Namibia's politics: a president whose ministers sit in Parliament

How the independence constitution was written

The constitution was drafted by the Constituent Assembly elected under United Nations supervision in November 1989 and adopted unanimously on 9 February 1990. On 16 February 1990 the assembly turned itself into the first National Assembly, keeping every member it had elected. Article 1 establishes the Republic of Namibia as a sovereign, secular, democratic and unitary state in which all power vests in the people.

Several provisions came out of the territory's own history. The bill of rights in Chapter 3 is entrenched by Article 131, which forbids any amendment that diminishes the rights it lists. Article 95 commits the state to maintaining ecosystems and biological diversity, which the Wikipedia article on the country's politics notes made the text an early one to write environmental protection in. Article 100 vests natural resources, land and water among them, in the state where nobody else lawfully owns them. Article 144 makes the general rules of international law and the treaties Namibia has ratified part of its law.

The law beneath the constitution is older. Roman-Dutch law was declared the common law of the territory in 1919 and remains so; Article 66 keeps both the common law and customary law in force where they do not conflict with the constitution or an act of Parliament.

Amending the text is hard by design. Article 132 requires two thirds of all members of the National Assembly and two thirds of all members of the National Council.

How the president is elected and limited

The president is elected directly for five years. Article 28 requires more than 50% of the valid votes; if no candidate reaches it, the two leading candidates go to a second ballot. Article 29 limits any person to two terms.

The limit has one written exception. Article 134 lets the first president hold office for three terms, and the Wikipedia history records how it got there: in 1998, a year before the election in which the first president would otherwise have had to stand down, the party holding two thirds of both houses amended the constitution to allow it. The founding president served from 21 March 1990 to 21 March 2005.

Why the cabinet sits in Parliament

Article 35 builds the cabinet from the president, the vice-president, the prime minister and ministers whom the president appoints from among the members of the National Assembly. The vice-president is appointed from the elected members and serves at the president's pleasure. The prime minister heads the government's administration and, with the cabinet, is appointed by the president. Up to eight further members of the Assembly may be appointed by the president for their expertise, with no vote.

The Wikipedia account of the country's politics notes that ministers dominate the Assembly by rank, if not by number, since they are the superiors of the ordinary members who are supposed to hold them to account. The BTI 2026 report adds that the president's powers have been widened by constitutional amendment, that the president appoints the members of the Electoral Commission, the ombudsman and the director of the Anti-Corruption Commission, and that a bill passed by Parliament can be left unsigned: the bill meant to bypass the Supreme Court's marriage ruling of 2023 had not been signed at the time the report was written.

How Parliament is built

Parliament has two chambers. The National Assembly is the legislature proper, elected for five years by proportional representation. The National Council, elected for six years, is chosen by the regional councils from among their own members and plays a mostly advisory role, reviewing bills the Assembly sends it.

The figures come from the Wikipedia article on Namibian politics and from Articles 46 and 69 of the constitution as revised in 2014. The amendment that enlarged both houses was passed before the general election of that year.

How elections have gone since independence

The first vote was the United Nations-supervised election of 7 to 11 November 1989, in which more than 97% of registered voters took part and SWAPO won 41 of the 72 seats in the Constituent Assembly, short of the two thirds that would have let it write the constitution alone. Before the United Nations plan took effect SWAPO had been barred from holding meetings of more than 20 people and its leaders were often detained, while in December 1976 the United Nations General Assembly had recognised it as "the sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people", a description the parties inside the territory did not accept. Later elections ran on the five-year cycle the constitution sets.

The 2019 result opened a period of opposition gains. In the regional and local elections of late 2020, the BTI 2026 report records, opposition parties won majorities in most municipalities and towns, though the same report finds they struggled to turn that support into policy.

Why opposition parties took the election to court

The National Assembly and presidential elections at the end of November 2024 were the first, in the BTI's assessment, whose results were seriously called into question by their own conduct. Freedom House's 2025 report lists ballot paper shortages along with severe technical and staffing failures; the BTI adds that the contract to print the ballot papers went at the last minute to a South Africa-based company, which raised suspicions of outside influence. Voting was extended by two days at selected polling stations, which with one exception, the BTI writes, lay in areas where the governing party was dominant. Turnout still exceeded 70%.

The main opposition parties rejected the results, called the extension illegal and went to the Supreme Court, arguing violations of electoral law and of the constitution. Freedom House writes that the shortages and malfunctions prompted the extension. The BTI 2026 report recorded the judgment as still pending when its review period closed. Freedom House scored Namibia 77 out of 100 in its 2025 report, 28 of 40 for political rights and 45 of 60 for civil liberties, and rated it Free.

How traditional authorities share power with the state

Beside the elected structure runs a network of traditional leadership. By the Wikipedia count the government recognises 51 traditional authorities, with a further 40 applications pending, and between them they cover the whole territory. They allocate communal land, set the customary law of their groups and handle minor judicial work. Their leaders are not paid by the state, which instead gave each recognised authority a car and pays allowances for fuel and administration; members of the group are expected to keep their leadership. The parallel existence of traditional authorities and the elected state is, in the Wikipedia account's word, controversial.

The country is divided into 14 regions and 121 constituencies, whose boundaries are drawn by delimitation commissions and accepted or rejected by the National Assembly. Four commissions have reported since independence, the last in 2013, and the number of regions rose from 13 to 14 before the 2014 election. Regional councillors are elected directly by secret ballot in their constituencies, and each regional council sends three of its members to the National Council. Below the regions sit the local authorities, which take the form of municipalities, town councils or villages.

Where the courts have drawn the lines

The Supreme Court heads the judiciary, above the High Court, which has original jurisdiction over all matters; judges of both are appointed by the president on the recommendation of the Judicial Service Commission. Article 89 creates an ombudsman, independent and subject only to the constitution and the law, to whom citizens can bring complaints. The BTI 2026 report describes the ombudsman, the Auditor-General and the Anti-Corruption Commission as understaffed and underfunded, with budgets set by the presidency, and notes that the prosecution arising from the Fishrot Files, the documents published by WikiLeaks on 12 November 2019 on payments by the Icelandic fishing company Samherji to Namibian politicians and officials for fishing quotas, has ten defendants and has been much delayed.

The courts and Parliament have gone different ways on sexuality. In 2023 the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages concluded abroad must be recognised, and in 2024 the High Court in Windhoek struck down the ban on sexual acts between men. Parliament answered with the Marriage Act, 2024 (Act No. 14 of 2024), which defines marriage as between a man and a woman and refuses recognition to same-sex marriages made elsewhere; the BTI records that the act is being challenged in court.

What the rights monitors report

Freedom House's 2025 report describes protections for civil liberties as "generally robust" and records the complaints that run against that. Minority ethnic groups accuse the government of favouring the Ovambo majority in allocating public goods and services; the nomadic San experience disproportionate poverty and marginalisation; police brutality and discrimination against women and LGBT+ people are listed as further concerns. The African Union's observers of the 2024 elections gave the Electoral Commission a transparency score of 50%. In April 2024 the University of Namibia banned political activity on its campuses, which analysts and opposition politicians criticised as a restriction on expression and association, and in June 2024 the High Court struck down two colonial-era laws criminalising sex between men, a ruling the government appealed to the Supreme Court.

Violence at home is measured separately. A report from November 2018, cited in the main Wikipedia article, found that 32% of women aged 15 to 49 had experienced violence from a spouse or partner and that 29.5% of men considered such violence acceptable. The constitution guarantees women equal treatment.

Who Namibia stands with

Namibia was admitted to the United Nations on 23 April 1990 as its 160th member, and joined the Commonwealth at independence as its 50th. It signed the instrument of accession to the Southern African Development Coordination Conference on 24 August 1990, and when that body became the Southern African Development Community, the treaty was signed in Windhoek on 17 August 1992. Its memberships, with their dates, are in the record beside this article.

The Wikipedia account describes a foreign policy that keeps its ties with the states that backed independence, Cuba among them, and puts regional integration first. In 2017 Namibia signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

The Namibian Defence Force was built at independence from former enemies, the People's Liberation Army of Namibia and the South West Africa Territorial Force, under a British plan and British training. The defence ministry's budget for 2019 was N$5,885 million. Namibian troops served in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 in a Southern African Development Community contingent.

The relationship with Germany is still being settled. The joint declaration on the colonial past, initialled by the two governments' envoys in May 2021, was renegotiated until December 2024, when both governments agreed a slightly revised text to be signed by their foreign ministers and approved by their parliaments. The BTI 2026 report records that the organisations representing the descendants of the main victim groups were bypassed and reject it; the history behind it is in Namibia: history.