Namibia’s founding father Sam Nujoma, who led his country’s fight for independence from South Africa, died Saturday aged 95, the presidency announced. Nujoma had been hospitalised over the past three weeks, battling an illness from which he “could not recover”, President Nangolo Mbumba said in a statement released Sunday.
With the “utmost sorrow and sadness” Mbumba said he was announcing “the passing of our revered freedom fighter and revolutionary leader”. “Our Founding Father lived a long and consequential life during which he exceptionally served the people of his beloved country,” he added. Born to poor farmers from the Ovambo tribe, Nujoma was the eldest of 10 children. He took a job as a railway sweeper near Windhoek in 1949 while attending night classes.
There, he met Herero tribal chief Hosea Kutako who was lobbying to end apartheid rule in Namibia, then known as South West Africa.
Kutako became his mentor, shepherding Nujoma as he became politically active among black workers resisting a government order to move to a new township in the late 1950s. At Kutako’s request, Nujoma began life in exile in 1960, leaving his wife and four children behind. That same year, he was elected president of the South West Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO) and shuttled from capital to capital seeking support for the independence cause.
SWAPO launched an armed struggle in 1966 after neighbouring South Africa refused a UN order to give up its mandate over the former German colony — arguing that it was a buffer against the advance of communism in Africa.
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