Yearbook 2010
Namibia. In March, a court ruled on the outcome of the 2009 parliamentary elections. Nine opposition parties had questioned the ruling party SWAPO’s (South West Africa People’s Organization) victory with close to three-quarters of the votes and got a recalculation and re-examination of the voting lengths. On the basis of these results, they had appealed to the Election Commission for a court ruling, which however rejected the case. In November, local and regional elections were conducted, which also resulted in smashing victories for SWAPO. However, turnout was only 40 percent.
According to COUNTRYAAH, Namibia has a population of 2.448 million (2018). A suspected corruption deal with a loose link with the Chinese state leadership was this year’s big news follow in Namibia. Two local businessmen and a representative of the Chinese company Nuctech had been arrested at the end of 2009 on suspicion of shooting at an order to Nuctech for delivery of advanced scanning equipment to Namibian customs. On a visit to Namibia in 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao had promised to grant soft loans to finance the $ 55.3 million order, provided the equipment was delivered by Nuctech, which was then headed by his son Hu Haifeng. According to the Namibian Anti-Corruption Authority, $ 12.8 million of the payment had been transferred to a “consulting firm”, where the three people had shared the money. Their assets were frozen on court orders, but pending trial they were released free of bail.
Dry and sparsely populated, the Kalahari desert was not very attractive to European colonization. It was not until the 19th century when Bismarck’s Second Reich in Germany began its colonization of the remaining “empty areas” in Africa that one of the objectives was Namibia. According to softwareleverage, the area was declared a German colony in the mid-1880s. However, the country was not “empty” and the cruelest genocide methods were used to defeat local resistance and control the interior. It was particularly hard on the gentlemen, who in a short time were reduced from 80,000 to 15,000. Out of the 20,000 from the Nama people, less than half survived the German “pacification”.
However, the country gained strategic importance as large deposits of iron, lead, zinc, copper, diamonds and a number of metals of military importance were discovered: manganese, tungsten, vanadium, cadmium and uranium.
At the outbreak of World War I, the British invaded the country from South Africa. When the world war was over, the country was assigned to the League of Nations as a mandate that left the concrete administration to the South African Union.
- Abbreviation Finder: Check to see how the two letter abbreviation of NA stands for the country of Namibia in geography.
After facing a number of initial disagreements, the South African peasants and the German settlers in Namibia quickly found a common interest: the hard plundering of the black population in the country whose “welfare” they should take care of, according to the League of Nations. Among the settlers was also the Nazi leader Göring’s father.
In 1974, South Africa officially declared its intention to annex the area to the UN. The UN, which had inherited Namibia from the League of Nations, rejected South Africa’s claim, citing: “The African people of South West Africa have not yet achieved political autonomy”. Until 1961, the UN had demanded this every year, and it had just as systematically been ignored by the racist governments in South Africa.
Population
According to estimates by international organizations, in 1998 the population of Namibia amounted to 1,660,000 residents (of which 80. 000 Bianchi). The rate of demographic increase is quite high and, in the last fifteen years, has remained substantially unchanged (in the period 1990-98 it was 30%), even if the prospects are oriented towards a progressive containment. In fact, both the birth rate and the mortality rate decreased from the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s (from more than 40% to 37%, and from 14% to 10%, respectively.‰): in the years to come, mortality will be unlikely to continue to decline and, therefore, the lower birth rate will result in a progressive erosion of the population growth rate. The percentage of the urban population is still very modest (it is estimated at 39 %, a value almost certainly approximated by excess); the only real city is the capital, Windhoek, which does not reach 170. 000 residents; the others are small towns of no more than 40. 000 ÷ 50. 000 residents (Swakopmund, Rehoboth, Walvis Bay etc.).