On the 22nd of December, outside the town of Loeriesfontein in South Africa's Northern Cape province, the ground began to shake. The ensuing earthquake and its aftershocks clocked in at 5,3 on the Richter scale, and though they inflicted no deaths or damages, they still left local residents reeling, with reports of tremors felt as far away as Cape Town.

South Africa has not yet grown used to earthquakes even though our centuries of mining activity have served to increase their frequency. Safely centered as we are on the single great tectonic plate that encompasses the whole continent, we've grown accustomed to the notion that sudden changes in the landscape are not something we need to fear.

A similar sentiment has long prevailed for analysts of our region’s political landscape. In 2008, Jacob Zuma, head of the African National Congress and then President of South Africa, boldly proclaimed that his party would rule the country “Until Jesus returns”. Back then such a boastful attitude was still a fair assessment not only of his own parties’ position but indeed the status of all the region’s Ex-liberation movement turned governments. Safely perched as they were atop seemingly unassailable electoral margins, and wielding a sense of moral authority that would leave them unblemished by even the most egregious of corruption scandals, the region's ruling parties then seemed as fixed and immovable as the very hills.

No longer. In the last year, a series of electoral setbacks for the region's ruling parties have turned local politics on its head. Voters, languishing under economic slowdowns and long neglected by corrupt, inefficient and uncaring administrations are awakening from their political torpor with a newfound willingness to back opposition candidates, including formerly obscure outsider figures. What's more, the momentum appears to only be increasing.

In the last year, the South African ANC has been forced into a coalition government, Botswana has seen its ruling party dethroned for the first time since independence, opposition parties in Namibia are gaining in the polls and challenging election results, and in Mozambique, a protracted standoff between the government and an up and coming oppositional figure threatens to tip the whole legion into crisis. Unaccustomed as we are to earthquakes we must now face the fact that the ground is nonetheless shifting beneath our feet.

‍

Botswana: The BDP bows out

A few weeks ago voters in Botswana delivered arguably the biggest electoral upset anywhere on the continent this year. After 58 years of unbroken rule, the tenure of the BDP (Botswana Democratic Party) which has ruled the country since independence from the UK, has come to an end. The handover of power from ex-President Mokgweetsi Masisi to the new incumbent Duma Boko of the opposition (Umbrella for Democratic Change) happened peacefully and without incident, which has helped to cement the country's reputation as one of Africa's most stable democracies.

This is significant as the last few years under Masisi had seen the country's administration take on an uncharacteristic authoritarian turn. Rumours swirled of electoral irregularities, of one-man-rule where dissenters faced being stifled or worse.

This lack of transparency extended to the public purse. Prior to Masisi's tenure, the country was widely hailed as a bastion of transparency but during his reign graft allegations surrounding water pipelines and other projects abounded, 2023/24 saw Botswana's first fiscal deficit in 40 years along with a widespread realization that the countries Pula fund, a government foreign currency reserve, was being drawn down unsustainably.

While Boko and his UDC are no doubt basking in the magnitude of their achievement, they cannot afford to rest on their laurels for long. The country they have temporarily inherited is one beset by a deep crisis. Botswana desperately needs many years of strong growth if it helps to address its critically high 45% youth unemployment rate. This will be no easy feat, The global market for diamonds, Botswana's key export, is flagging, and the double whammy of high Western interest rates and a Chinese lending slowdown will make it challenging to secure the necessary funding for long-planned economic diversification schemes.

Local voters have already demonstrated that their patience is not limitless and that they are more than willing to unseat incumbents who do not do enough to address their needs. To quote a young waitress in Gaberone who recently spoke to an Ecna news team: "I want to see if the new system that comes in will make a change for us. If not, then we're going to change it again."

‍

Namibia: SWAPO starts to sweat.

Compared to Botswana, the situation in the equally arid and even less populated nation of Namibia may seem considerably more static. Recent December polls have reaffirmed the long-standing governance of SWAPO, the political movement which won Namibia its independence in 1990 and has ruled the country ever since

While the party has celebrated this recent victory, boasting of having now inaugurated the country's first female leader, President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, there's no getting around the fact that this was the worst ever election performance for SWAPO since it originally secured control of the country from South Africa in 1990. Though Ndaitwah wasn't forced into a nail-biting runoff with one of the opposition candidates as some over-optimistic analysts predicted, her party has nonetheless failed to arrest its steady decline, its only saving grace being the disorganized nature of the local opposition

In the final tally, it was revealed that SWAPO had won 51 of the 91 seats at stake in the 2024 election, a sharp decline down from their 63 seats in 2019. Hot on their heels are the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) who won 20 seats and Affirmative Repositioning (AR) who won 7. Though still well short of the results required to seriously threaten SWAPO’s grip on power, these performances are nevertheless impressive given these movements' relative youth. The IPC was only formed in August of 2020 after its leader, SWAPO defector Panduleni Ithula had managed to secure a stunning 20% of the vote as an independent candidate the previous year. AR, originally a grassroots youth movement in Windhoek, only officially became a political party this year.

The fact that both these opposition movements are led by Ex SWAPO insiders has put Namibia’s ruling party in a bind. Unable to dismiss them as provocateurs or counter-revolutionary elements, it is instead SWAPO that now find themselves on the back foot, forced to contend with credible accusations that they have foregone their original principles for personal gain. Ithula prides himself as an anti-corruption campaigner driving to root out graft in the country's administration, whilst the AR’s leadership are all former SWAPO youth wing members who originally earned public acclaim by campaigning against what they see as the slow pace of land reform and urban joblessness.

These messages are sure to fall on sympathetic ears. Despite being far more educated on average than their elders, Namibia's youth battle an unemployment rate that sits at more than 40%. The natural frustration that emerges from this is further compounded by local authorities' reputation for unremitting kleptomania. The scale of the problem made international headlines in 2019, when WikiLeaks published a series of communications between employees of Samerjis, an Icelandic fishing company, and the Namibian government, clearly showing that the latter had taken bribes in exchange for allowing the fishing company to bypass the countries restrictive fishing quotas. This revelation, now known as the “fish rot scandal” proved particularly damaging in a country where many fishing-dependent coastal communities had been reduced to penury precisely because of the general mismanagement of quota allocations.

While the Namibian opposition certainly did well in these last polls, some amongst them are convinced that they should have done better. Stories of ballot paper shortages, malfunctioning equipment and a curiously long vote count have served as a basis for Inthula and other candidates to challenge the results. Local courts decided to humour them, granting them full access to voting data on the 13th of December. We can expect little from this as the addition of a few miscounted votes will not be sufficient to grant the disunited opposition the leverage they need to unseat SWAPO at the national level, but the gesture underlines their growing confidence in their ability to eventually bring about such an event nonetheless.

There is much at stake for the country's political leadership in the coming years. In 2022 the country's historical trajectory was forever changed with the discoveries of Venus & Graaf, These offshore oil fields were the largest discoveries of their kind in African history and the biggest anywhere on the globe for the last 20 years. If properly managed, they represent a once in an eon opportunity to transform the country of scarcely 2,6 million people into a growth success story that could rival Arab oil states like Qatar & the UAE. This assumes of course that SWAPO bucks its own trend and ensures that these resources are managed properly and that the global pressure to decarbonise doesn't leave these assets stranded. Should the opposition win a resounding victory in 2029, it may yet still find that it doesn't have forever to set things right.

‍

Mozambique: Making ready for Hurricane Mondlane.

Mozambique is no stranger to natural disasters. As I write it has been barely weeks since the country was struck by Hurricane Chido, a cyclone that killed under a hundred and left many tens of thousands more homeless. Observers of the country are however presently occupied with an ongoing disaster of a very different kind.

When Mozambicans headed for the polls this last October it was widely expected that FRELIMO, the ruling party would hold onto power with opposition figures showing some moderate gains. When the opposition leader and head of PODEMOS, Venacio Mondlane, announced that he would be challenging the final results in court, few could have predicted the uproar that would ultimately result. Such court challenges had, after all, become a regular feature of local politics, occurring with almost lockstep regularity since the country's first multiparty elections in 1994. Nothing much was expected to come of it - that is, until someone in the Mozambican state security forces drastically overplayed their hand.

On the late afternoon of the 18th of October, unknown gunmen murdered Mondlane’s lawyer, Elvino Dias, along with Paulo Guambe, a PODEMOS parliamentary candidate, as the two men traveled together in a car. The event had all the hallmarks of a political assassination, and the country erupted in outrage. Fearing for his life, Mondlane fled the country, some said to South Africa or yet still further afield. Once safely ensconced in this hideout, he implored the people of Mozambique to come out against the government in force, and tens of thousands across the country heeded his call.

The result was pandemonium. Worker strikes shuttered farms, mines & refineries, students brought end-of-year exams to a close, running battles between large crowds and heavy-handed security police killed dozens across the country's major urban areas and brought many urban areas to an effective standstill. In Maputo, street barricades stopped the flow of freight traffic to and from the city's port, cutting off a key logistic avenue for South African exports during a critical seasonal spike in goods traffic.

Mondlane, continuing his regular broadcasts online, now discovered that he held the country's stability in the palm of his own hand. November saw a brief lull in the chaos as the Mozambican courts deliberated on whether they would affirm the election's outcome. Mondlane threatened further action if the final ruling was not in his favour, but little came of it. The final tally granted him 24% of the vote, up from his original 20%. True to his word, the opposition leader now unleashed his supporters back onto the streets, vowing not to call them off until he was granted the Presidency.

The political constraints imposed on both Mondlane and the FRELIMO incumbents suggest the country is in for a protracted crisis. By publicly demanding the Presidency and peppering his speeches with calls for revolution and a return to people's power, Modlane has somewhat painted himself into a corner. He has now taken a swing at the administration that he can't afford to miss, and backing down or compromising at this juncture could well lead to a catastrophic drop in support amongst his rank-and-file supporters who have had to suffer so much in recent weeks. But if Mondlane can't back down, neither can FRELIMO. Being seen to buckle to the rioters' demands would send the wrong messages, not just to foreign investors, but also to the Islamist insurgents battling government forces in the country's northern reaches around Cabo Delgado

Bringing the issue to a head isn't an option for either party either. Mondlane, though locally popular, is regionally isolated, lacks the support of the security forces, and is now formally locked out of the halls of power thanks to the recent court decision. Though he still has the option of using his support base as a battering ram to force his way in, this strategy has diminishing returns, as the longer the violence continues, the more the Mozambican authorities can portray him as a dangerous rabble-rouser and deny his legitimacy on that basis. The government is equally stuck, as a very public, very violent, crackdown would risk the country incurring irredeemable reputational harm at a time when it desperately needs foreign investment to smooth over the economic losses from the tuna bonds crisis and the covid period.

The intervention of foreign actors will likely prove key to breaking the deadlock, but even here there are opposing forces at play. Regional governments, specifically South Africa & Zimbabwe will be keen to see the crisis end quickly, lest the continued closure of Mozambican ports wreak havoc on their logistics. Pretoria will have the added incentive of preventing any major refugee flows that could bring its own populations’ simmering anti-foreigner sentiment to a boil. Stability through a negotiated compromise will be what regional governments are after, ideally one that enshrines the original court decision and leaves their FRELIMO allies still firmly (and officially) in control.

‍

Ripples further afield

Other powers operating in the region may take a different view, By criticizing the recent elections as unfree & unfair, and giving much airtime to Mondlane on major news channels like the BBC & others, The West has more or less taken the stance of the protestors. This is but the latest step in the growing effort to secure more US influence in Southern Africa in recent years (See my previous writing on this here). Stung into action by their expulsion from the Sahel & motivated by a keen desire to one-up their arch-rivals, the Russians, the US has been working diligently to enhance their local security presence. With the Russian reputation as a dependable security partner in the developing world now somewhat tarnished by the recent Syrian debacle, some in Washington could perhaps see the ongoing unrest in Mozambique as an opportunity to expand their influence in the region still further. Reports of suspected US intelligence flights over the country certainly lend credence to the idea that the Americans are monitoring events on the ground with great interest.

Anything other than covert alignment would likely prove counterproductive The ex-liberation movements are well aware of what the Americans are doing and have come out strongly against it. Earlier in the year the Zimbabwean government openly accused the Zambian government of colluding with the Americans to isolate and topple the ZANU PF regime. Other pro-western forces in the region, including the Botswana government, have frequently come under similar suspicion, isolating them at a regional level.

As a splinter faction of RENAMO, The party which fought FRELIMO with western backing during the Cold War, PODEMOS members are somewhat more likely to harbour pro-west sentiments, Mondlane would however do well not to position himself this way too stridently. Though the regional incumbents are growing increasingly unpopular amongst their local populations, this is not due to some newfound yearning for a liberal Western society built upon free market capitalism. Rather, it represents a new generation of political activists successfully challenging the liberation movements from the left, highlighting their corruption and apparent inability to resolve the social inequalities they were instituted to address. Foreign powers seeking to sponsor local proxies that can successfully challenge the region-ruling incumbents would do well to keep this in mind,

Unless the old ruling parties presently still clinging to power across Southern Africa somehow manage to conduct the necessary soul-searching and dramatically alter course, they are set to continue their irreversible decline in the next few electoral cycles. The coming years will witness a watershed moment in regional politics as impactful as any since the 1990’s. Much is at stake, and though we here in Southern Africa don't live in fear of earthquakes, we can't help but feel the ground shifting beneath our feet.

‍