a five-year cycle.

In 2009, traditional leaders received 4x4 bakkies on the eve of that year’s general election. Jerry Ekandjo, the cunning minister of local government at the time, held onto the vehicles until the last minute. When subjects entered the voting booth, fresh on their minds was what the government had done for their chiefs – and by extension, their communities – a day earlier. Machiavellian stuff!

In his New Year message, President Hage Geingob couldn’t resist the temptation of sneaking in a potentially vote-swaying offer: to more than double old-age pension grants from N$1 400 to N$3 000 in the coming months.

A bumper year is in the offing for war veterans too. Defence minister Frans Kapofi has spent the past two years explaining that he can’t give money to veterans – their ‘token of appreciation’ as Nickey Iyambo liked calling it – which doesn’t exist.

But Swapo, at its congress in 2022, told Kapofi and Ipumbu Shiimi to find that money – by hook or by crook. How dare we go into an election year with unhappy war veterans, who constitute a good fraction of party voters, they subtly remonstrated.

While at it, the unemployed armies of young people might as well seize the once-in-every-five-years Swapo generosity to claim their stakes. Hold the party by the scrotum in 2024 for jobs and other opportunities, because after November, when all is said and done, politicians will crawl back into obscurity. We’ve come to learn that in Namibia, proper servitude happens in an election year. It’s an election ploy, but we must rejoice in it.

Lastly, the Geingob administration began waking up from its eight-year slumber by recording its first real economic successes towards the tail end of the past year. We saw signs of economic recovery last year, and many would hope for some sort of trajectory of success. The shacky legacy of Namibia’s third republic can be consolidated in the next 14 months and we all have a duty of care to assist the president and his lieutenants to bow out on a high. Happy New Year, Namibia!

• Toivo Ndjebela is editor of Namibian Sun. Still on leave, he is writing from his birthplace of Okalongo, Omusati Region.