Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar)
At a moment of visible internal strain, the appeal for unity by President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah on the occasion of the inauguration of the new building for the Swapo party national headquarters is not routine rhetoric. It was a diagnosis and, signals more importantly, exposure. Unity, once embedded in the ruling party’s historical DNA, must now be actively produced, defended, and, crucially, legitimated.
The significance of the crossroads of 2026 lies precisely here. It is a threshold. It will test whether the ruling party can complete a transformation that has eluded many liberation movements: the shift from historically anchored authority to institutionally grounded legitimacy. Read carefully, the call for unity is less an affirmation of strength than a recognition that cohesion can no longer be assumed.
This is not a transition fully under control. It is a system under negotiation.
A diagnostic signal unity as an invocation
The emphasis on discipline, trust, and collective purpose operates simultaneously as reassurance and revelation.
When unity must be invoked, it is already under strain. When discipline must be emphasised, it signals erosion. When trust must be encouraged, it implies its weakening. This is not rhetorical excess, but it is diagnosis.
This appears to signal entering a phase of managed fragmentation, a condition in which cohesion is sustained through leadership mediation and rhetorical reinforcement rather than deeply internalised institutional norms. Unity, in this context, is no longer organic. It is managerial.
Such systems do not collapse abruptly; they thin out. The consequences are tangible:
• policy incoherence driven by factional pull
• selective enforcement of rules
• increasing reliance on informal bargaining over formal processes
Unity sustained through appeals persists only as long as competing interests can be balanced. It does not resolve them.
From cohesion to elite bargaining
Under the Founding Father Dr Sam Nujoma, cohesion was structured. Authority was centralised, discipline enforceable, and contestation contained. But that unity was forged under conditions that no longer exist: the exile, external threat, and a shared existential horizon.
What has replaced it is not simply pluralism, but it is elite bargaining.
Informal networks and factional alignments now operate alongside formal rules, often superseding them. Unity becomes less about shared political direction and more about negotiated coexistence among competing blocs.
This distinction is decisive. A system grounded in shared purpose can reform itself. A system grounded in negotiated balance resists disruption even when reform is necessary.
The constitution constraint or instrument?
In principle, the party constitution is the anchor of unity. In practice, its role depends on a single condition, whether it constrains power or merely accompanies it.
In long-dominant parties, rules often persist while their binding force weakens. Enforcement becomes selectively applied when convenient and relaxed when costly.
The danger is not the absence of rules. It is their instrumentalisation.
This is visible where:
• candidate selection becomes opaque
• internal elections lose credibility
• disciplinary mechanisms are uneven
• dissent is contained rather than structured
Under such conditions, constitutionalism produces temporary compliance, negotiated and reversible, not cohesion.
The core question that follows is, can rules generate unity in a system where informal power remains decisive?
Leadership and the incentives of power
Leadership is often framed as the stabilising force. But this framing obscures a deeper reality that leadership operates within incentives.
Where institutional rules are weak, leaders face a choice that binds them to procedure or preserves flexibility to manage coalitions. In many dominant-party systems, informality is not a failure of governance, but it is a method of control.
This complicates the reform question. Institutional weakness persists not only because it cannot be corrected but also because it serves a function.
The issue, therefore, is not whether leadership can institutionalise unity but whether it is incentivised to do so.
Salary increases and elite consolidation
Although recommended by an independent commission of public office bearers, the decision to increase salaries for ministers, parliamentarians, and regional governors while civil servants received a modest 5% adjustment, amid rising living costs and despite the government citing limited resources, should be read as political economy, not administrative adjustment.
The conventional justification of professionalisation and reduced corruption is theoretically sound but empirically weak and difficult to justify. Across comparable systems, higher salaries have rarely dismantled patronage networks in the absence of strong accountability.
What matters is distributive logic.
Such measures signal:
• prioritisation of elite stability
• reinforcement of loyalty networks
• allocation of public resources toward political insiders
In such systems, control of the state becomes the primary mechanism of elite reproduction. The office is not merely administrative; it is also distributive.
Absent parallel improvements in public welfare, such decisions reinforce a perception of the state as a consumption coalition at the apex.
The party-state convergence
Namibia’s political structure intensifies these dynamics. The overwhelming majority of ministers, MPs, and regional governors are drawn from the same governing party, reflecting not just electoral success but systemic concentration of power.
In contrast, opposition parties remain present but structurally peripheral.
The boundary between party and state therefore becomes blurred.
In practice, national policy is shaped less by inter-party competition than by intra-party negotiation. The real arena of contestation lies within the governing party itself.
This produces a decisive shift; governance outcomes reflect internal elite balances more than broad societal bargaining.
Internal cohesion and public legitimacy
Internal cohesion and external legitimacy are inseparable. A party that cannot ensure fairness within its own structures will struggle to project fairness in governance. Internal asymmetries translate into public skepticism.
Decisions such as salary increases are interpreted through perceived imbalance:
• between elites and citizens
• between political office and service delivery
• between rhetoric and lived reality
Hence, the public anger is growing over salary increases for politicians, with many questioning the timing. Legitimacy rarely collapses. It erodes incrementally, cumulatively, and often invisibly until it is politically consequential.
A system can remain electorally dominant while becoming socially distant. That is the more dangerous phase.
Regional patterns and structural limits
This trajectory is not unique. Across the region, long-dominant parties have followed a similar recognisable pattern:
1. liberation legitimacy
2. institutional consolidation
3. informalisation of power
4. internal fragmentation
The issue is not inevitability, but constraint. Once informal systems dominate, reform becomes politically costly. Those who benefit from the system must choose to dismantle it. That choice is rarely made voluntarily.
From memory to performance
The weight of 2026 lies precisely in what it demands: a transition from historical legitimacy to performance legitimacy.
Liberation memory retains symbolic power, but it no longer guarantees cohesion or public trust. A new foundation must emerge based on the Olivarian (from Don Oliver) four quartets of the reduced principles of good governance; a) Legality
b) Procedural Propriety
c) Rationality
d) Proportionality
These in turn lead to:
• credible institutions
• equitable governance
• visible accountability
Unity must therefore be redefined. It cannot remain retrospective. It must become operationally embedded in how power is exercised.
Conclusion: Unity or simulation
The call for unity within the ruling party is necessary, but necessity does not ensure effectiveness.
If unity remains rhetorical, it will remain fragile. If constitutionalism remains selective, legitimacy will remain procedural. If elite consolidation continues without broader inclusion, the party risks losing its social base, and from a party formed by workers initially, it ends up being a party of the elite displaying material ostentations and vain glory while those who fought for it are left out in the cold holding placards.
The deeper risk is the normalisation of simulated unity:
• cohesion is performed publicly while fragmentation deepens privately
• rules that exist but do not bind
• governance shaped by negotiated balance rather than institutional principle
In such a system, decline is gradual. It is managed. And for a time, it is stable.
But it is also hollow. The challenge of 2026 is therefore not simply to preserve unity. It is to decide clearly and decisively whether unity will be real, institutional, and binding or merely staged.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or this newspaper. They represent our personal views as citizens and pan-Africanists.
