Populism, Electoral Democracy and the 2019 Presidential Election in Namibia

Abstract

The last few decades have seen the revival of populism, both as an ideology and praxis of political anatomy. This is no surprise given the realities that have underscored the twenty-first century. Although momentous in the far west, populism has somewhat revealed itself distinctly in sub-Saharan Africa with the rise of socio-political movements and the use of populist rhetoric as a means of electoral traction. An evident manifestation of populism in Africa has been through elections, with populists using these democratic processes (or the opportunities that come with such electoral processes) to get their messages across to the electorate. An immediate consequence of this causality between populism and electoral processes is the uneven changes in formerly settled political establishments. Using the 2019 Namibian presidential election as a matrix, particularly the populist alterations to Namibian politics brought about by once presidential hopeful Panduleni Itula, Namibia’s first independent presidential candidate, and the emerging social movements and their use of populist rhetoric, this article seeks to analyse the impact of populism on Namibia’s electoral democracy. The article argues that populism, at least as it played out in the 2019 Namibian presidential election, serves as an indicator and consequently as a determinant of the declining political hegemony of the South West Africa People’s Organisation—the country’s leading liberation movement.