In Memoriam

SAM NUJOMA

1929 -- 2025

Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma, who  passed away on 8th February, was the last of the great national liberation leaders in the wave of decolonisation from the 1950s to 1990s, and a giant of the liberation struggle in southern Africa. He was born at Etunda, a village in Ongandjera near the town of Okahao in Ovamboland in South West Africa, on 12th May 1929. 
His first political activity in the early 1950s was as a trade unionist on South African Railways. Namibia, then called South West Africa, was ruled by South Africa which applied the brutal apartheid and contract labour systems to the African majority, condemning them to virtual slavery in the service of the super-rich Western imperialist exploiters.
He became a leading member of the Ovamboland People's Congress, created in 1957, which was renamed the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) in 1960 with Nujoma as president. SWAPO adopted Marxist–Leninism, and its declared goals were the creation of an independent Namibia and the building of a socialist society. 
In 1962 the South West African Liberation Army, later the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), was formed, and the first armed clash with South African security forces on 26th  August 1966  marked the beginning of the 25 year long Namibian War of Independence.
Both SWAPO and PLAN received support from across Africa and the socialist states, with Nujoma representing them at many meetings of the African Union, the United Nations in New York, and at the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961.
He met and received support from many of the early leaders of the newly independent African states including Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Ahmed Ben Bella and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Negotiations between the leading Western powers and the African Frontline States and Nigeria led to the adoption of UN resolution resolution 435 in 1978, which outlined a ceasefire and UN-supervised elections. But Namibia’s freedom was held back by American and South African involvement in the war against the MPLA freedom-fighters in Angola. 
But the historic victory of the MPLA-Cuban forces at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in March 1988 finally opened the path for Namibia’s independence the following  year. Nujoma served as the country’s first president until November 2007.
However it was Namibia’s great misfortune to gain its freedom just as socialism was reversed in the Soviet-led bloc, limiting the prospects for socialist-oriented development beneficial to the working people. 
Sam Nujoma, as he was known, was a charismatic and inspiring leader, with great charm and a characteristic smile. He will be forever remembered as a great socialist, freedom fighter, a Pan Africanist and supporter of the Non-Aligned Movement.