Windhoekers are tired, tired of the pretence, tired of the empty rituals, tired of the political musical chairs that masquerade as leadership in the capital city of Namibia. Every year, like clockwork, city council stages its tired spectacle: elect a new mayor, parade them in front of cameras, hand them a chain with great ceremonial pomp, and then immediately strip them of any meaningful authority. Annual election, zero executive powers. A new face, the same impotence. The same bureaucracy, untouched and unbothered. It is governance by Groundhog Day, a classic definition of doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different result.
Windhoek does not merely have a leadership problem. It has a structural paralysis so deep that even the most visionary mayor would be reduced to a decorative emblem, another figurehead presiding over a city kept on life support by a bureaucratic machinery that hasn’t changed in decades. And why would it change? The current system suits those who profit from its inertia. A mayoral office with no power is an excellent shield for a council administration that thrives in the dark, far away from scrutiny and accountability.
Windhoek should be a modern African capital, vibrant, dynamic, imaginative, and unapologetically ambitious. Instead, it is a city suspended in mediocrity, drained of creativity, stubbornly clinging to outdated systems and outdated people who confuse obstruction with governance. A city that feels as though it is being run on manual typewriters and filing cabinets.
And yet, every election cycle, mayoral candidates emerge with slogans and promises they cannot possibly fulfil. They campaign as though they were running for the presidency of a major metropolis, only to spend their single one-year term unveiling plaques, delivering speeches, attending ribbon-cuttings, and making appeals they know will die in committee. They assume office with enthusiasm and leave with resignation. The only consistent beneficiaries are the ones behind the scenes, the bureaucratic elite who outlast every political season, every coalition, every vision.
These entrenched administrators treat the city like a private inheritance, resisting reform with a level of discipline they never apply to service delivery. They know how to wait out mayors, councils, political waves, and public pressure. After all, the mayor changes annually. They do not. Their power is not ceremonial; it is real, durable, and largely unchallenged.
And what do we get as a result? A capital city that appears drained of ambition. A city so allergic to innovation that it cannot imagine public space as anything other than brick paving and interlocks. Urban planning in Windhoek has all the creativity of a spreadsheet. Every possibility is paved over, literally and figuratively.
What kind of city fears public squares? What kind of capital has no civic heart? No central place where people gather, exchange ideas, enjoy the outdoors, or simply feel part of a community? Windhoek is a capital whose only “park” has devolved into a photo booth for hustling photographers. It has become easier to find a backdrop than a bench. It’s easier to find a paved slope than a shaded spot to read or reflect. Families with children are treated as logistical nuisances, not citizens. Pedestrians are an afterthought. Public space is a casualty of administrative imagination.
Residents across the city whisper the same question: Who is actually running Windhoek?
The mayor? Certainly not.
The council? Only on paper.
The political parties? Only when it suits them.
The real power sits with an ageing bureaucratic class that has perfected the art of passive resistance, slow-walking initiatives, killing ideas in subcommittees, drowning proposals in procedural quicksand, and turning every spark of innovation into a mound of paperwork. Windhoek is not just mismanaged; it is intentionally contained.
So, to the next batch of mayoral hopefuls polishing their speeches and hiring their social-media photographers, the Windhoek Observer poses the most important question of all:
Why do you want this job?
Is it for the influence you won’t have?
For the decisions you won’t make?
For the reforms you won’t implement?
For the praise you haven’t earned?
Or is it for the travel allowances, the photo ops, the temporary prestige, and the carefully crafted illusion of authority?
Windhoekers are done pretending. The mayoralty has become little more than an annual audition, a symbolic role in a play whose script never changes. It gives the public the illusion of progress while ensuring nothing of substance ever shifts. It shields the bureaucracy, comforts politicians, and leaves residents with a city perpetually underdeveloped but permanently over-administered.
This is not governance. This is stagnation dressed in ceremony.
Windhoek deserves leaders with courage, not just to dream, but to confront the bureaucracy that smothers those dreams. Leaders who refuse to allow the city to remain hostage to outdated systems and outdated thinking. Leaders willing to pick a fight with the machinery that has kept the capital suffocating in mediocrity for far too long.
Will the next mayor break the cycle?
Windhoek has learnt better than to hold its breath.
