Namibia has shattered glass ceilings with women now holding its highest offices - but representation alone cannot dismantle patriarchy. As LGBTQI+ rights, gender-based violence, and economic inequality test the promise of feminist leadership, the country stands at a crossroads between symbolic progress and true transformation.
In March 2025, Namibia entered the history books when it swore in its first woman president, alongside a woman vice president, a woman speaker of parliament, its first woman Supreme Court justice, and filling eight ministerial portfolios with women; many of us felt the ground shift. For a young democracy, this is seismic. As a queer Namibian and feminist activist, I felt both pride and pause. Pride, because glass ceilings cracked. Pause, because representation does not necessarily mean transformation - especially if systems of injustice are still maintained by patriarchal means of governance.
Representation Is Not the Revolution - Transformation Is
African feminist thought has long insisted that representation is a doorway, not the destination. Women in office matter. But the revolution is measured in policy, participation and protection.
Namibia’s first woman president, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, emerges from the ruling party SWAPO Party, which in 2014 introduced its landmark “zebra list” policy - a gender-parity mechanism requiring a 50/50 alternation of women and men on party candidate lists. It significantly increased women’s participation in the National Assembly, raising it to approximately 46 percent and positioning Namibia among the continent’s leaders in parliamentary gender parity. By 2025, such policies helped Namibia make history as the first country in the world with women holding its top three leadership positions. Yet beyond these remarkable milestones of representation, substantive equality remains uneven.
Representation has shifted; structural vulnerability endures.
In Namibia, structural inequality persists despite advances in political representation. The raw gender pay gap indicates that women earn approximately 11 - 14 percent less than men on an hourly basis. Gender-based violence (GBV) remains endemic: an estimated 33 percent of women aged 15 - 49 have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence from an intimate partner. In 2024 alone, more than 5,000 cases of GBV were reported. A large number of cases, overall, reported in a single year for a country of just three million inhabitances. Civil society organisations have repeatedly called for GBV to be declared a national disaster. In 2020, a broad-based feminist campaign mobilized over 60,000 signatures - the largest petition effort of its kind - demanding the repeal of the restrictive 1975 Abortion and Sterilization Act, a law inherited from apartheid South Africa. Namibia finally gained independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990. Yet, despite women occupying the highest offices of the state, these longstanding civil rights demands have not translated into comprehensive legislative reform or systemic protection. Representation has shifted; structural vulnerability endures.
True transformation asks: Are patriarchal norms being dismantled? Are economic inequalities shrinking? Are women in rural areas, informal settlements, and care economies experiencing tangible change? And crucially, are LGBTQI+ Namibians safer, freer, and recognized under the law?
Thus, we have come to understand the litmus test of women’s political leadership is not numerical parity - it is whether power is exercised to expand dignity for all.
The “Born-Free Feminist Paradox”
I am part of Namibia’s born-free generation - raised after apartheid and promised equality under one of Africa’s most progressive constitutions. Yet for many queer youth like myself, our coming of age has unfolded at a painful crossroads: growing up in a liberated democracy while colonial-era laws continued to criminalize our existence. Before independence, our parents were denied dignity and the right to love freely because of the color of their skin. More than three decades later, LGBTQI+ Namibians remained bound by the shackles of apartheid-era sodomy laws, relegated to second-class citizenship. How “born-free” are we, truly, if freedom is still conditional?
In June 2023, Namibia’s Supreme Court recognized same-sex marriages lawfully concluded abroad between a Namibian and a foreign spouse, affirming that queer Namibians are “part and parcel of the fabric of our society.” In 2024, the Windhoek High Court struck down the apartheid-era sodomy offence, reinforcing constitutional protections of dignity and equality. These were landmark affirmations of constitutional democracy.
Yet progress in the courts was met with backlash in parliament. Regressive unconstitutional legislation targeting LGBTQI+ recognition followed, accompanied by political rhetoric that blurred the line between moral panic and statecraft. Words matter. When leaders tasked with upholding the rule of law frame queer equality as a threat, it reverberates beyond parliamentary chambers. The youth-led civil rights movement, Equal Namibia, documented a surge in hostility and violence following the passage of these anti-LGBTQI+ bills, and seven members of our community lost their lives in the shadow of this polarized moment.
State-sanctioned homophobia stands in tension with the very ethos of anti-colonial freedom.
This is the paradox: a liberation movement that fought racial oppression now presides over laws that marginalize queer citizens. President Nandi-Ndaitwah is herself a veteran of the liberation struggle. That legacy carries moral authority. But liberation cannot be selective. State-sanctioned homophobia stands in tension with the very ethos of anti-colonial freedom SWAPO once championed.
The question before Namibia is not whether women can lead - they demonstrably can. It is whether leadership born from liberation will extend freedom in full; especially with gender parity in parliament.
Namibia: 4th Most Tolerant in Africa - But Elite Politics Lag Behind
Afrobarometer ranks Namibia among the more socially tolerant countries on the continent, with 51 percent of Namibians tolerant towards those in same-sex relationships. Ordinary Namibians often display more openness than political rhetoric suggests. Yet elite politics has increasingly leaned toward populist moralism. Namibians are not “homophobic”; or opposed to “sexual and reproductive rights” - our politicians are. And this is where transformation is needed; not just representation.
Ordinary Namibians often display more openness than political rhetoric suggests.
Civil society sees both opportunity and contradiction. We celebrate women’s ascent while recognizing that formal equality does not automatically yield feminist governance. If this administration truly wishes to pioneer gender equality, it must align representation with rights: protect civic space, affirm bodily autonomy, and resist anti-rights mobilizations that target women and queer communities alike.
Namibia stands at a defining moment. The world is watching a country led by women. We are proud of our women in leadership. The deeper question is whether this leadership will widen democracy or merely symbolize it.
Representation opened the door. Transformation - especially in how LGBTQI+ and sexual and reproductive rights are treated - will determine whether this historic moment becomes a feminist milestone or a missed opportunity.
