Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma (12May 19298February 2025) was a Namibian revolutionary, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served three terms as the first president of Namibia, from 1990 to 2005. Nujoma was a founding member and the first president of the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) in 1960.
Nujoma became involved in anti-colonial politics during the 1950s. In 1959, he co-founded and served as the first president of the Ovamboland People's Organization (OPO), a nationalist organization advocating for an independent Namibia. In December 1958, he was an organizer of the Old Location resistance and was arrested and deported to Ovamboland. In 1960, he escaped and went into exile in Tanzania, where he was welcomed by Julius Nyerere.
Nujoma played an important role as the leader of the national liberation movement in campaigning for Namibia's political independence from South African rule. The OPO was renamed SWAPO in 1960. Nujoma established the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) in 1962 and launched a guerrilla war against the apartheid government of South Africa in August 1966 at Omugulugwombashe after the United Nations withdrew the mandate for South Africa to govern the territory. Nujoma led SWAPO during the lengthy Namibian War of Independence, which lasted from 1966 to 1989.
Namibia achieved independence from South Africa in 1990 and held its first democratic elections the same year. SWAPO won a majority, and Nujoma was sworn in as the country's first president on 21 March 1990. He was re-elected for two more terms in 1994 and 1999. Nujoma retired as SWAPO party president on 30 November 2007.
Nujoma published his autobiography, Where Others Wavered in 2001. He received multiple honours and awards for his leadership, including the Lenin Peace Prize and the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize. The Parliament of Namibia conferred on him the titles "Founding President of the Republic of Namibia" and "Father of the Namibian Nation". In 2007, SWAPO named him "Leader of the Namibian Revolution".
Early life
Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma was born at Etunda, a village in Ongandjera, near Okahao, Ovamboland, South West Africa, on 12 May 1929. Nujoma was born to Helvi Mpingana Kondombolo (1898–2008) and Daniel Uutoni Nujoma (1893–1968). His mother, Helvi, was a Uukwambi princess by descent, and this fact would later reinforce Nujoma's charismatic influence during his political career. He was the eldest of his parents' eleven children.
Nujoma spent much of his early childhood looking after his siblings and tending to the family's cattle and traditional farming activities. His educational opportunities were limited. He started attending a Finnish missionary school at Okahao when he was ten and completed Standard Six, which was as high as possible for blacks during the time. In 1946, at age 17, he moved to Walvis Bay to live with his aunt, where he began his first employment at a general store for a monthly salary of 10 shillings.
Political career
During World War I, South Africa had defeated the German colonial forces in South West Africa and established martial law in the colony after making a peace treaty in July 1915. After the war, the League of Nations officially assigned the former German colony to the United Kingdom as a mandate under the administration of South Africa. When the National Party won the 1948 election in South Africa, it passed laws establishing racial segregation known as apartheid. It applied these laws to South West Africa as well, which it governed as the de facto fifth province of South Africa.
Nujoma became involved in politics in the early 1950s through trade unions. Nujoma's political outlook was shaped by his work experiences, his awareness of the contract labour system, and his increasing knowledge of the independence campaigns across Africa. As a result of this activity, he was dismissed from SAR in 1957. In 1957, a group of Namibians working in Cape Town, led by Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, formed the Ovamboland People's Congress (OPC). OPC was opposed to South African policies in South West Africa, including the inhumane contract labour system under which people were forced to work for meager wages. Nujoma had become friends with Toivo, and in 1959, he joined with OPC cofounder Jacob Kuhangua to start the Windhoek branch of the organisation, which had by then been renamed the Ovamboland People's Organization (OPO).
thumb|left|Nujoma pictured in 1979
After the Old Location Massacre in December 1959, Nujoma was arrested and charged for organizing the resistance and faced threats of deportation to the north of the country. He was released after one week in custody. In 1960, Nujoma petitioned the UN through letters and eventually went into exile in February of that year. He left Namibia on 29 February, crossing into Bechuanaland and from there travelling to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia by train. He flew from Bulawayo to Salisbury (now Harare) and on to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia. With the assistance of members of the Northern Rhodesian United National Independence Party (UNIP) he crossed into the Belgian Congo's Katanga Province. There Nujoma met Moise Tshombe from the Conakat Party of Congolese. Crossing back over the border to Ndola, he boarded a flight to Mbeya. In Mbeya, he was treated for malaria and escaped from the hospital after being threatened with arrest by the colonial authorities. On 21 March 1966, in a bid to test South Africa's claims at the International Court of Justice at the Hague that Namibians in exile were free to return and its assertion that they were in self-imposed exile, Nujoma, accompanied by Hifikepunye Pohamba, chartered a plane to Windhoek. On arrival at the airport, they were arrested and deported to Zambia the next day. He also warned of the danger of the installation of neocolonialist marionettes who would superficially change the visible colonial regime while the position of the majority of people would stay the same. The Constituent Assembly, elected in November 1989, chose him as Namibia's first president. Nujoma was sworn in on 21 March 1990, in the presence of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the UN, Frederik de Klerk, president of South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, just released from prison. During the liberation struggle, Nujoma was also the commander-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) and the chairman of the Swapo Military Council, which was the biggest decision-making body of PLAN.
Nujoma's role in PLAN has been questioned following allegations of torture and imprisonment of fighters in the Lubango dungeons in Angola. About 1,000 SWAPO members were incarcerated for over nine years in these prisons. Details of what occurred were published in a left-wing journal, Searchlight South Africa, with an interview with two of those who had been kept in pits in poor conditions. It was alleged that Namibian churches participated in a cover-up of the events by the current Namibian government.
After serving 47 years as leader of SWAPO, he was succeeded by Hifikepunye Pohamba in 2007. There was speculation that he would be re-elected as SWAPO leader in 2007 and that he was planning to run for president again in 2009. In early October 2007, however, Nujoma said that he had no intention of seeking re-election as SWAPO president and would stand aside in favour of Pohamba. Pohamba was accordingly elected unopposed as SWAPO president on 29 November 2007 at a party congress. Nujoma said that he was "passing the torch and mantle of leadership to comrade Pohamba". The congress also decided to give Nujoma the title of "Leader of the Namibian Revolution", in addition to his existing title, "Founding Father of the Namibian Nation". Choosing to leave active politics, Nujoma was not re-elected to the SWAPO Central Committee nor the Politburo, but the congress permitted him to attend meetings of the Central Committee and Politburo "at his discretion". The possibility of his receiving the title of National Chairman of SWAPO was also left open.
At independence, Namibia was gravely divided as a result of a century of colonialism, dispossession, and racial discrimination, compounded by armed struggle and propaganda. For instance, SWAPO had been so demonized by the colonial media and by official pronouncements that most white people, as well as many members of other groups, regarded the movement with the deepest fear, loathing and suspicion. One of Nujoma's earliest achievements was to proclaim the policy of "national reconciliation", which aimed to improve and harmonise relations amongst Namibia's various racial and ethnic groups. Under his presidency, Namibia made steady if unspectacular economic progress, maintained a democratic system with respect for human rights (in the exception of LGBT rights), observed the rule of law, and worked steadily to eradicate the heritage of apartheid in the interests of developing a non-racial society.
In 1990, Nujoma initiated a plan for land reform, in which land would be redistributed from whites to blacks. Some 12% of the total commercial farmland in the country was taken away from white farmers and given to black citizens by 2007. However, according to a 1998 statement made by the Cabinet of Namibia "the agricultural base is too weak to offer a sustainable basis for prosperity" and 38% of Namibia's rural population continues to live beneath the poverty line as of 2010.
thumb|Nujoma with [[Shankar Dayal Sharma, President of India, in 1995]]
Nujoma was re-elected as president of Namibia in the December 1994 election with 76.3% of the vote. The constitution of Namibia was changed to allow Nujoma to run for a third five-year term in 1999; this was justified because he had not been directly elected for his first term, and the change applied only to Nujoma. He won the 1999 election with 76.8% of the vote. Nujoma also allowed the Angolan military to use Namibian territory to launch attacks on UNITA during the Angolan Civil War, which resulted in UNITA launching cross-border attacks that resulted in civilian deaths. He also oversaw the suppression of the Caprivi conflict in August 1999, during which a state of emergency was declared.
thumb|Nujoma in 2003
Nujoma was the international patron and a strong supporter of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, based in Namibia. He was also a supporter of women's and children's rights, having called for fathers to pay for the maintenance of children born out of wedlock.
In 2000, alongside President of Finland Tarja Halonen, he co-chaired the United Nations' Millennium Summit that led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
In 2001, Nujoma announced purges against gays and lesbians in Namibia, saying "the police must arrest, imprison and deport homosexuals and lesbians found in Namibia". He also described homosexuality as a "foreign and corrupt ideology".
While attending a United Nations conference in Geneva in 2000, Nujoma called AIDS a man-made biological weapon. At one point during his presidency, he banned foreign television programmes from being broadcast in Namibia, accusing them of corrupting the country's youth. In 2001, he banned government agencies from purchasing The Namibian newspaper and placing advertisements in it, accusing the paper of having an "anti-government stance".
Nujoma played a crucial role in addressing the country’s HIV/AIDS crisis, despite negative homophobic and stigmatizing comments, by advocating for awareness and policy development. He publicly recognized the epidemic as a major health challenge. Under his leadership, Namibia introduced its first National Strategic Plan on HIV/AIDS, which outlined prevention, treatment, and care initiatives. His administration collaborated with global organizations such as WHO and UNAIDS to secure funding and expand support for HIV programs and also promoted the gradual expansion of antiretroviral therapy to improve treatment access.
Post-presidency
thumb|Nujoma meets with [[Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Windhoek on 25 June 2009.]]
right|thumb|Nujoma with awarded athletes Beatrice Masilingi and Christine Mboma and their coach Henk Botha in [[Walvis Bay on 24 November 2021]]
Despite stepping down from a formal role, Nujoma remained active in the political sphere and regularly campaigned for SWAPO at various rallies and functions across the country. In 2009, Nujoma earned a master's degree in geology from the University of Namibia.
The director of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) in Namibia claimed in 2007 that Nujoma had connections to the CIA. The organization asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Nujoma and what they say is his role in disappearances during the independence struggle and his presidency. To date, these claims have not been substantiated.
Despite his commitment and actions during his presidency to foster racial reconciliation and harmony between Namibia's various ethnic groups, Nujoma made controversial and violent remarks after his presidency. In June 2009, he called on the SWAPO party youth to take up arms and, as he put it, "drive the colonists out of the country". In 2009, he attacked the German-speaking Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia (DELK), accusing it of having "collaborated with the enemy before independence and possibly still being an enemy". He also said: "We tolerate them. But if they don't behave, we will attack them. And when they call their white friends from Germany, we will shoot them in the head". In September 2009, during a speech in northern Namibia defending Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, Nujoma repeatedly verbally attacked Americans, Britons, and Germans and urged his supporters: "As soon as you see an Englishman, hit him with a hammer in the head". He further added, as he had done previously in June 2009: "...that Germans who are unwilling to cooperate should be shot in the head".
After leaving the presidency, Nujoma resided in his private farm near Otavi and at a SWAPO-owned property outside Windhoek. He was granted an official residence by the government in 2015.
Personal life
Nujoma married Kovambo Theopoldine Katjimune on 6 May 1956. The couple had three sons and one daughter: Utoni Daniel (born 1952), John Ndeshipanda (1955–1993), Sakaria "Zacky" Nujoma (born 1957), and Nelago Nujoma (born 1959), who died at 18 months while Nujoma was in exile. Two decades elapsed before his wife joined him abroad. Nujoma's first-born son, Utoni, is a high-ranking politician and member of SWAPO who has served in both the Cabinet and the National Assembly. His youngest son, Sakaria, was named in the Panama Papers in 2016, which revealed details about the business connection between him and alleged Sicilian Mafia member Vito Palazzolo.
Nujoma's father, Daniel Uutoni Nujoma, whose sole "crime" was being Nujoma's father, was arrested at Okahao and sent to Pretoria prison in 1966. There he developed tuberculosis from which he died in 1968. Nujoma's mother, Kuku Helvi Mpingana Kondombolo, died in November 2008; she was reportedly more than 100 years old.
Nujoma's autobiography, Where Others Wavered, was published in 2001.
Illness, death, and funeral
Nujoma made his last public appearance at the funeral of president Hage Geingob in February 2024. In July 2024, Nujoma was hospitalized in Windhoek after feeling ill. He had been hospitalised the previous month due to an illness and had to miss a public engagement.
On 8 February 2025, Nujoma died at a hospital in Windhoek, where he had been confined for the previous three weeks due to an illness. He was 95. The Namibian government announced a period of national mourning over his death beginning on 9 February and ordered Nujoma's remains to be transported to the Omusati, Oshana, Erongo, Kavango East, Zambezi, Otjozondjupa, Khomas and ǁKaras Regions. A memorial service was held at Independence Stadium on 28 February 2025, which was followed by Nujoma's burial on 1 March 2025 at Heroes' Acre.
The African National Congress in South Africa set its party flags at half-mast in mourning for Nujoma, while Cuba declared three days of national mourning for him.
Legacy
An act of parliament of December 2005 conferred the title "Founding Father of the Namibian Nation" on former president Nujoma. His portrait has appeared on some of the country's banknotes since 2012.
Described as both "charismatic" and "fiery", Nujoma was a revered figure in Namibia for leading the country towards independence and steering it on a path towards to democracy and stability. In a press release issued after his death, the National Assembly said that his contributions to the nation's legislative processes were foundational in creating a constitutional democracy based on freedom, unity and prosperity.
The Namibian – a publication that at times had a strained relationship with Nujoma
|-
! scope="row" | 1980
| Frédéric Joliot-Curie Gold Medal
|
| World Peace Council
|-
! scope="row" | 2007
| Leader of the Namibian Revolution
|
| SWAPO Party of Namibia
|-
! scope="row" | 2018
| Order of the Companions of O. R. Tambo
| For his opposition to the government of Apartheid South Africa
| South Africa
|}
Honorary doctorates
{| class="wikitable"
! scope="col" | Date of award
! scope="col" | Title
! scope="col" | Awarding university
|-
! scope="row" | 1973
| Honorary Doctorate of Law
| Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria
|-
! scope="row" | 1975
| Honorary Doctorate of Computer Science
| Ombwana University, Malawi
|-
! scope="row" | 1986
| Certificate of Honour
| University of Ibadan, Nigeria
|-
! scope="row" | 1990
| Honorary Doctorate Degree of Law
| Lincoln University, USA
|-
! scope="row" | 1990
| Honorary Doctorate Degree of Law
| National University of Lesotho, Lesotho
|-
! scope="row" | 1992
| Honorary Doctorate Degree of Technology
| Federal University of Technology Minna, Nigeria
|-
! scope="row" | 1993
| Honorary Doctorate Degree in Education
| University of Namibia
|-
! scope="row" | 1993
| Honorary Doctorate Degree of Law
| Central State University, USA
|-
! scope="row" | 1996
| Doctor of Laws
| University of Atlanta, USA,
|-
! scope="row" | 1997
| Honorary Doctorate Degree of Laws
| Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA
|-
! scope="row" | 1998
| Honorary Doctorate Degree
| Russian Economic Academy, Russia
|-
! scope="row" | 1998
| Honorary Doctorate Degree
| Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Russia
|-
! scope="row" | 1999
| Honorary Degree of Doctor of Public Service
| La Roche College, USA
|-
! scope="row" | 1999
| Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws
| University of Zimbabwe
|-
! scope="row" | 2003
| Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science
| Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Nigeria
|-
! scope="row" | 2005
| Honorary Doctorate in Public Management
| Polytechnic of Namibia
|-
! scope="row" | 2006
| Honorary Professor
| China University of Geosciences
|-
! scope="row" | 2015
| Doctor of Philosophy in Peace and Conflict Studies
| University of Zambia
|}
See also
- History of Namibia
- Aaron Mushimba, brother-in-law and prominent businessperson
- Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, co-founder of both OPO and SWAPO
Notes
References
In book and film
- Sam Nujoma, Where Others Wavered, The Autobiography of Sam Nujoma, London 2001
- Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, epic film by Charles Burnett, the Namibian independence movement through the eyes of Nujoma
External links
- Nujoma's interview with German magazine Die Welt