Namibia: President Nujoma's third term (1999-2004)

Updated September 2009

Much had been achieved in the first decade since independence, but many issues had not been addressed and new difficulties had presented themselves. Government investment in healthcare, education and in other social and economic infrastructure had improved the lives of many but poverty remained endemic. Despite declining population growth rates, economic growth rates had been too modest to make substantial improvements to per capita income or to reduce unemployment and inequality, while the inequity in land distribution remained substantially unaddressed. Moreover, Namibia's economy remained highly dependent on the production and export of a few primary commodities, vulnerable to large and unpredictable price fluctuations, and highly integrated with the economy of South Africa in terms of trade and finance and thus captive to decisions made in Pretoria. The HIV/AIDS epidemic had spread rapidly and government measure to arrest the plague had proved to be ineffective so that many developmental gains were halted and then reversed. However, after the Angolan civil war ended in April 2002 the government was able to lift the curfew in place in the Caprivi since June 2000, the economic destruction and social misery wrought by National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) incursions ceased and Namibian refugees were returned from Botswana and 20 000 Angolan refugees were repatriated from Namibia; resources were also freed for development (Saunders 2008, 829; Melber 2003, 19). The government's high handed entry into the civil war in the DRC, the South West African Peoples Organisation's (SWAPO) use of its two-thirds majority to railroad through Parliament a constitutional amendment to allow for a third term for President Nujoma and the authoritarian handling of dissent in the Caprivi raised concerns about the long term future of democracy in Namibia.

Between 2000 and 2004 the economy grew on average 4.5% per year, an improvement on the 3.8% in the decade between 1990 and 1999, but remained characterised by large fluctuations from year to year such as the low of 2,4% in 2001 and the high of 6.7% in 2002 (IMF 2008a). Population growth rates continued to fall, mainly because the HIV/AIDS epidemic led to a rise in mortality rates. The growth rate of 3.5% in 1992 fell to 2.6% by 1999 and stood at 1.1% in 2004 (IMF 2008a). Higher GDP growth combined with lower population growth translated into rising per capita income. Between 1991 and 1999 per capita GDP grew by a modest 0.75% on average annually, but between 2000 and 2004 it had accelerated to 2.9% (IMF 2008a). This did not necessarily translate into rising living standards for the poor. Broadly defined unemployment was 33% in 1992, stood at 34.5% in 2000, and was 36.7% in 2004; job creation grew only 1% per year on average between 1992 and 2004 while the labour force grew by 3% during this period (Freeman 1992, 36; IMF 2008b, 56). In 2004 unemployment was highest in the rural areas (45%), among women (43%) and young people (57% of those aged 20-24. IMF 2008a, 57). Thus unemployment worst inflicted those groups that were identified as the poorest in the country at the end of the millennium (Krugmann 2001, 8). The Gini coefficient deteriorated from an estimated 0.7 in 1992 to 0.8 in 1999 and 2006 estimates put it at 0.6, indicating that inequality declined over the long run, but remained amongst the highest in the world nevertheless (IMF 2006, 21, see especially footnote 11; Ministry of Health and Social Services 2008, 6).

Government policy during President Nujoma's third term, for the most part, proved to be more of the same. Government found its room for manoeuvre constrained by high levels of spending on civil servant salaries, which, though it declined from 16.9% to 14.8% of GDP between the 1999/2000 financial year and 2003/04, remained way above the 6.1% average for sub-Saharan Africa and reflected a bloated state bureaucracy that swallowed up resources that would otherwise be available for social and economic development (IMF 2005, 23-25; IMF 2006, 66; Mseyamwa 2006). As a result government capital expenditure stagnated as a proportion of GDP, declining marginally from 4.54% on average between 1993/94 and 1997/98 to 4.36% between 1999/00 and 2003/04, while government debt rose steadily from a manageable 22.4% of GDP in 1998/99 to an unsustainable 34% in 2004/05, so that funds needed for upliftment were increasingly diverted to debt servicing (IMF 1999, 16; IMF 2009, 17; Directorate of Environmental Affairs 2002, 9). 85% of Namibia's poor were concentrated in the rural areas and poverty was especially concentrated among the third of the population reliant on subsistence agriculture survival, whose consumption expenditure was half the national average, and among labourers on commercial farms, while urban dwellers employed in informal sector activities formed the third component of Namibia's underclass (IMF 2006, 24).

Despite its election promises in 1994 the government was unable to expedite land reform and by mid-2006 only 10 000 of 240 000 applicants had been allocated land on 150 commercial farms, but even these were not given the technical support necessary and many were unproductive (Saunders 2008, 831). Attempts to assist Africans to buy land through a loan scheme were also not successful since the lenders were often not able to keep up their loan repayments (Saunders 2008, 831). The government came under increased pressure to increase its land reform efforts, but the President firmly rejected allowing land invasions in Namibia as were taking place in Zimbabwe (Saunders 2008, 830). However, the government was frustrated by the slow progress of land reform and announced in February 2004 that it would abandon the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle and would use compulsory expropriations to resettle some 240 000 landless people (Saunders 2008, 830). Since the government lacked the resources to conduct any substantial land reform while adhering to the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle, successive poverty reduction strategies and programmes ignored the land issue (Melber 2005, 137). Instead priority was given to healthcare, education, the provision of social and economic infrastructure and the upliftment of women; the last, because of their marginalised economic and social positions, provided the main focus for the empowerment of the poor (Krugmann 2001, 8). In 2000 the Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare was established (renamed Gender Equality and Child Welfare in 2005. Directorate of Environmental Affairs 2002, 9).

In education the government's policies were directed at reducing the disparities and inequities that persisted despite massive the successes of past efforts, where the rural poor especially remained the recipients of poorly equipped schools with under qualified teachers and massive overcrowding due to high pupil to teacher ratios (Krugmann 2001, 19; Directorate of Environmental Affairs 2002, 8). It was recognised that the norms established for Whites by the Apartheid regime were not financially attainable nationwide and that it the poor were to be uplifted national standards overall would have to drop to free resources to be directed at them, but implementation was delayed until 2001 because of resistance from teachers' trade unions (Ministry of Basic Education, Sport and Culture 2001, 140).

By 2003 there was an estimated HIV/AIDS prevalence of 15% among people between the ages of 15 to 49 (WHO 2008, 4). The HIV/AIDS crisis undermined and then reversed the enormous successes achieved in the 1990s, for by 2003 life expectancy at birth had declined to 40 years from 57 years in 1990, and not risen to the 70 years that would have materialised had the disease not manifested (IMF 2006, 21, 22). The destruction of the immune system of AIDS sufferers exacerbated the increasingly unmanageable tuberculoses epidemic, which in turn complicated and made more expensive the treatment of AIDS (McCourt & Awase 2007). Impacting worst on the economically active and productive part of the population, the spillover effects on the economy and on society were incalculable. As a rough indicator, between 1992 and 2006 the percentage of children who had lost both parents rose from 0.4% to 2.5% (Ministry of Health and Social Services 2008, 8).

Sensible to the holocaust that was unfolding, and to the failure of past government policies to address the situation, new directions were sought in 1998 and a vigorous medium term plan (MTP III) of action was adopted in 1999 with ambitious preventative and treatment goals; by 2007 prevalence would decline or level off and the number of people receiving antiretroviral treatment would increase from 3000 to 25 000 people (a quarter of those in need, but without consideration of private sector treatment. IMF 2005, 6; Ministry of Health and Social Services 2008, 9). In addition mother-to-child transmission of HIV was to be cut from 30% in 2005 to less than 15% by 2009, while the number of households with orphans receiving welfare grants was to rise by 30% by 2007 and 80% by 2009 on those receiving grants in 2005 (IMF 2005, 6). In 2003 the government decided to support the manufacture of generic drugs for AIDS treatment and in the 2003/4 the budget for anti-retroviral drugs purchases by the government was substantially increased (Saunders 2008, 830).

The Mother to Child Transmission Programme was in initiated in 2002 and the Antiretroviral Treatment Programme in mid 2003 and the latter was rapidly rolled out to cover 94% of public hospitals by 2005 (Ministry of Health and Social Services 2008, 24, 38). The percentage of HIV infected mothers receiving antiretroviral before childbirth to prevent transmission to their infants climbed rapidly from 12% in 2004 to 43% in 2005 (WHO 2008, 13). The percentage of AIDS sufferers receiving antiretrovirals from private and state facilities rose from an estimated 22% in 2004 to 62% in 2005, despite shortages of skilled medical professionals and lack of space in healthcare facilities (WHO 2008, 10, 11). As a result of these interventions the estimated number of people who died of AIDS, which had risen from 6700 people in 2001 to 12 000 people in 2004, dropped off sharply to under 5000 people in 2005 (WHO 2008, 5). Despite the educational offensives launched in the past HIV infection prevalence rates continued to climb, though more slowly than before; thus adult (aged 15-49) rates rose from 14.6% in 2001 to about 15% in 2003 (WHO 2008, 5). The government reacted by creating an Emergency Plan Integrated Team in 2004 to educate the public and bring about the change in behaviour necessary to reduce HIV infection (Karlesky 2008, 124, 125).

The electoral decline of the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA) in the elections held after 1989 was further advanced by the breakaway of National Unity Democratic Organisation, that drew its support from the Herero, in November 2003 and the White based Republican Party (Saunders 2008, 830; EISA 2004, 7, 8). In the Presidential and National Assembly elections held on the 15 and 16 November 2004 SWAPO's candidate, Hifikepunye Pohamba, won 76.4%, comparable with that of Nujoma's 76.8% in 1999, but on a voter turnout 23% higher (compare 2004 Election Presidential results and 1999 Election Presidential results). Six other candidates were ranged against him, none of whom won more than 8% of the vote. Similarly SWAPO's performance in the National Assembly election of 76% of votes cast was virtually the same as in 1999 (compare 2004 National Assembly results and 1999 Election National Assembly results). The leading opposition party, the Congress of Democrats, saw its share of the vote fall by more than 2.65% to 7.3%. The combined share of the three splinters of the DTA in 1999 was 11.2%, 1.7% up on 1999. Three other parties won one or more seats, and the opposition was now more fractured than ever before. Hifikepunye Pohamba was inaugurated as President in March 2005.

References

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