In some ways, Namibia’s recent history has been a dress rehearsal of South Africa’s. In 1990 South West Africa, as it was called then, became independent of the South African National Party’s apartheid government, ushering in a SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation) government. That prefigured the South African majority’s emancipation from that same government in 1994, which brought SWAPO’s liberation movement ally, the African National Congress (ANC), to power.
Namibia is gearing up for the biggest corruption trial in its post-independence history, with SWAPO’s future in the balance, A long-delayed bribery trial, in which 10 highly connected businessmen and politicians stand accused of siphoning money from Namibia s fishing industry, risks turning voters away from the party that has ruled the country since independence in 1990.