Sam Nujoma, independence leader who became Namibia's founding president

Yahoo

09-02-2025

Sam Nujoma, who has died aged 95, was the first president of Namibia and one of Africa's renowned freedom fighters whose name was linked with men like Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana.
In power, he stressed the need for national reconciliation and urged the country's white population to stay; it was a wise move, and they still play a major role in farming and other areas of the economy. He championed the rights of women and children, and introduced a measure forcing fathers to pay for the maintenance of their illegitimate children.
A co-founder of the original rebel movement in South West Africa, as the country was known before independence in 1990, Nujoma spearheaded its fight for freedom as an exile. For 30 years he travelled the world seeking money and arms from the Soviet Union and communist nations. He set up guerrilla bases in Tanzania, Zambia and Angola.
The struggle for liberty claimed the lives of 20,000 Africans and caused the flight of 130,000 whites from the country that was a German colonial protectorate from 1880 to 1915. During the First World War it was annexed by South Africa.
Under the Treaty of Versailles, South West Africa continued to be entrusted to South Africa with full powers over the territory. But when the League of Nations – formed in 1920 to promote world peace – was dissolved in 1946, South Africa informed the United Nations that it would carry on ruling the country abutting its northern border.
With the arrival of South Africa's system of apartheid in South West Africa in 1966, Nujoma launched his independence campaign by forming the South West Africa People's Organisation (Swapo) and the Peoples' Liberation Army of Namibia.
Samuel Daniel Nujoma was born on May 12 1929 in the northern Ovamboland village of Ongandjera. His peasant parents taught him how to tend crops and cattle. The only formal education was provided at a primary school run by Finnish Lutheran missionaries. Secondary education was only available to whites so Nujoma signed on for a correspondence course with a school in Johannesburg.
At the end of the Second World War he went to live with an aunt in Walvis Bay, and when she died he was taken in by an uncle who lived in the capital of Windhoek. During the 1950s, Nujoma worked as a janitor and messenger for South African Railways in Windhoek – and soon learned the results of living under the system of racial discrimination.
When he realised that higher positions on the railways were open only to whites, he organised black workers to press for changes. Later in life Nujoma recalled the reality of his early working days.
'We learned either that we learn to do something or else we would perish,' he said. 'The black population of Namibia was reduced every day by shootings on sight, by beating to death in offices or on the farms. Contract labourers were not accorded sick leave or annual leave, or even compensation in the case of accident.'
Nujoma was dismissed for his union activities but managed to find work as a municipal clerk and a clerk with a wholesale store. In 1959 he and a railway policeman, Andimba Herman Toivo ya Toivo, formed the Ovamboland People's Congress to ensure the welfare of Africans and oppose apartheid.
Later that year, police forced all blacks in Windhoek to move into a new township. When protesters staged a demonstration planned by Nujoma, police fired on them, killing 12. Nujoma was arrested and imprisoned for a week. On release, he was exiled and immediately established bases in Tanzania and Zambia from which he campaigned against the authorities in South West Africa.
In April 1960, the Ovamboland People's Congress was renamed the South West Africa People's Organisation to represent all Namibians, and not just Ovambos, who made up half the population.
Nujoma, who spent much of his time lobbying United Nations officials and visiting many foreign capitals, attempted to return home in 1966. He was denied admission and exiled immediately.
His liberation army made little progress until Portuguese rule collapsed in neighbouring Angola in the mid-1970s. The new government allowed Nujoma to set up guerrilla bases in Angola, from which raids were made into South West Africa against farms owned by whites and South African security troops.
Nujoma's men suffered higher casualties than the South West African forces but there was no shortage of recruits among thousands of Africans who had fled north from a South African purge against Africans.
Nujoma, however, enjoyed a series of diplomatic successes. The World Court decided in 1971 that South Africa's presence in South West Africa was illegal, and in 1976 the UN General Assembly added its weight to the isolation of South Africa.
It endorsed Swapo's 'armed struggle for independence' against objections from the United States and many western governments. Recognising Swapo as the sole legitimate representative of the Namibian people, the General Assembly condemned South Africa's 'illegal occupation'.
South Africa was effectively forced to reconsider its refusal to talk to Swapo, which it had described as a terrorist organisation. The South African prime minister, John Vorster, finally agreed to take part in indirect talks with Nujoma under the auspices of the US, Canada, Britain, France and West Germany.
While South Africa accepted in principle Swapo's claim to independence, it insisted on preserving white domination of the region. Diplomatic wrangling went on for years until South Africa accepted the five-nation western peace plan for a ceasefire, the gradual withdrawal of South Africa forces and one-man-one-vote elections under UN monitoring.
Nujoma was caught in a dilemma, with the West pressuring him to accept the formula and the Soviet Union and Cuba urging him to reject it. During talks with the US Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, in April 1978, Nujoma proposed changes to the plan.
He wanted a UN presence in South West Africa, the inclusion of Walvis Bay – the territory's only deep-water port and already claimed by South Africa – within the boundaries of the new nation and the movement of South African forces restricted.
While Nujoma's demands were being discussed by diplomats, South Africa bombed a Swapo camp in South West Africa, killing hundreds, including women and children.
Nujoma broke off negotiations immediately. It was only the determination of Donald McHenry, the leader of the five western nations and America's deputy representative at the UN, that kept the peace talks flickering with faint hope. Three months later, Nujoma, urged by several African governments to remain flexible, finally accepted the plan virtually in its original form.
But the implementation of the plan created discord and the fighting continued. In 1981 Swapo leaders and South African delegates met face to face for the first time. The meeting was held in the League of Nations council chamber in Geneva, where the first mandate had been drawn up after the First World War.
A conciliatory Nujoma appeared willing to negotiate but South Africa posed the biggest difficulty by insisting that the UN was incapable of overseeing elections because it had recognised Swapo as the only legitimate representative of the Namibian people. Once again, talks collapsed and fighting resumed.
Diplomatic moves to achieve a ceasefire became increasingly difficult with the election of Ronald Reagan as US president. When he supported South Africa's position, Nujoma accused him of setting up 'an unholy alliance' with the Pretoria regime.
It was not until August 1988 that the deadlock began to yield. The Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reduced support for independence wars throughout the world and automatically raised hopes for a settlement of troubles in southern Africa.
A ceasefire was agreed between South Africa and Cuba, which had sent troops to Angola, and the Angolan government. Swapo and South Africa concluded a separate agreement for a truce in South West Africa and a plan for its independence.
The plan proposed the withdrawal of South African forces and the destruction of Nujoma's bases. There were compromises: Nujoma withdrew claims to Walvis Bay until independence had been achieved and South Africa accepted UN referees to conduct elections. More than 40,000 exiled Namibians were allowed to return home.
Apart from one flare-up on the South African-Angolan border between Swapo forces and South African troops, the timetable for freedom in South West Africa held. Nujoma returned home on September 14 1989 after 30 years in exile to discover that his 89-year-old mother, Helvi Kondombolo, led the welcoming reception committee (she died in 2008 aged 110).
Nujoma declared that he was looking towards the future and called on his people to 'unlearn, forget and leave the sad chapter behind us.' Bitter memories, racial hatred and distrust should be buried forever. 'Let us open a new page and a new chapter, based on love, peace, human rights, patriotism, respect for one another and genuine reconciliation.'
After a year of electioneering, the last colony in Africa became independent with Nujoma elected president of Namibia. Swapo won a convincing majority of two-thirds of the 72 seats in the new legislature.
World leaders attended celebrations costing £2.5 million, with half of it paid by South Africa and the rest funded by Namibian commercial interests.
Namibia opted to join the Commonwealth in 1991, the 50th nation to do so and introduced English to replace Afrikaans. The transition was somewhat bizarre since the link with Britain was based on the original annexation of the territory by South Africa, which left the Commonwealth in 1961 to become a republic.
In 1994, Nujoma maintained his grip on the nation in its first post-independence election when Swapo again took 52 of the 72 parliamentary seats. Nujoma won nearly 72 per cent of the presidential vote.
While consolidating Namibia's status as a stable, fully functioning nation, Nujoma occasionally provoked controversy, as in 2001, when he announced a purge of homosexuals in the country.
He stood down in 2005, publishing a memoir, Where Others Wavered, but in retirement he maintained a vocal presence in the political arena.
Sam Nujoma married Kovambo Theopoldine Katjimune in 1956; she survives him with their daughter, and three sons, the eldest of whom, Utoni, is a senior politician and member of Swapo.
Sam Nujoma, born May 12 1929, died February 8 2025