Namibia still votes Swapo, still eats bretchens

IT'S one day after Namibia's presidential and legislative elections and I'm sitting opposite a born Namibian, Piet Conradie, in a Superspar in Windhoek. He is Afrikaans, but in Namibia the drive for Afrikanerskap may no longer be so deeply rooted.

He, like his wife, has worked at Namwater for all his career. Like so many white Namibians, his ideas and opinions are characterised by an astonishing pragmatism. By the way, Namwater and Nampower are state-owned enterprises which, compared to their South African counterparts, closely follow the dictates of German precision. Not without problems and signs of corrupt officialdom, but that's nowhere near the destruction of an Eskom or a Rand Water.

Raw meat and onions

I have endless respect for Piet whom I meet up with from time to time to catch up. What we also have in common is that his lifelong partner was my matric farewell date in 1980. More importantly, however, is our mutual, undisguised attachment to rohhack brötchens. A rohhack brötchen is a traditional German bread roll laden with raw (roh) minced meat (hackfleisch), seasoned with salt, white pepper, and onions. This culinary delight is particularly famous in countries with German colonial influence, such as Namibia. There is another version from the old Southwest where pickles are added but my taste buds cannot tolerate the sourness.

In Namibia, the German word “brötchen" (meaning “bread roll") is often pronounced as “bretchen". This linguistic distortion is indicative of how German culinary terms have been incorporated into local languages. The pronunciation “bretchen" is close to the original German but is best spoken in phonetic Afrikaans and English. It’s a good example of how loan words evolve to adapt to the phonology of different languages in a multicultural society. By the way, Namibians use the plural form “bretchens" (or brötchens), but the addition of an -s to the German word brötchen is linguistically problematic because it does not follow the standard plural forms in German. I can't remember whether I had my first rohhack before or after my first breast milk, but my dependence on it is now a matter of genetics.

“So, who did you vote for?” I ask Piet Conradie. On each of our plates a rohhack brötchen has been attacked. He finishes chewing, looks at his wife as though to come with a confession: “I voted for Auntie Ndaitwah.” He manages to make the fact that a white, late-middle-aged man voted for an elderly female leader of Swapo sound like the most normal thing in the world. I know he voted because it’s the right thing to do, but he is pragmatic in his outlook: “Her opponents don’t inspire confidence, and she is one of the few Swapo leaders not associated with corruption.”

The president-elect of Namibia he is referring to is Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. She won 57% of the votes and will be the country’s first female president when she is inaugurated on Independence Day,  March 21, 2025. The 72-year-old Nandi-Ndaitwah has had an impressive political career, including roles as vice-president and minister of foreign affairs. She will take over from the interim president, Nangolo Mbumba, who has been acting since the death of Pres. Hage Geingob in February 2024.

Combi full of bread with a wolf dog

But first, let me explain my German-Namibian roots. I wrote matric at the Higher Technical School Windhoek and there always were German children in the class. The school's librarian was also German and her conversations with the German boys fascinated me. The German culture of Namibia was everywhere. On weekends, Wecke & Voigts' brötchens gobbled up all my and the German children's pocket money. I still can't for the life of me avoid the place. Now 44 years later, the rohhack brötchens tradition – with the demise of the Wecke & Voigts shop in Kaiserstrasse (now Independence Avenue) – has moved to the Superspar of the Maerua mall.

Wecke & Voigts was founded in 1892 in Okahandja when Namibia was still known under German colonial rule as German South West Africa. As a company run by German entrepreneurs – Gustav Voigts, Albert Voigts and Fritz Wecke – German was naturally the language of use. As a child, I remember the German pensioners who sat packed in Wecke & Voigts in the morning while rows of bread van-like Volkswagen Kombis idled outside in the parking area. On the front left seat, a German shepherd dog was barking at all and sundry through an open window.

To my knowledge, the business was still family-owned in 2021 and being run by the fifth generation. Until 2020, Wecke & Voigts' slogan, still in German, was “Etwas Besonderes!" (Something Extraordinary), on the company's logo. The only way to get a seat in Wecke & Voights on a weekend morning was to shout as loud as possible, “Ein kombi mit einem wolfshund brennt auf dem parkplatz!” (there is a combi with a wolfhound on fire in the parking lot).

More competitive policy formulation

I realise that the bunch of white men I have dealt with in Namibia's coffee shops are not a representative sample, but there is a strange yet discernible consensus among them. It is hoped that Swapo's support will decrease to such an extent that policy formulation will become more competitive. The consensus is that Swapo's complacent monopoly on power has led to the systemic corruption that plagues the country. The problem, however, is that the opposition can't really be trusted with power either, in any case no more than Swapo.

The former Swapo member Panduleni Itula is the “unknown devil" in the scenario of a competitive opposition. During the 2019 elections, he stood as an independent, but was still a member of Swapo. With 29% in the presidential election, he dragged Geingob's support from 87% in 2014 down to 56% in 2019. However, in 2024 he lost steam against Nandi-Ndaitwah, and was unable to win Namibians' trust.

Bernardus Swartbooi of the Landless Peoples' Movement (LPM) is a “southern man" and represents the farming and land interests of the Namas and Damaras in the Keetmanshoop and Mariental areas. In places in the south of the country his support was as high as 11%, but nationally he ended up at 4,65%. His ethnic origin could not find a foothold in the north, but perhaps neither could his ideological approach to the land issue.

I am reminded of a conversation during my most recent trip to Namibia with a friend, Piet Bamm. He lives in Maltahöhe, a small town on the edge of the Namib Desert, about 110 km west of Mariental and 280 km southeast of Windhoek. I went to school there for a month or two sometime in the early 1970s. With a dry and semi-desert climate, it is a convenient stopover for travellers en route to Sossusvlei, Sesriem and Duwisib Castle. Piet is my age and we were in the army together. I sometimes stop at his place on the way to Windhoek, it's a detour of about 220 km.

As he stokes the camel thorn coals late at night and turns the lamb chops with a long-handled fork with measured caution, he claims: “Unlike the older generation, the younger generation of Swapo members has an open aversion to corruption." And therefore “it is better if Swapo wins the election". While he is speaking, I read another WhatsApp message from Chris Kantewa, a long-time friend with deep roots in Swapo: “I advised my colleagues to consider appointing a strong, experienced former white police officer to lead the anti-corruption agency."

Piet explains that the opposition consists mainly of ethnic minorities who do not envisage a common interest. I ask about Itula, he puts the fork down, wipes his hands on an old cloth, turns his head to me and says with a serious frown: “Better the devil you know than the one you don't know."

During a panel discussion in front of an audience at The Village, a forum in Windhoek where the owner, Wouter van Zijl, encourages complex discussions, two Namibian researchers argue convincingly that Itula should get enough support to survive in a “run-off" against Nandi-Ndaitwah and win the presidency. Adherents of the school of thought that Namibia will be saved by a more competitive system hoped that Itula would become the new president in the acceptance that Swapo would continue to dominate the legislatures after the 2024 elections.

I was also on the panel, but kept my sceptical mouth shut. My debater's logic, which was proven wrong in the end, was that the Otjiherero-speaking group, 8,6% of the population, will vote for Swapo, but in a “run-off" this patriarchal cultural group will prefer Itula over an elderly woman like Nandi-Ndaitwah. Itula therefore stood a good chance of becoming president and serving as a counter to Swapo's power in the legislature. In the final result of the 2024 presidential election, Nandi-Ndaitwah got 57% and Itula 26%. A “run-off" was far beyond the horizon.

Click here to register 📌

Mudge’s party just a shadow

Those who have been watching Namibia's politics since the 1980s will be surprised to learn that the DTA (Democratic Turnhalle Alliance), the party of Dirk Mudge, is now just a shadow of its once dominant past. By November 2017, the DTA, since 2013 under the leadership of McHenry Venaani, transformed itself into the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) In the election this year the wheels came off, perhaps finally. It may be that the DTA had a colonial shelf life, especially with new opposition parties around which needed to remain relevant in a changing political landscape that had been dominated by Swapo for too long.

The invigorating end of the DTA and the inauspicious birth of the PDM were accompanied by new symbols and unmarketable ideological assumptions. As a Namibian businessman told me with reference to Venaani and the PDM, “they are now just a small Herero party". In the general election the PDM's support dropped from 16,7% (16 seats) in 2019 to 5,5% (five seats). Itula's IPC became the new official opposition in the national legislature. Mudge is spinning in his grave, his dreams of an ideological alternative to Swapo shattered.

But perhaps Mudge's legacy is something else. Namibians are pragmatic in their understanding of each other. Afrikaans is used far and wide without stigma and the Germans are cherished for their distinctiveness. The Oshivambo-speaking majority (52%) in the north of Namibia are comfortably commercialising and the Herero are cattle farmers. Most white Namibians share these interests and characteristics with these two identities. In the dry south of the country, the Namas and Damaras share Afrikaans as a second language. There is a strange peace in Namibia. It is not uncommon to hear an Oshivambo-speaking waiter speak German and English to tourists, only to switch comfortably to Afrikaans shortly afterwards with a Piet Conradie, Piet Bamm or Piet Croucamp.

This is the land of Sam Nujoma, N!xau ǂToma, Piet Conradie, Samuel Maharero, Gwen Lister, Herman Toivo ya Toivo, Piet Bamm, Hendrik Witbooi, Dirk Mudge, Frankie Fredericks, Hannes Smith, Frans Indongo, Herholdt Pupkewitz and Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah. This is a country where some white men find reason to vote for “Auntie Ndaitwah", while others will make a peaceful compromise with the Swapo they already know and understand.

Office of the First Spouse

In 1983 Netumbo Nandi married Epaphras Denga Ndaitwah, a retired lieutenant-general and former head of the Namibian Armed Forces, in Tanzania. Epaphras was a prominent member of Swapo's military wing, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia. With Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah as the newly elected (female) president, the Namibian government has renamed the “Office of the First Lady” to the “Office of the First Spouse”. I hope it stays that way in the future.

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.