Surveillance technology: used and abused African states have been deploying surveillance capabilities to spy on and intimidate youth movements and activists On 20 August, 2016, a group of mostly young social media activists gathered at a property in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura, to discuss national political affairs. The political climate was tense in the central African country following brief, intense protests against the continued rule of long-time strongman Pierre Nkurunziza, politically motivated killings, repression of the media and an attempted coup the year before, in May 2015. As the gathering got under way, police swooped in and 46 of the…
Frederico Links
In September 2015 the Namibian High Court, in the country’s capital Windhoek, found Geoffrey Mwilima, a former opposition parliamentarian, and 29 others guilty in the so-called Caprivi treason trial. The court convicted the accused of a range of offences, including high treason, murder and attempted murder. However, another 35 people were acquitted. The legal drama was “the longest criminal trial in Namibia’s history”, according to The Namibian, an online newspaper. The verdict stemmed from an attack on August 2nd 1999 by members of a secessionist rebel group, the Caprivi Liberation Army, on a military base and police station in Namibia’s…
Since taking office on March 21 last year, President Hage Geingob’s administration has cast itself as business-friendly and welcoming of foreign investors. Yet developments since the last quarter of 2015 suggest its policies are damaging Namibia’s attractiveness as an investment destination. The country faces several longstanding challenges, among them pervasive poverty, rampant unemployment (more than 40% of youth are unemployed, according to the Namibia Labour Force Survey (NLFS) 2014) and staggering income and wealth inequality. A prolonged drought has contributed to widespread malnourishment and reportedly decimated the livelihoods of rural, communal and subsistence farming households, which account for roughly half…
Namibia: apartheid-era tactics By Frederico Links In April 2018, Namibia’s Central Intelligence Service (NCIS) attempted to block the publication of a report by the weekly The Patriot newspaper alleging widespread misuse of state assets and resources by the spy agency’s bosses. Strikingly, the NCIS cited the apartheid-era Protection of Information Act of 1982, which allows state security agencies to invoke an information and media blackout under the cloak of “national security”. The law itself has long since been scrapped in South Africa, after it was found to be unconstitutional in the post-1994 dispensation in that country. But in Namibia, the Protection of Information…
Namibia: ethnicity and politics In the context of deep ethnic divisions and conflicts on the African continent perhaps Namibia is getting some important things right When Hage Geingob was declared the ruling South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) Party’s presidential candidate for the 2014 election, some commentators cautiously suggested that Namibia had moved into a “post-ethnic” political phase. Geingob, from the minority Damara ethnic group, was a popular choice at the ruling party’s elective congress of November 2012. He competed against no fewer than seven other senior party leaders, all of whom were from various sub-groups within the majority Owambo…
Namibia’s shaky alliance Relations between the ruling party and the largest labour union turn cold By Frederico Links It was only in the early hours of Friday May 1st, that the National Union of Namibian Workers’ (NUNW) leadership elections were finally settled. The poll should have been held the day before and the outcome celebrated as part of the official May Day festivities at the Namibian coastal resort town of Swakopmund. The run-over into the international workers’ holiday was due to fierce politicking on behalf of erstwhile parliamentarian and ex-cabinet level politician Petrus Iilonga—a former unionist, political prisoner and liberation…
Mismanagement, corruption and politicking hold back promised allocations of land and houses in Namibia In November 2014, a few weeks before Namibia’s presidential and parliamentary elections, three ruling party youth league activists illegally staked out and occupied a piece of land in an affluent suburb on the outskirts of the capital, Windhoek. The three, Job Amupanda, George Kambala and Dimbulukeni Nauyoma, all young professionals with steady incomes, were protesting against steeply rising urban property and rental prices, which they said were unaffordable for many young professionals and working Namibians. The stunt was the birth of the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement,…
