Namibia’s Vice President, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah could become the country’s first female president after the incumbent, Hage Geingob said she would be the ruling SWAPO party’s sole candidate in elections set to be held in 2024.
Addressing a SWAPO central committee meeting on Saturday, Geingob said all party members should rally behind Nandi-Ndaitwah when the right time comes. ZimLive quoted him as saying:
We are going to have one candidate only when the time comes. That will be comrade Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah.
So, let’s stop the rumours, dreams, fears and so on. The time is not here yet. The appropriate time [will come].
And we will campaign because it’s SWAPO at stake. There are a lot of things at stake. SWAPO and the country.
When you have processes, systems, and institutions, it’s not [about] an individual. It’s a question of our party and country.
Therefore, we have a person who will lead us, supported by all of us, whether you were opposed to [her]… that’s politics. It’s democracy.
You have the right to oppose, disagree or condemn a person. But when that person is elected, that’s why I kept on saying, don’t play the person, play the ball. When the game is over, you kick the ball away.
… When it’s over, it’s over. I hope we don’t go and have factions from now on. I’ve been hearing it still. It’s over. We have elected candidates.
When the time comes, we will properly campaign for her. We will do the campaign, some of us so that she is elected on behalf of SWAPO.
Nandi-Ndaitwah would be Namibia’s fourth president since the country gained independence from South Africa in 1990.
Geingob, who is serving the last of his two terms, succeeded Hifikepunye Pohamba in 2015.
Pohamba served as the second president of Namibia from March 2005 to March 2015 after taking over from the country’s first president Sam Nujoma, who ruled from 1990 to 2005.
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