Namibia: Meet Namibia’s First Female President-in-Waiting, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah (72) is almost guaranteed a place in Namibian history as the first woman to become the president of the southern African nation of three million people.

At Namibia’s independence in 1990, “NNN”, as she is widely known, became a member of the national assembly. She has held several ministerial positions since then.

However, her career took a short downturn when she was accused of supporting a dissident faction in the party in the fight over the succession of President Sam Nujoma.

NNN was among those temporarily damaged but survived the vendetta. Supported by Nujoma’s successor Hifikepunye Pohamba, she displays some of his personality features and virtues, preferring to handle conflict-prone situations in a non-confrontational manner. Her behaviour, void of vanity, gives her authority and appeals to those who prefer down to earth to lofty attitudes.

Over one million Namibians, 73% of registered voters, cast their vote in the country’s 2024 national assembly and presidential elections.

If the election results are confirmed, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) – the former liberation movement which has governed the country since independence in 1990 – will retain power in the national assembly with 53.4% of the votes, down from 65.5% in 2019. Its members in the 96-seat assembly will decline from 63 to 51.

Nandi-Ndaitwah scored 57.3% in the presidential vote, which is slightly more than the 56.3% President Geingob received five years ago.

But due to some irregularities, opposition parties are contesting the election results. It remains to be seen how the court will rule.

If the results are confirmed, Nandi-Ndaitwah will be sworn in on 21 March 2025 as the country’s first female head of state.

For now, she remains a president elect. This merits a closer look at who Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is and what can be expected from her.

Read more: Namibia’s game-changing 2024 elections: Swapo might face defeat for the first time since independence in 1990

As a political scientist, I have followed Namibia’s political developments since independence. The elections in late November were a page turner in the country’s democratic history. For the first time, Swapo faced a massive challenge by opposition parties.

Nandi-Ndaitwah’s path to leadership

Born on 29 October 1952 in Onamutai village, Oshana region (the northern part of the country), Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was one of 13 children raised by her mother Justina Nekoto Nandi and her father Petrus Nandi, a reverend of the Anglican Church. She went to St Mary’s mission school in Odibo.

Nandi-Ndaitwah was politically active from a young age, chairing the Swapo Youth League in Ovamboland, the party’s northern home base. With the Lutheran bishop Leonard Auala and the Anglican bishop Suffragan Wood, she campaigned against public floggings. These were practised under the local apartheid system to intimidate and punish political resistance against the occupation regime. She was imprisoned for months in late 1973. In 1974, she left to join Swapo in exile.

A member of the Swapo central committee from 1976 to 1986, she was the movement’s chief representative in Lusaka from 1978 to 1980. From 1980 to 1986, she was chief representative for east Africa, based in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian capital. She then studied at the Glasgow College of Technology (graduating in public administration and development in 1987) and Keele University (international relations diploma in 1988 and a master’s in diplomatic studies in 1989).

In 1983, she married Epaphras Denga Ndaitwah, then a leading figure in Swapo’s armed wing People’s Liberation Army of Namibia. From 2011 until retirement in 2013, he was the chief of the Namibian Defence Force.

More of the same?

Swapo congress elected NNN as Namibia’s first female vice president in 2017. She was re-elected at the party congress in November 2022. Following the party’s practices, this made her the presidential candidate to be nominated for the 2024 presidential elections. As the late President Hage Geingob then stated:

this is a big day, we have made history by electing the first female president come 2024. I would like to tell her that your task ahead is a heavy one. When I step down you become Swapo’s candidate to stand for the presidency.

NNN has not been implicated in any known scandal and has personified integrity. This makes her declared commitment to fighting corruption more credible. While seeing is believing, Nandi-Ndaitwah might have the trust and support for exactly what she is and not what she pretends to be. As had been recognised already in an earlier portrait by local journalists:

She stayed free of scandals and rose to become deputy prime minister and minister of international relations and cooperation, with a seat at Swapo’s top-four table. That could be her launch pad to the presidency in 2024.

As the first female leader, NNN seems no challenge to Swapo’s overall policy framework. She does not contradict the male-dominated culture and the ideological leftovers in the former liberation movement. Despite being president of the Namibian National Women’s Organisation (1991-1994), a rapporteur general of the Fourth World Conference on Women 1995 in Beijing, and minister of women affairs and child welfare (2000-2005), she is no feminist.

With a strong Christian faith, she remains a traditional role model. She believes in strict regulations of highly limited abortion and is no friend of LGBTI+ rights. When these became a matter of public controversy in 2023, she displayed anti-gay sentiments.

Having attended a course at the Lenin Higher Komsomol School in the Soviet Union in 1975-1976, graduating with a diploma in work and practice of communist youth movement, she has maintained ideological affinities to the governments in China, Russia, and North Korea. She used the US-Africa summit in Washington in 2022 for a stopover in Venezuela.

As Namibia’s and Swapo’s next president, NNN will most likely offer few if any surprises, but will try to steer the ship as smoothly as possible. This won’t be an easy task. Given the steady decline of party support since 2019, she must be bracing for the storms.

Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria