In a first for the continent of Africa, a country has two women as its heads of state. It is a milestone that many countries inside and outside the Motherland have not achieved.
Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, 72, is Namibia’s president, and in March of this year, she appointed Lucia Witbooi, 64, as the country’s first-ever female vice-president.
Nandi-Ndaitwah was declared the winner in Namibia’s December 3, 2024, presidential election. Her party, the Southwest Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), has governed since Namibia won independence from the apartheid regime of South Africa in 1990.
Having joined Namibia’s resistance against White-minority rule when still a teenager, Nandi-Ndaitwah has been active in political life since she was 14.
She got her start as an activist in SWAPO’s underground independence movement in the 1960s and ’70s. She studied in the United Kingdom, returned and served in Namibia’s parliament in 1990.
She served as Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Minister of Environment and Tourism and Deputy Prime Minister. Nandi-Ndaitwah earned a master’s degree in diplomatic studies, a post-graduate diploma in international relations from Keele University in the UK, and a diploma from Lenin High Consumer School in Moscow.
According to Germany’s Cultural Diplomacy news site Berlin Global (berlinglobal.com), her career in politics began in 1966, when she joined SWAPO: “When she left Namibia for exile in 1974, she was Chair of the SWAPO Youth League in Owamboland.
From 1976-1978, Honorable Nandi-Ndaitwah served as SWAPO Deputy Chief Representative, in Central Africa, based in Lusaka, Zambia and became SWAPO Chief Representative at the same station from 1978 – 1980.
She was then transferred to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, to assume the duty of SWAPO Chief Representative for Eastern Africa and to the Organization of the African Union (OAU) Coordinating Committee, from 1980-1986.”
In Namibia’s December 2024 election, she became its first female president and Africa’s third woman head of state.
According to Martha Johnson, associate professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, Namibia’s election of its first female head of state is in line with SWAPO’s historic priority on gender equality.
Johnson specializes in African politics and pointed out that President Nandi-Ndaitwah’s party has led the way in gender parity in the country’s constitution, making Namibia one of a few Southern African nations that fosters female political leaders, noted the Northeastern Global news website, newsnortheastern.edu.
“Africa has, on average, the highest rates of women in parliament. People are more open to the idea of women leaders…,” Johnson noted. Nandi-Ndaitwah “was able to remain clean and unassociated with corruption and she had name recognition,” Johnson added.
Comparing Africa with Western nations like the U.S., Johnson explained, “Unlike many Western nations, African governments have more quotas for gender proportionately than any other region in the world … which means that as a result many African parliaments have a high proportion of women.”
SWAPO’s quota is even more notable, Johnson added, “because it requires an even proportion of men and women on the ballot and in party leadership.” When President Nandi-Ndaitwah appointed Vice-President Lucia Witbooi, she also swore in 14 ministers, eight of whom are women.
Nandi-Ndaitwah and her party have challenges ahead in their governance. While SWAPO has made some minor progress in improving the lives of its majority Black population, the legacy of apartheid still runs deep and can be seen in patterns of wealth and land ownership.
Namibia has a population of 3,079,760. And while only l.8 percent of the population is White, they own over 70 percent of Namibia’s agricultural land.
According to “Review of Land Reforms In Southern Africa 2010,” countries of southern Africa share similar histories of colonization and dispossession and their histories continue to shape current patterns of land tenure and administration.
“Most of the countries in the region have been through a phase of liberalization and market reforms, or market-related land redistribution programs, and since the 1990s new land laws have been passed in several countries, which tend to have been relatively weakly implemented and enforced,”
According to “Review of Land Reforms In Southern Africa,” published by the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, (PLAAS) School of Government, University of the Western Cape (UWC), in Cape Town, South Africa.
According to the Namibian Sun, following the perceived failure of the willing buyer, willing seller land reform model, President Nandi-Ndaitwah is now targeting a shift in approach by intensifying focus on absentee landowners and strengthening land tax policies to accelerate redistribution and address Namibia’s deep-rooted inequality.
“Truly, land is a serious problem in this country,” Nandi-Ndaitwah told the BBC ahead of her inauguration. “We still have some White citizens and more particularly the absent landowners who are occupying the land,” she said.
Similar to South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, Nandi-Ndaitwah explained that her administration is committed to the “willing-buyer, willing-seller” principle, which means that no one is forced to sell land.
During her inaugural address, she steered clear of the dilemma around agricultural land inequality. “The task facing me, as the fifth president of the Republic of Namibia, is to preserve the gains of our independence on all fronts and to ensure that the unfinished agenda of economic.
And social advancement of our people is carried forward with vigor and determination to bring about shared, balanced prosperity for all,” she said.
“I am optimistic that, as a nation, we can make a success of our country. We must work together as a united people with one heart and one mind.” Follow Jehron Muhammad at @africawatchfcn on X
