Sam Nujoma: The revolutionary leader who liberated Namibia

The giant who shaped Namibia’s national identity leaves a void few can hope to fill.

Namibia, previously called South West Africa, suffered decades of looting and colonial violence at the hands of Europeans who had flocked to the country around the turn of the 20th Century.

Starting in 1904, German colonisers killed tens of thousands of Namibians in what has been dubbed the world’s “forgotten genocide”. German officers used black Africans as guinea pigs for horrific crimes later repeated by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Namibia was under German occupation from 1884 until 1915, when Germany lost its colony in World War One.

Namibia then fell under the rule of white South Africa, which extended its racist laws to the country, denying black Namibians any political rights, as well as restricting social and economic freedoms.

The introduction of sweeping apartheid legislation led to a guerrilla war of independence breaking out in 1966.

By this stage, Nujoma was already involved in the fight against white-minority rule.

The self-confessed “elder son of a peasant family” from the northern village of Etunda had a modest start in life, with little more than a primary school education.

Married to Kovambo Theopoldine Katjimune with whom he had four children, and working on a railway, he held a deep passion for politics and yearned to see his people free from the injustice and indignity of colonialism.

Inspiration came in the stories of early Namibian resistance leaders, such as Hendrik Witbooi, who fought against the Germans in the 1880s.

By 1959, Nujoma had become the head of the Owamboland Peoples organisation, the independence movement that was a forerunner to Swapo.

A year later, aged 30, Nujoma was forced into exile. With no passport, he used his cunning to adopt different personas and blagged his way onto trains and planes, external – ending up in Zambia and Tanzania before heading to West Africa.

With the help of Liberian authorities who were early backers of black Namibians’ push for independence, Nujoma flew to New York and petitioned the UN to help grant Namibia its independence – but South Africa refused.

Nujoma was branded a “Marxist terrorist” by South Africa’s white leaders for leading forces that fought alongside the anti-apartheid movement, posing a formidable challenge to the oppressive regimes in several southern African countries.

With support from Cuban troops who were fighting in neighbouring Angola, Swapo guerrillas were able to attack South African bases in Namibia.

Returning from exile, Nujoma was swiftly rearrested by the South African authorities and deported to Zambia six years later.

“We knew that only military force and mass political mobilisation backed by the support of the people would force South Africa out of Namibia,” Nujoma narrated in his autobiography Where Others Wavered, which was published in 2001.

He led Swapo forces from exile, before returning to the country in 1989, a year after South Africa had agreed to Namibian independence.

South Africa was becoming more isolated internationally and the cost of military intervention was increasing. Namibia finally gained independence in 1990 after almost 25 years of warfare.