Southern Africa Archive

The death in October of Zambian President Michael Sata has brought internal rivalries to a boiling point not only in his ruling Patriotic Front (PF), but also in the main opposition parties. The infighting, which has already seen some political heavyweights switching parties in order to satisfy their ambitions, complicates efforts to predict the outcome of Zambia’s presidential election on Jan. 20. Amid all the mud-slinging and legal challenges, there has so far been little time for policy discussion in Africa’s second-largest copper producer. Instead, voters are witnessing an unedifying spectacle of name-calling, scheming and internecine squabbling. Sata’s long battle […]

Zimbabwe has been a de facto one-party state since the mid-1980s, despite the formal trappings of a multiparty system and a series of fraudulent elections. Real politics, in terms of decision-making and genuine contests for power, is inevitably confined within the ruling party, ZANU-PF. The sole exception to this was the government of the national unity period between 2009 and 2013, although even then, the hegemony of ZANU-PF and President Robert Mugabe remained largely intact despite convincing electoral defeats in 2008. However, because the party is in thrall to Mugabe—and given his frequent assertions of what amounts to a divine […]

Namibia’s ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) party won last month’s presidential election with over 86 percent of the vote. In an email interview, Elke Zuern, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, discussed Namibia’s domestic politics. WPR: What explains the continued popularity of the ruling SWAPO Party of Namibia? Elke Zuern: SWAPO has dominated elections since independence. It first won two-thirds of the vote in the country’s second free elections in 1994, and has maintained this majority with the power to unilaterally change the constitution ever since. In its strongest showing yet, the governing party’s candidate, Hage Geingob, […]