Lessons the ANC can learn from Namibia
Last month, the voters of Namibia re-elected the South West African Peoples Organization with its largest ever majority in the history of Democratic Namibia - it achieved 80% on the parliamentary ballot, and its presidential candidate, Hage Geingob, won over 86% of the vote. It was SWAPO's sixth consecutive election victory. It was Africa's first fully electronic election, and barring some delays, the election was peaceful, free and fair.
The novelty of electronic voting and the credibility of the election dominated international news coverage of the election, but the economic success story of Namibia is what should really have dominated coverage.
Namibia and South Africa have much in the way of shared history, with the apartheid regime refusing independence and, of course, effectively treating the then South West Africa as a province and enforcing apartheid and its excesses onto Namibia.
At independence, Namibia started on much the same baseline that the apartheid regime bequeathed to South Africa, with high levels of unemployment, inequality and poverty its major challenges, as well as skewed patterns of land ownership causing much resentment.
The economic policies and interventions chosen by SWAPO, however, stands in stark contrast to that of the ANC in dealing with these challenges. Both SWAPO and the ANC have much in common - former liberation movements engaged in armed struggle that eventually won power through peaceful democratic means, with socialist influences and leanings.
This has led to both organizations having a fairly strong radical wing. However, SWAPO contested the 2014 election on a platform of ‘Consolidating Peace, Stability and Prosperity,' hardly the most radical of outlooks. If anything, such a platform promotes staying the course and continuing on its current direction - a direction that 80% of the voters agreed with on election day.
SWAPO, in government, has aggressively courted foreign investment, and provides legal guarantees against nationalisation. Exchange controls in Namibia do not prohibit the freedom of foreign firms to remit capital and profits. A free trade zone in the form of the Walvis Bay Export Processing Zone was set up in 1996 and has been extremely successful in attracting investment and promoting manufacturing.
On the land question, despite some noises in 2000 after land grabs in Zimbabwe that placed pressure on SWAPO, the government has taken a realist approach to land reform, looking to invest rather in affordable urban housing going forward (to the amount of N$45-billion over 18 years) rather than making noises about radical land redistribution.
In its 2014 election manifesto, SWAPO pledged to continue its economic agenda promising "maintenance of its sound macroeconomic and fiscal policy", "acceleration of private investments and public-private partnerships" and promotion of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.
In South Africa, the populist left would deride all of the above as ‘neoliberal' or market fundamentalism. Trade agreements in general and free trade in particular are seen as somehow destructive, foreign investment is treated with suspicion and the policies of the reserve bank are routinely attacked. In each debate on jobs and the economy in the Gauteng Legislature since 7 May 2014, ANC and EFF members have advocated for soviet-style economic isolationism and protectionism.
Policy confusion and the strong hold of the radical left on the ANC has resulted in muddled economic policies, policies that are unclear on the question of land ownership, policy direction and long term stability for investment and growth.
SWAPO, by contrast, has resisted populist calls for protectionism, nationalisation and land grabs to influence its policy and law making in government. As a result of pursuing policies derided as ‘neoliberal', Namibia under SWAPO is projected to grow by 4.4% in the current financial year and over 5% in the next. The pursuit of an open economy that is export orientated has allowed Namibia to rapidly recover from the global economic downturn. Reuter's news agency has dubbed Namibia as one of the world's healthiest economies in an article on the 1st of December 2014.
Even on matters of good governance, SWAPO has courted far less controversy than many of its African peers and certainly less than the ANC. Despite having majorities to unilaterally amend the constitution, term limits have routinely been respected and the judiciary has been able to maintain its independence without threats from the governing party. While a raft of constitutional amendments courted some controversy in August this year, they were hardly amendments that interfered with the basics of good governance.
Some of the more controversial amendments included enlarging its parliament to 96 seats and the creation of a national intelligence agency. However, the amendments also created an independent electoral commission and strengthened the independence of the judiciary by constitutionally creating its own administration unit and accounting officer.
SWAPO is an outlier - it is a liberation movement steeped in the radical left that has transitioned into a governing political party tempered by economic realism. Its economic policies have been geared towards GDP growth and the voters have handsomely rewarded them with over 80% of the vote.
While, publically at least, the various liberation movements turned political parties in Southern Africa (SWAPO, the ANC and ZANU-PF) show solidarity towards one another, the directions chosen by these parties could not be more different. Namibia and Zimbabwe can be seen as laboratories of economic policy and post-colonial development models. Namibia stands out as an economic case study that South Africa in general and the ANC in particular can learn from.
Ashor Sarupen, MPL is Democratic Alliance Gauteng spokesperson on finance.
This article first appeared The Star Newspaper.
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