Africa
Namibia swears in first female president
Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was sworn in as Namibia’s first female president on Friday, reaching the highest office in her land nearly 60 years after she joined the liberation movement fighting for independence from apartheid South Africa.
The 72-year-old Nandi-Ndaitwah won an election in November to become one of just a handful of female leaders in Africa after the likes of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Joyce Banda of Malawi and Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania.
Sirleaf and Banda, now former leaders of their countries, and current Tanzania President Hassan all attended Nandi-Ndaitwah’s inauguration.
Nandi-Ndaitwah’s swearing-in coincided with the 35th anniversary of Namibia’s independence, but the ceremony was switched from a soccer stadium where thousands were due to attend to the official presidential office because of heavy rain.
The new president made her pledge to defend, uphold and support the constitution in front of other visiting leaders from South Africa, Zambia, Congo, Botswana, Angola and Kenya.
Nandi-Ndaitwah succeeds Nangolo Mbumba, who had stood in as Namibia’s president since February 2024 following the death in office of President Hage Geingob. Nandi-Ndaitwah was promoted to vice president following Geingob’s death.
Nandi-Ndaitwah is just the fifth president of Namibia, a sparsely populated nation in southwestern Africa which was a German colony until the end of World War I and then won independence from South Africa in 1990 after decades of struggle and a guerilla war against South African forces that lasted more than 20 years.
“The task facing me as the fifth president of the Republic of Namibia is to preserve the gains of our independence on all fronts and to ensure that the unfinished agenda of economic and social advancement of our people is carried forward with vigor and determination to bring about shared, balanced prosperity for all,” Nandi-Ndaitwah said.
Nandi-Ndaitwah is a veteran of the South West Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, which led Namibia’s fight for independence and has been its ruling party ever since.
She was the ninth of 13 children, her father was an Anglican clergyman, and she attended a mission school that she also later taught in. She joined SWAPO as a teenager in the 1960s and spent time in exile in Zambia, Tanzania, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s.
She had been a lawmaker in Namibia since 1990 and was the foreign minister before being appointed vice president.
She said she would insist on good governance and high ethical standards in public institutions and would promote closer regional cooperation. She pledged to continue calling for the rights of Palestinians and the people of Western Sahara to self-determination and demanded the lifting of sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
She also said Namibia would continue to contribute to efforts to fight climate change, a persistent threat for an arid country of just three million people that regularly experiences droughts.
Nandi-Ndaitwah’s husband is a retired general who once commanded Namibia’s armed forces and was formally given the title “first gentleman.” Nandi-Ndaitwah’s inauguration came a day after Namibia’s Parliament elected its first female speaker.
A significant step by South Africa’s legal system in confronting the atrocities of the country’s dark political past.
A judge this week approved the trial of two apartheid-era police officers for their involvement in the 1982 assassination of three student activists.
The prosecution is unprecedented. Until now, no individual had been held accountable for the crime of apartheid.
The case centers around three young freedome fighters killed in an explosion in 1982. The victims were part of a resistance movement opposed to the apartheid regime which enforced White-only rule and domination over the Black majority.
Experts say the trial could open the door for others.
Also this week, South Africa reopened an investigation into the death Albert Luthuli, a former president of the African National Congress (ANC) and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who was killed in 1967.
The prosecuting authority seeks to have the findings of previous inquests into Luthuli overturned.
The authorities at the time had concluded that Luthuli’s death the result of an accident.
The development comes more than 30 years since South Africa became a democracy and after a Truth commission unearted numerous atrocities.
Tunisia on Friday handed opponents of President Kais Saied lengthy jail terms after convicting them of plotting against state security.
Issam Chebbi and Jawhar Ben Mbarek of the opposition National Salvation Front coalition, as well as lawyer Ridha Belhaj and activist Chaima Issa, were sentenced to 18 years behind bars, their lawyer said.
Businessman Kamel Eltaief received the harshest penalty of 66 years in prison.
They are among forty people, including high-profile politicians, businessmen and journalists, who who were being prosecuted on security and terrorism charges.
Critics say the charges lacked merit, and only served to consolidate Saied’s power grab.
The president won re-election virtually unchallenged last year after the jailing or disqualification on flimsy grounds of his opponents.
Saied has ruled mostly by decree since dismissing parliament in 2022 and promulgating a revised constitution giving himself wideranging powers in 2023.
Tanzania’s main opposition party said it had failed to get access to its leader who is in detention on treason charges.
CHADEMA said Friday that the family and lawyers of Tundu Lissu had failed to see him at a Dar es salaam jail where he had been kept since his arrest on April 9.
In a statement, the party said it held the Tanzanian government and Prisons Service responsible ble for Lissu’s safety.
The Prisons Service quickly denied that Lissu had been moved from jail.
In a statement, the agency dismissed CHADEMA’s concerns as misinformation.
“We would like to inform the public that Tundu Lissu is safe and he is still detained at Keko Prison in Dar es Salaam according to the country’s laws and procedures,” the Service said in a statement.
Lissu came second in Tanzania’s 2020 presidential election. Last week, he was arrested and later charged with treason after a speech demanding election reforms.
Prosecutors said the speech called for an uprising.
With another presidential vote on the horizon, critics say President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s government has ramped repression against the opposition.
This week, the election commission banned CHADEMA from taking part in elections after the party refused to sign a document pledging to obey the commission’s orders.
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