“There can be no hesitation henceforth,” Sam Nujoma wrote in his autobiography, “Where Others Wavered” (2001), about the struggle for independence in Namibia, or Southwest Africa. “The course has been set. We have no alternative but to rise in arms and bring about our own liberation. The supreme test must be faced and we must at once begin to cross the many rivers of blood on our march towards freedom. And as sure as night follows day, victory will be ours.”
His prophecy of victory was indicative of his leadership and determination. The revolutionary died Feb. 8 in Windhoek, Namibia. He was 95.
Many activists and residents in New York were introduced to Nujoma by the late Elombe Brath via the Patrice Lumumba Coalition. In 2005, when Nujoma made his last address to the Harlem community, Brath covered the event. Nujoma saluted the assembly of members and organizations for their contribution to the fight for liberation in Namibia. “Namibia’s protracted liberation struggle was bloody and bitter,” Nujoma said. “It demanded untold suffering and sacrifices of our people inside the country and the rest of us who were forced to spend many decades in exile”; in his case, 29 years.
His visit, Brath observed, was something the Harlem welcoming committee planned to honor his return, which began 44 years before. In his autobiography, , Nujoma explained the connection between Black nationalism in America and the anti-colonial fight in Africa. “Over the years we struggled hard and finally gained recognition, with observer status for SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization) in the general assembly. We were also able to address the General Assembly directly and there was even support, in the form of facilities, allocated to us. But before we were able to have our own representatives at the UN we were greatly helped by Marcus Garvey’s African Pioneer Movement …” He was probably referring to the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement founded by Carlos Cooks.
Born Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma on May 12, 1929, to a mother who was a princess by descent, he was the eldest of 11 children. Looking after his younger siblings and herding cattle occupied much of his youth. While his education was limited, he did complete Standard Six, the highest Blacks could achieve at that time. He was still a teenager when he began working in Walvis Bay in 1946, which put him in touch with European soldiers during World War II.
Two years later, Nujoma began working as a cleaner for South African Railways (SAR). “In 1957, at the age of 29,” he wrote, “I resigned from the SAR with the purpose of devoting my time to politics. However, I had to face the problem that, by law, an African not employed or in the service of a white man would not be allowed to live in Windhoek or elsewhere in the urban districts.
“My solution was to seek employment with the Windhoek Municipality doing some clerical work. But when I found myself doing the work of lazy Boers, with too little money as my salary, I resigned and found employment with Hurbert Davis, a subsidiary of a Cape Town company which supplied and fitted electric cables in new buildings. The manager liked my work, but other whites did not, so I left and moved to another job with Carsten Veld, a South African manufacturing representative and wholesaler.”
By this time, Nujoma had already begun to protest against the apartheid that restricted Black Africans. When the Andimba Toivo ya Toivo was arrested in 1959, Nujoma was further incensed and spurred to activism. “From April 1959 we could now petition as the Ovamboland People’s Organization (OPO),” he continued in his autobiography. “Though formed by a group of individuals, it already had a solid base among the Contract workers of the Windhoek area, in the Old Location and the Pokies Draal Compound. I was the founding President, with Louis Nelengani as Vice-President and Jacob Kuhangua as Secretary-General. To form the OPO Constitution, we adapted a copy of the OPC Constitution, changing it only slightly to suit the political conditions in South West Africa. I myself typed it out on a second-hand typewriter I had bought from an old German lady in Windhoek.”
There, he stated the revolutionary aims and objectives of the organization. A year later, SWAPO was formed, and Nujoma joined its executive committee, representing OPO.
After being arrested for his political resistance, it was decided that he should leave the country and operate outside of it. Nujoma met all the prominent African revolutionaries: Patrice Lumumba, Gamal Nasser, Frantz Fanon, et al. Kwame Nkrumah assisted his desire to travel to the U.S. and later to Liberia, where a case about South West Africa was being presented to the International Court of Justice. Later, in Tanganyika, he received support from Julius Nyerere and established SWAPO’s provisional headquarters in Dar es Salaam. Five years later, SWAPO launched the first armed attack, thereby igniting the Namibian war of independence.
After the collapse of the Portuguese empire, Nujoma realized a change was necessary and moved the military base from Zambia to Angola. It would take a decade of struggle against the apartheid regimes in South Africa and Namibia, but by March 1989, a cease-fire agreement with South Africa was implemented via Security Council Resolution 435. In September, after nearly a generation in exile, Nujoma returned to his homeland. He arrived just in time to be elected Namibia’s first president and was re-elected in 1994, bolstered by his land reform initiatives. (By 2007, some 12% of the total commercial land was taken from white farmers and given to Black citizens.)
In the final pages of his autobiography, Nujoma said he was most proud of the nation’s constitution. “The Constitution of Namibia is, in many ways, a unique document,” he said. “The oppressed, the disenfranchised who at last won their struggle for freedom, argued for the enshrining of the fundamental human rights in the Constitution. These rights cannot be diluted. Further, ours is perhaps the only Constitution that commits the government to environmental protection. We are proud that our Constitution has been applauded all over the world by scholars and politicians alike, and we are proud that during the first ten years of independence Namibia has lived up to the letter of this supreme law.”
Good stuff , I was unaware of Harlem connection. I feel like I should read more books after reading this.
I was born into the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement & SWAPO! My Baba Elombe lived to see SWAPO come to Power!
Elombe,Jr.