AFRICANS BID FAREWELL TO LAST INDEPENDENCE GIANT

A sombre mood engulfed the Namibian capital, Windhoek, on Friday, 28 February, 2025, as thousands gathered to give a final salute to the nation's founding father and liberation hero, Sam Nujoma, who died earlier this month. Namibians, African heads of state and political organisations came to Windhoek's Independence Stadium to bid farewell to Nujoma, whose death marks the end of a generation of African leaders who led their nations to freedom from colonial settler regimes.

Born in 1929, Nujoma emerged as a prominent labour activist in the 1950s in the territory then known as South West Africa, ruled by apartheid South Africa.

In 1959, Nujoma and Andimba Herman Toivo ya Toivo, a policeman with the South African Railways, co-founded the Ovamboland People's Congress (OPC) to fight for the rights of African workers who faced abuse at the hands of the White colonial settlers. The following year, the OPC was renamed as the South West People's Organisation (SWAPO). Nujoma immediately took the reins of the organisation and would spend the majority of the next three decades in exile, mostly in Zambia, where SWAPO's headquarters were.

He also spent a considerable amount of time in Angola, where the organisation's military wing, the People's Liberation Army (PLAN), established bases in 1966 when it launched an armed struggle against the apartheid regime. At least 20,000 Africans were killed in the war of independence between the beginning of the struggle in 1966 and the late 1980s when negotiations led by the United Nations and other regional organisations led to a ceasefire between SWAPO and the apartheid regime.

In 1989, after nearly 30 years away, Nujoma returned to Namibia. Months later, he won the country's first democratic elections and was sworn in as Namibia's first post-independence leader in March 1990. He remained in office until 2005, when he stepped down. He has been credited with maintaining the country's economic and political stability.

Source

https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/southern-africa/namibia-founding-president-nujoma-dies-at-95-4919380