The life of Sam Nujoma in brief – 1929-2025

Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma was born on May 12, 1929, at Etunda village near Okahao in northern Namibia.
His educational opportunities were limited because Nujoma spent much of his early childhood looking after his siblings and tending to the family’s cattle and traditional farming activities.
He, however, attended a Finnish Missionary School at Okahao at the age of 10 and ended at Standard 6.
Nujoma moved to Walvis Bay when he was 17 in 1946 to live with his aunt and got his first job at a general store earning 10 shillings.
His second job was at a whaling station where he was exposed to world politics when he met World War II soldiers from Argentina, Norway and some European countries.
In 1949, Nujoma moved to Windhoek and started working as a cleaner for the South African Railways. He also attended night school at St Barnabas Anglican Church School in Old Location.
He further studied for his Junior Certificate through correspondence at the Trans‐Africa Correspondence College in South Africa.
In 1959, Nujoma co-founded and served as the first president of the Ovamboland People’s Organisation (OPO. In December 1958, he organized the Old Location resistance and was arrested and deported to Ovamboland.
After the Old Location Massacre on December 10, 1959, Nujoma was arrested and charged for organizing the resistance and faced threats of deportation to the north of the country.
By the directive of OPO leadership and in collaboration with Chief Hosea Kutako, it was decided that Nujoma join the other Namibians in exile who were lobbying the United Nations on behalf of the anti-colonial cause for Namibia. In 1960, Nujoma petitioned the UN through letters and was eventually exiled in February.
He left Namibia on February 29, crossing into Bechuanaland and, from there, travelling to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia by train. He flew from Bulawayo to Salisbury and on to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia. With the assistance of a Northern Rhodesian United National Independent Party member, he crossed into the Katanga Province of Belgian Congo where he met Moise Tshombe from the Conakat Party of Congolese.
Crossing the border to Ndola, he boarded a flight to Mbeya where he was treated for malaria and escaped from the hospital after being threatened with arrest by the colonial authorities.
From Mbeya, Nujoma travelled with the assistance of the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) officials via Njombe, Iringa and Dodoma to Dar Es Sallam.
With the help of Julius Nyerere, then president of TANU, he received a passport.
While in Tanganyika, he received permission to address the UN Committee on South West Africa in New York.
In April 1960, Nujoma travelled from Tanganyika to Khartoum, Sudan, to Accra where he attended the All People’s Conference organized by Kwame Nkrumah against the French atom bomb test in the Sahara Desert. Nujoma met with other African nationalist leaders, such as Patrice Lumumba, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, and Frantz Fanon, at the conference. His early encounters with other African nationalist leaders left a lasting impression and informed his Pan-African outlook. Kwame Nkrumah assisted Nujoma in travelling to the United States and later to Liberia, where a case in South West Africa was presented to the International Court of Justice.
After breaking away from SWANU, OPO reconstituted itself as the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in New York on April 19 1960, Nujoma was elected president in absentia. He arrived in New York in June 1960, where he petitioned before the Sub Committee of the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Nujoma demanded that South West Africa be given its independence by 1963 the latest.
He then returned to Tanganyika in 1961, where he and a small group of activists would develop SWAPO into an international force.
He received support from other African nationalists and strong backing from Julius Nyerere. Nujoma established SWAPO’s Provisional headquarters in Dar es Salaam and arranged scholarships and military training for Namibians who had started to join him there. Mzee Kaukungwa, Mosé Tjitendero, and Hifikepunye Pohamba were among the first arrivals.
In 1962, SWAPO founded its armed wing, the South West African Liberation Army (SWALA), later renamed the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). Nujoma procured the first weapons from Algeria via Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia, where they were taken to Omugulugwombashe in Ovamboland.[citation needed] On March 21 1966, in a bid to test South Africa’s claims at the International Court of Justice at the Hague that Namibians in exile were free to return and its assertion that they were in self-imposed exile, Nujoma, accompanied by Hifikepunye Pohamba, chartered a plane to Windhoek. On arrival at the airport, they were arrested and deported to Zambia the next day. On August 26 1966, the first armed clash between SWALA and the South African security forces took place when paratroopers and police attacked SWALA combatants who had set up a camp at Omugulugwombashe. The attack would begin the Namibian War of Independence, which would last more than 25 years. In 1969, Nujoma was re-affirmed as SWAPO President at the Tanga Consultative Conference in Tanzania.
In the late 1960s, Nujoma continued his diplomatic rounds as SWAPO set up offices across Africa, Europe, and the Americas. He represented SWAPO at the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement on September 1 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and at the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on May 25 1963. In 1965, the OAU recognized SWAPO as the only lawful representative of the Namibian people.

Additional information from Wikipedia