IMAGE: Namibia Fact Check / The Namibian
The false claim that the Namibian constitution was written by the West has gotten new life on the election campaigning landscape
This false claim has gained new life because those pushing it are doing so in the wake of significant legal gains for LGBTQ rights through the Namibian courts over the last few years.
The latest political figure to have this claim attributed to them is Panduleni Itula, president of the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), who made the claim in order to suggest that the recognition of LGBTQ rights was being forced on Namibia through a foreign-created constitution.
Itula was reported to have made the claim during a live interview broadcast by private Oshiwambo-language radio station Shipi FM on 25 June 2024. Though the interview is in Oshiwambo, a translator indicated to Namibia Fact Check that Itula does indeed state that the Namibian constitution was “written” by Western countries between the 46th and 52nd minutes of the just more than hour-long interview. Itula says this in response to being asked about the issue of LGBTQ rights and whether it was correct when people say that the IPC brought the issue of LGBTQ rights to Namibia.
A report of Itula making the constitution claim during the radio broadcast was published under the headline ‘Constitution written by Western countries – Itula’ on the front-page of The Namibian newspaper on 5 July 2024.
In the article, Itula, like other political figures across the political spectrum recently, appears to express opposition to the recognition of same-sex marriages.
He is quoted saying:
“It’s not the IPC. When the Constitution was discussed in the Constituent Assembly, the IPC was not part of it. If there is anyone who signed for the Constitution that allows homosexuals in the country, it’s Swapo”
At the time the article appeared, a video clip of Itula making a similar claim also appeared in various social media feeds.
Since then the false claim that the Namibian constitution was written by Western countries has been repeated by some social media figures and continues to be part of homophobic and anti-LGBTQ rights narratives circulating in Namibian social media spaces.
When approached by Namibia Fact Check in July 2024 to clarify Itula’s claim that the constitution was written by Western countries, IPC spokesperson Imms Nashinge responded: “Well our President’s response was/is based on the evidence contained in the document I am sharing with you above.”
The document Nashinge shared with Namibia Fact Check was a copy of a letter from the Western Contact Group (USA, UK, France, Canada and West Germany) to the UN that preceded the adoption of Resolution 435, a copy of Resolution 435 and another letter from the Western Contact Group following the multi-party negotiations that saw the emergence of the 1982 Constitutional Principles (more on this later).
Nashinge added: “In this document the Western Contact Group is saying they had discussions with Swapo prior to the actual Constituent Assembly gathering. The principles were already defined and agreed upon. So that is the basis upon which the [Itula’s] statement is made.”
The facts
There actually are accounts of those who were intimately involved in writing the constitution to draw on to debunk the claim that the constitution was “written by Western countries”.
One of those accounts is by one of the three South African lawyers who were appointed by the Constituent Assembly, following the landmark elections of November 1989, to draft the Namibian constitution. The three lawyers were human rights lawyer and judge Arthur Chaskalson, Professor Gerhard Erasmus of the University of Stellenbosch and constitutional law expert Marinus Wiechers.
According to Wiechers’ account, when the Constituent Assembly met for the first time on 21 November 1989, its members unanimously resolved to use the 1982 Constitutional Principles (more on this below) as a framework for the Namibian constitution. Wiechers’ explanation of why the Constituent Assembly chose three South African lawyers is telling:
Concerning the 1982 Constitutional Principles he mentions (and that Imms Nashinge points to as foreign influence), Wiechers notes in this regard:
With regard to the Western Contact Group mentioned in the above section, Wiechers writes the following:
This brings Resolution 435 into the picture, and Wiechers notes as follows:
For more on the birth of the Namibian constitution, read the Institute for Public Policy Research’s (IPPR) ‘The Constitution in the 21st Century‘, which gathered the perspectives of some of the “founding mothers and fathers” of the constitution. In their own words they tell of how the Namibian constitution came about. And in none of their tellings does it come across that the Namibian constitution was “written by Western countries”.