Samuel Shafiishuna Nujoma, 1929-2025

Samuel Shafiishuna Nujoma, one of Africa’s great revolutionaries and liberators, who led the struggle for the eventual independence of the Republic of Namibia from South Africa in 1990, passed on at the age of 95 on February 8, 2025.

With his passing, Namibia and indeed Africa lost one of the true heroes of the struggle to free the continent from the shackles of colonialism and racial apartheid. His struggle for the independence of Namibia, which he led under the South West People’s Organization (SWAPO), was particularly notable as his organisation was fighting both a colonial power—apartheid South Africa—and racial segregation in Namibia by the German settler community, who were the remnants of the German colonial administration of the country.

Namibia was ruled for a time as a German colony but was ceded to South Africa by Britain, which was awarded the mandate to take over the territory by the League of Nations following the defeat of Germany in the First World War in 1918.

SPONSOR AD

Nujoma was born the first of seven children in 1929 in the remote village of Ongandjera in the Namibian region of Ovamboland, where he tended the family’s livestock. He combined this with attending a night school for his education. But due to pressures to support his peasant family, he left school to work as a railway dining car steward at age 16.

Nujoma’s first taste of political activism came when a colleague was dismissed without compensation after he sustained serious workplace injuries. As similar incidences against railway workers were common, Nujoma tried to form a trade union to press for the rights of his colleague as well as workers in the Namibian railway system. The railway authorities subsequently dismissed Nujoma from his job, whereupon he found a job as a clerk and store assistant.

But the two incidences involving his colleague and his own personal experience of being fired for trying to organise a trade union ignited the fire of struggle in Nujoma. Henceforth, there was to be no going back in the struggle to liberate the Namibian people from the shackles of colonial subjugation under apartheid South African rule.

In 1958, Nujoma, along with like-minded colleagues, founded the Ovambo People’s Organisation in his native Ovambo region of Namibia which soon attracted the attention of the colonial South African authorities. Nujoma subsequently fled into exile in 1960, enduring a tortuous journey through Angola, Botswana and eventually finding himself in Tanzania, where he was given refuge by President Julius Nyerere.

On April 19 of the same year, following the formation of the South West Africa Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO), which was an enlargement of the Ovambo People’s Organization encompassing the entire people of Namibia, Nujoma, while in exile in Tanzania, was named as president and leader of the organisation.

For the intervening years until 1966, the Namibian struggle under Nujoma’s leadership of SWAPO was focused on prevailing on the United Nations through petitions to grant Namibia independence from South Africa. In 1966, the struggle changed to an armed one with the formation of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). For this phase of the Namibian struggle, Nujoma travelled extensively through Africa to mobilise financial, material and moral support. He was a frequent visitor to Nigeria, where an office was granted to SWAPO and where donations of all kinds poured in.

Due to Nujoma’s untiring advocacy and activism, Nigeria undertook to provide educational scholarships as well as military training for Namibian citizens willing to join the liberation struggle.

In 1971, a significant development in the Namibian struggle came when the International Court of Justice granted the forfeiture of the mandate given to South Africa and Namibia reverted to direct United Nation’s control.

The following years witnessed recalcitrance on the part of the rulers of apartheid South Africans to agree to grant the ruling by the ICJ for the dismantling of its colonial structures in Namibia. This was despite the passing of UN Resolution 435 calling for full independence for Namibia.

This led to the intensification of armed struggle against South Africa by Namibian liberation fighters of SWAPO from the territory of neighbouring Angola. By the late 80s the struggle had reached a highpoint with the defeat of South African forces at the battle of Cuito Cannavale in Angola.

Subsequently, South Africa was compelled to withdraw from Angolan territory and begin negotiations for independence for Namibia, which also included arrangements for UN-supervised elections in 1990.

Nujoma arrived to lead SWAPO to the first Namibian independence elections, which the party predictably swept. Nujoma thus became deservedly the first president of an Independent Namibia for which he had spent the greater part of his life fighting. He won two subsequent elections in 1994 and 1998 respectively. Having won third term elections, he announced his decision not to run for a fourth term in 2005 when the elections came up. The Namibian Parliament formally honoured him with the title of ‘’Founding Father of the Namibian Nation’’.

Following his retirement from SWAPO, he had been involved in humanitarian and constructive political causes in Namibia and beyond before his passing this month at the ripe old age of 95.

Our condolences go to his family and the Namibian people for the passing of this great son of Africa.