By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The first president of independent Namibia, Sam Nujoma, has died at the age of 95 in the capital Windhoek, the Namibian Presidency said on Sunday.
Nujoma had been hospitalised over the past three weeks, battling an illness from which he “could not recover”, Namibian President Nangolo Mbumba said in a statement announcing the death.
“It is therefore with utmost sorrow and sadness that I announce this morning of the 9th of February 2025 to the Namibian people, our African brothers and sisters and the world at large, about the passing of our revered freedom fighter and revolutionary leader,” Mbumba said.
“Our founding father lived a long and consequential life during which he exceptionally served the people of his beloved country.”
Born to poor farmers from the Ovambo tribe, Nujoma was the eldest of 10 children.
Nujoma began a life in exile in 1960, the same year he was elected to head the South West Peoples’ Organisation (SWAPO), which led the liberation struggle.
After independence, Nujoma became president in 1990 and led the country until 2005.
He “inspired us to rise to our feet and to become masters of this vast land of our ancestors”, Mbumba said.
Nujoma was the last of a generation of African leaders who brought their countries out of colonial or white minority rule that included South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Mozambique’s Samora Machel.
Many Namibians credited Nujoma’s leadership for the process of national healing and reconciliation after the deep divisions caused by the independence war and South Africa’s policies of dividing the country into ethnically based regional governments, with separate education and health care for each race.
Even his political opponents praised Nujoma — who was branded a Marxist and accused of ruthless suppression of dissent while in exile — for establishing a democratic Constitution and involving white businessmen and politicians in government after independence.
Despite his pragmatism and nation-building at home, Nujoma often hit foreign headlines for his fierce anti-Western rhetoric. At a United Nations conference in Geneva in 2000, Nujoma stunned delegates when he claimed AIDS was a man-made biological weapon. He also occasionally waged a verbal war on homosexuality, calling gays “idiots” and branding homosexuality a “foreign and corrupt ideology.”
He once banned all foreign television programs, declaring they had corrupted the youth of Namibia.
Nujoma built ties with North Korea, Cuba, Russia and China, some of which had supported Namibia’s liberation movement by providing arms and training.
But he balanced that with outreach to the West, and Nujoma was the first African leader to be hosted at the White House by former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1993. Clinton called Nujoma “the George Washington of his country” and “a genuine hero of the world’s movement toward democracy.”