Upon this analyst’s visit in 1998, Namibia appeared strangely both a lazy travel destination and a largely poor, yet vibrant, democracy. Blue, green, and red South-west Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO) political candidate posters were prolific, especially on the lampposts and fences on the outskirts of towns near the squatter camps and villages. On a visit to Henties Bay, a coastal resort fishing town of some 2,700 permanent residents, it was clear that SWAPO party leader and country president Sam Nujoma was balancing a tourist and foreign industrial investment strategy against an obvious effort to build basic services and, thus, enhance whole communities. As part of South Africa’s apartheid colonial legacy, black laborers were used, and even needed, to support a small recreational fishing industry and tourists traveling to see such natural wonders as the Skeleton Coast and Namib desert where hundreds of miles of sand dunes meet the Atlantic Ocean. However, with a legacy of the poverty and separation of races, blacks lived in a small shanty village just beyond the main roads Nonetheless, at that point, SWAPO had been in power for eight years and had built numerous public buildings?an elementary school, post office, and civic hall?among and for the black majority living in corrugated metal and wood structures. The only other brick building within the “township” was a church. Of benefit to all residents was the obvious and continuous maintenance of the main national gravel coastal road, a single dirt road east for nearly 100 miles before it met the national paved highway from Windhoek to Namibia’s only deep seat port, Walvis Bay, and nearby century-old German tourist resort Swakopmund.

The most recent Namibian federal elections in November 2004 finally saw the retirement of Nujoma and the free and fair election of his hand-picked SWAPO successor, Hifikepunye Pohamba . Although Nujoma was not without his critics, Pohamba received 76% of the votes?even Nujoma was only able to muster 57% in his first election in 1990. Pohamba, in so doing, brought Namibia and SWAPO nearly to the level of democratization as its former colonial ruler, South Africa. From at least the 1960s to the 1980s, leaders of the South African, Namibian, and Zimbabwean resistance shared a common anti-colonial, anti-oppression struggle. South Africa, while last to achieve true independence, was the first to see a legitimate succession within the African National Congress (ANC) from Nelson Mandela to Thabo Mbeki in 1999. Nujoma actually had the constitution amended so he could remain on for a third term as president, but with SWAPO’s clear victory in the presidency and in parliament in 2004, Namibia is well on the road to free and fair openly contested elections and a continued vibrant democracy. Robert Mugabe , president of Zimbabwe and leader of Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), a legacy of his ZANU militant movement, which he has led since 1975, has yet to demonstrate any interest or steps toward anything but autocracy.