For much of the twentieth century Namibia was the 'forgotten colony' of southern Africa, first occupied by the Germans in 1884, then liberated by South African and allied forces in 1915, only to be effectively recolonized by South Africa who were given trusteeship of the region by the League of Nations in 1920. Apartheid South Africa effectively superimposed her ethnically divisive and exclusionary legal structures upon Namibia (or South-West Africa as it was then known) in the post-war period right up until full independence in 1990. 1989 proved to be a year of rapid change after seventy years of internal struggle and international ambivalence, and years of foot dragging by the South African government who, ten years before in 1978 had agreed to a United Nations (UN) plan for a military withdrawal and transition to independence.
For her 'liberation' election of November 1989 and her second parliamentary general election held in December 1994 Namibia used the most basic form of national list Proportional Representation (PR) with the whole country constituting a single district returning 72 members of parliament, see List PR. The allotment of seats was done by the Hare method which, along with the Droop quota, is a largest remainder method but uses a slightly different quota which on average gives more proportional results. No threshold for representation was imposed so the quota became 1.39 percent of the national valid vote but with the largest remainder method the Namibia National Front (NNF) managed to win a single seat with 0.8 percent of the vote in 1989, and the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN) and Monitor Action Group (MAG) won seats with 0.82 percent and 0.83 percent respectively in 1994.
The adoption of list PR came primarily at the instigation of the United Nations who urged as early as 1982 that any future non-racial electoral system ensure that political parties managing to gain substantial support in the election be rewarded with 'fair representation.' Indeed the Namibians had their new constitution largely imposed upon them. The option of discarding the first past the post electoral system (the whites-only system operating in what was the colony of South-West Africa) and moving to a rigid list PR system was originally proposed by Pik Botha, the then South African Foreign Minister. Although the South Africans had previously, but unsuccessfully, pressed for separate voter rolls ( la Zimbabwe 1980-1985) which would have ensured that whites gain seats in the new Assembly. Botha's subsequent PR proposal was accepted in principle by the UN Secretary-General who then handed over the specific details to the South African Administrator-General and UN Special Representative. The PR system dovetailed nicely with the UN's earlier pronouncements, which stressed the need for as wide as possible representation in the forthcoming Namibian Constituent Assembly.
For the first elections in 1989 the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) had expressed a preference for keeping the single member district system, no doubt reasonably expecting (as the dominant party) to be advantaged by such winner-take-all constituencies. However, when the Constituent Assembly met for the first time in November 1989, and each parliamentary party presented their draft constitution, SWAPO readily gave in on the issue of PR apparently as a concession to the minority parties for which they hoped to gain reciprocal concessions on matters of more importance.
1989 Election Results
Precursing the subsequent South African general election of 1994 the first multiparty Namibian election of 1989 produced a what many international observers felt to be a 'dream result' with the liberation movement (SWAPO) winning handsomely, with 57 percent of the national vote, but not winning enough seats (48) to write the new constitution alone. The opposition, led by the DTA, were in the eyes of many, suitably rejected for their tainted pasts and explicitly ethnic appeals, but they still commanded enough votes and seats to mount a serious opposition within parliament and balance out the possible excesses of SWAPO majority rule. This 'positive power configuration in the Constituent Assembly conducive to real compromise' led to a new constitution, adopted in March 1990 which was widely acclaimed as one if the most democratic and enlightened constitutions to be found anywhere in the world.
While SWAPO proved to be the only party capable of winning an absolute majority in the 1989 Namibian elections the wildly inconsistent distribution of their vote led some African political scientists to argue that they had dramatically failed to live up to their promise of being the 'sole and authentic representative of the people of Namibia.' SWAPO gained over 90 percent of the votes in the large northern electoral district (ED) of Ovamboland, which contributed nearly 60 percent of their national total. Furthermore, while country wide they did manage to out poll all other parties combined SWAPO actually won a majority in only seven, of the 23, electoral districts, with the DTA winning majorities in 15 districts. Similar regional concentrations of party support existed for the minority parties. Besides the DTA, which gleaned most of their votes from the south of the country and other farming areas in Koakoland and Hereroland, the UDF and ACN (the only other parties to win more than one parliamentary seat) drew their support from clearly defined geographical areas and ethnic groups. The UDF was strongly identified with the Damara ethnic group and as expected polled an absolute majority of the votes in Damaraland. While the ACN, a predominantly white grouping, polled nearly half its entire national vote in the EDs of Karasburg (the southern border area where many South African whites voted), and Windhoek (the capital which again played host to a disproportionate number of white voters).
1994 Election Results
The 1994 elections illustrated a consolidation of SWAPO support juxtaposed against severe erosion of the opposition vote. SWAPO actually polled 23,000 votes less in 1994 than they had gained in the first parliamentary elections of 1989 but the much lower turnout (down from 682,000 to 497,000) meant that their share of the vote was pushed up nearly 20 percent, giving them 12 extra seats and more than the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to change the constitution unilaterally. The stayaway of voters who had cast ballots in 1989 came primarily at the expense of the DTA. Their 101,000 national votes were only just over half the 191,000 they had received in 1989 and translated into a loss of six parliamentary seats. Similarly the UDF lost two of its four seats (retaining only 35 percent of its 1989 vote) while Moses Katjiongua's NPF, now renamed the Democratic Coalition of Namibia (DCN), could do no more than retain its single seat.
SWAPO's overwhelming victory prompted the DTA leader and presidential candidate, Mushake Muyongo, to claim that the election had shown the country to be divided along ethnic lines, and that it had become an ethnic democracy. For the 1994 elections, the Namibian boundary commission discarded the old, uneven SouthWest African electoral districts in favor of 13 new regional districts broken down into 95 smaller counting areas. SWAPO managed to make more inroads into the votes of non-Ovambo communities in 1994 than they had done in the first multiparty elections. In 1994, the DTA won absolute majorities in only two regions (Hardap and Omaheke) and pluralities in only three others (Caprivi, Otjozondjupa, and Kunene), compared with 15 of the 23 electoral districts in 1989. SWAPO's share of the vote rose substantially in Karas (from 30 to 45 percent), Okavango (50 to 80 percent), and Khomas (45 to 60 percent). The UDF failed to hold onto the predominantly Damara district of Kunene, but did score two out of their three victories in the Kunene sub-districts of Sesfontein and Khorikas. Despite the SWAPO percentage advance, and the failures of the minority parties in 1989, it seems clear that most of the changes can be attributed to DTA absenteeism rather than SWAPO winning the votes of former minority party supporters.
