The southwest African country of Namibia may elect its first female president at the next elections.
Overnight, the ruling SWAPO party (South West Africa People’s Organisation) elected Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah as its new vice-president, making her the front-runner to succeed President Hage Geingob as president.
The 70 year-old former Minister of Women’s Affairs has been Deputy Prime Minister of Namibia since 2015, and will likely become the country’s first female president.
Nandi-Ndaitwah beat two rivals: Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila and the Minister of Environment and Tourism, Pohamba Shifeta, to become the ‘number two’ of SWAPO —making her the most viable candidate, representing the party at the 2024 general elections.
On Monday, at the seventh elective congress of the SWAPO Party in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia —President Geingob declared: “We have made history by electing the first woman president in 2024,” though warned his likely predecessor that the position she assumes will be “a heavy task.”
The day before, after the SWAPO Party elected Nandi-Ndaitwah as its new vice-president — Geingob implored his party to accept the results.
“Let the winner be elected by you and whoever wins, starting from me, we must accept that victory,” Geingob said.
“I am appealing to you now that whoever wins democratically, no cheating. If there is cheating, we will expose them. We have systems here. We have returning officers, well-trained, and we have agents. Candidates, what is important is your agents. And when a person emerges from that democratic exercise, then we all must accept that person whether you like that person on not.”
Since the nation’s independence in 1990, SWAPO has led the country of 2.5 million and remains its largest political party.
In the last general elections in 2019, Geingob was re-elected as president, four years after his party announced a gender quota demanding at least half of SWAPO’s seats in parliament would be held by women.
Nandi-Ndaitwah was born in Namibia in 1952 and educated in Zambia, Russia, and the UK. She joined the National Assembly of Namibia in 1990, before taking on several roles within the Office of the President, including Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Minister of Environment and Tourism and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.