Government and Opposition in Namibia and Namibian-Zimbabwean Relations

Tuesday, 10th April 2007
13.00 to 17.00 hrs
at the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
Övre Slottsgatan 2, Uppsala

Co-organised with the
Namibia Society in Sweden, www.namibiafriends.com Swedish Development Forum, www.fuf.se

13.00 - 14.30     Samson Ndeikwila will summarise the current situation in Namibia and Namibia-Zimbabwe relations

14.30 – 15.00     Coffee

15.00 - 16.30     Amin Kamete willtake us beyond Namibia’s internal policy matters into the regional constellation and the policies among and between former liberation movements now parties in political power from a Zimbabwean perspective.

16.30 – 17.00     Discussion

Please register your participation at your earliest convenience, preferably no later than Wednesday, 4 April, with Kajsa Övergaard (Kajsa.Overgaard@dhf.uu.se).

Registered participants will receive some more background information and analysis related to the thematic focus of the seminar. The recent NAI Discussion Paper (no. 37) on “Political Opposition in African Countries. The Cases of Kenya, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe” can be downloaded from the web site of The Nordic Africa Institute (www.nai.uu.se).

The Forum for the Future (FFF) is a Namibian NGO founded during the late 1990s to provide a platform for critical public debate. It provides space for alternative social and political discourses and by doing so adds to the voices of autonomous local organizations contributing to democracy in practice. At the same time, Namibia is since Independence dominated by the democratically elected representatives of Swapo, the former liberation movement. Swapo holds a two third majority on both central as well as regional governance levels and dominates the official political arena in all spheres. Despite a variety of opposition parties, Namibia is largely a de-facto one party state, with Swapo having the sole authority and power of definition in terms of official national, regional and local policy.

The challenge under such circumstances to any civil society actors will in a first session (13.00 to 14.30 hrs) be presented by and discussed with Samson Ndeikwila, the coordinator of the FFF, who is on a visit to the Nordic countries. He will summarise the current situation in Namibia at a time, when the next Swapo Congress is under preparation for August 2007. This Congress will elect the party leader and thereby also deal implicitly with the succession of the current Head of State. The Congress decisions will have far reaching implications for the near political future of the country, the composition of the Swapo leadership and the impacts on democracy and pluralism in Namibia. This does not happen in isolation but has also a direct impact on the Southern African region.

This is documented by the official policy of the Namibian government with regard to the recent developments in neighbouring Zimbabwe. It did not only refuse to criticize the ZANU-PF government for its violent oppression of the opposition, but also denied a Namibian opposition party the right to table a motion in Parliament and prevented demonstrators to hand over a petition to the Zimbabwean High Commissioner. Both cases showed disrespect towards the rights and principles embodied in existing Namibian laws. The seminar will therefore in a second session (15.00 to 16.30 hrs) use Namibia as a point of departure to look beyond the country’s internal policy matters into the regional constellation and the policies among and between former liberation movements now parties in political power. By doing so, it will draw upon the insights of Amin Kamete, who will be able to contribute to this topical issue from a Zimbabwean perspective.

This seminar coincides with the publication of recent analyses on government and opposition both in Namibia and Zimbabwe in a Discussion Paper by the Nordic Africa Institute. Henning Melber as the author of the Namibia chapter will present a summary of the findings during the first session and will also provide inputs to the second session. The publication also includes a chapter on Zimbabwe by Amin Kamete, who will be able to add in a comparative perspective to the summary of findings.

The seminar also aims to facilitate dialogue and debate among those in Sweden, who are concerned about the Southern African developments and seek to reflect upon the implications of the current policy issues on their own understanding. The challenges include our concept of solidarity and the formulation of positions on the basis of values and norms supported.