IMAGE: The Windhoek Times (on X) / Namibia Fact Check
Before and after the voting there were loud claims and accusations of Zimbabwe’s ruling party having influenced Namibia’s elections, but months later this still remains unproven
The Zimbabwe ruling party rigging narrative surfaced publicly months before the 27 November 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections in Namibia, and appear to have been stoked in the wake of a meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, between Swapo Party secretary general Sophia Shaningwa and Zimbabwean president Emmerson Mnangagwa and Zanu PF secretary general Obert Mpofu. The meeting happened at the end of July 2024.
The narrative gained steam after it emerged that Swapo Party politician and Namibian Cabinet minister Utoni Nujoma, the son of late Namibian and Swapo Party president Sam Nujoma, had also met with Zimbabwean president Mnangagwa at the end of September last year in what Nujoma labeled as a “private visit”.
Following this, the Zanu PF-is-rigging-Namibian-elections narrative remained ever-present on the electoral information landscape, fuelled by opposition political leaders and social media users. Days before the 27 November elections, Landless People’s Movement (LPM) leader Bernadus Swartbooi voiced the claim again on radio.
And then in the days following the troubled elections, which were extended to 29 – 30 November, five leading opposition political parties – the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), the Affirmative Reposition (AR) movement, the Landless People’s Movement (LPM), the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) and the All People’s Party (APP) – all repeated the claim ( see here and here), which was subsequently dismissed as conspiracy theorising by the Swapo Party, with its winning candidate calling on journalists and ordinary Namibians to investigate for themselves and to report back on whether Zimbabwe’s Zanu PF actually had influenced the elections in some way.
Zimbabwean, and other regional, as well as international media also picked up and reported on the Zanu PF-is-rigging-Namibian-elections claims (see here and here).
The facts
Despite all this, to date no evidence has been presented publicly by any of those who had made or repeated the Zanu PF-is-rigging-Namibian-elections claims.
In the three months since the conclusion of Namibia’s presidential and parliamentary elections and the announcement of results, followed by court challenges to the results, no political party, politician, or social media user has come forward with credible evidence that the Zimbabwean ruling party had played a part in an alleged attempt to rig the Namibian elections of 2024.
It is because of this that Namibia Fact Check concludes that the Zanu PF-is-rigging-Namibian-elections claims are and remain unproven.
This article will be updated if and / or when more information or evidence becomes available.
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This is an output of and for the Elections Fact Checking Coalition of Namibian media and civil society partners combating election-related misinformation.