The late Namibian president Hage Geingob.
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Hage Geingob’s legacy as a moderniser will live on despite contradictions and unfulfilled promises.
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Anna “Kakurukaze” Mungunda became the most widely acknowledged face of the resistance to the apartheid policy of forced removal.
Martti Ahtisaari receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008. Chris Jackson/Getty Images.
Ahtisaari’s role in Namibia was crucial. But he left a major legacy in pursuing peace in various places of conflict in his later life too.
Presidents Hage Geingob, left, and Cyril Ramaphosa at the Union Buildings in Tshwane.
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How Swapo and the ANC respond to any further decline in electoral support will define the future of democracy in both countries.
Mikhail Gorbachev at his news conference following a summit with US President Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1986.
Photo by Bryn Colton/Getty Images
External changes, including the end of the Cold War, helped lead to the ending of apartheid. Gorbachev played a major role in that process.
An aerial view of members of the Herero and Nama communities taking part in the Reparation Walk in 2019.
Christian Ender/Getty Images
The problem is that communities who continue to be most affected by the violent past have not been involved in negotiations.
Hundreds of Namibians protested against growing gender-based violence in October 2020. The Afrikaans wording on the placard says ‘We are tired’.
Hildegard Titus/AFPvia Getty Images)
The legitimacy of SWAPO, the former liberation movement that has governed since 1990, has been eroded amid growing corruption and a deepening economic crisis.
Jackson Mthembu is the most prominent South African politician to succumb to COVID-19.
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Jackson Mthembu’s death drives home the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
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The November 2020 local and regional elections have indeed put Namibia’s political culture at a crossroads.
Namibians queue to vote. Fewer and fewer cast it for the ruling party SWAPO.
Photo by Gianluigi Guercia/ AFP) (Photo by GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP via Getty Images)
The hunger, frustration and desperation of ordinary Namibians should be first on the political agenda. But this isn’t the case.
John Liebenberg in the ransacked hospital in Cubal, Angola, in 1993.
Photographer unknown/Courtesy the Liebenberg family
No other photographer in southern Africa has documented war in the way that John Liebenberg did. He captured the life and the conflict of both sides in his body of work.
The guitar man. ‘The chords reached a crescendo as the Casspir drowned the song in its passing,’ says the photographer of taking the shot.
© Photo courtesy John Liebenberg
An archive project is restoring the secret history of Namibia’s resistance music culture from the 1950s to the late 1980s – suppressed and censored during apartheid but now touring the world.
The results of the Namibian election reflect growing discontent among voters with the way the country is being run.
EFE/EPA
For the first time since independence, Namibia’s ruling party has suffered electoral setbacks in the midst of economic and political crisis.
Namibian president Hage Geingob.
EPA/Siphiwe Sibeko
Namibia’s political stability so far has been vested in the dominance of Swapo. Those opposing its control face an uphill battle.
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Swapo remains the dominant party by far in Namibia. But it seems increasingly unable to live up to its promises.
One of the new resolutions on land related to Namibia’s urban areas, like the capital city Windhoek.
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The question of land has been hotly contested in Namibia ever since independence.
Pik Botha played a central role in the intricate talks that eventually led to Namibia’s independence.
Foto24/Nasief Manie
Pik Botha defended apartheid and South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, but in the end helped end both.
Both South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Zimbabwean counterpart Emmerson Mnangagwa need to reform their parties.
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Southern Africa’s liberation movements have been losing popularity and confronting a crisis of legitimacy.
Protesters demand Congolese President Joseph Kabila step down.
Reuters/Thomas Mukoya
Too often developments in one country are seen in isolation. In southern Africa events in one affect others in the region.
Bernoldus Niemand (aka James Phillips) at the Market Theatre Warehouse in Johannesburg, 1989.
John Hogg/The Times
Rock music against military conscription during 1980s South Africa resonated with wider fault lines in Afrikaner society - this as the apartheid regime’s grip on power started to slip.