The passing of Namibia’s founding president and long-time leader of the SWAPO Party, Sam Shafiishuna Nujoma, on February 8, 2025, at the age of 95, ends the era of arguably the most influential political figure in Namibia’s history. Born in the village of Etunda in the Omusati region of Northern Namibia, Nujoma became a young contract worker on the railways. He directly experienced the exploitation and humiliation of contract workers by the racist colonial regime and the white settlers in the country. This shaped his political understanding, and he organized amongst contract workers against the hated contract labor system known as okaholo. Alongside others, Nujoma also organized the resistance against the forced removal of the inhabitants of the Old Location in Windhoek on December 10, 1959. This act of resistance was met with police brutality, resulting in the death of 12 unarmed black people.

In March 1960, at the age of 30, Nujoma went into exile and attended the All-African Peoples’ Conference organized by President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana against the French atom bomb test in the Sahara Desert. Nujoma became a committed pan-Africanist who understood Namibia’s independence struggle as part of a broader struggle for Africa’s liberation from colonial rule. When the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) was formed on April 19, 1960, it had its base amongst the contract workers, just like its forerunners, the Ovamboland People’s Congress (OPC) and the Ovamboland People’s Organisation (OPO). Nujoma was elected as SWAPO president in absentia, a position he held for 47 years.

Nujoma led SWAPO through turbulent times in exile and crisscrossed the globe to garner support for Namibia’s independence. He set up SWAPO’s headquarters in Tanzania and oversaw the formation of the armed wing, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), in 1966. In 1971, he became the first African liberation movement leader to address the UN Security Council. In the late 1970s, Nujoma led the Namibian delegation, which negotiated the UN Security Council Resolution 435, which provided the framework for Namibia’s independence. In 1988, he signed the ceasefire, which ended the war with the South African occupational forces. A year later, he returned to a hero’s welcome to Namibia, and after the election victory of SWAPO, he became Namibia’s founding president on March 21, 1990.

Nujoma was a charismatic leader, totally dedicated to the liberation struggle, but he also showed little tolerance for divergent views. During the years in exile, he directed SWAPO with an iron fist and demanded complete loyalty. The question of spies (real or suspected) within the ranks of SWAPO led to a witch hunt that developed its own dynamics and threatened to tear the organization apart. Organizational, political, and sometimes personal differences led to accusations of espionage leveled against cadres in exile. This resulted in widespread cases of detention, torture, and death. At one point, even Nujoma’s own brother-in-law was detained, and when Namibians returned from exile in 1989, many told the stories of the autocratic rule and suffering in the camps. Neither Nujoma nor the rest of the SWAPO leadership were willing to account for these events within the liberation struggle, and the surviving victims demanded in vain that their names be cleared.

Politically, Nujoma felt at home with the icons of Africa’s liberation struggle. Kwame Nkrumah and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, as well as his closest friend, Robert Mugabe, were amongst those he truly admired and regarded as his brothers-in-arms. He believed firmly that Africa needed to rid itself of white settler colonialism and the imperialist forces that underpinned it. However, Namibia attained its independence not through a military victory of the liberation movement but through a negotiated settlement that involved extensive international mediation and entailed substantial compromises. In the 1970s and 1980s, SWAPO still claimed to play the vanguard role in the liberation struggle “of the oppressed and exploited people of Namibia” (so reads the SWAPO constitution of 1976). SWAPO’s political program of 1976 was characterized by socialist rhetoric, inspired by the newly won independence of Mozambique and Angola and by the support rendered by the Soviet Union. SWAPO stated that one of its key tasks was “to unite all Namibian people, particularly the working class, the peasantry and progressive intellectuals, into a vanguard party capable of safeguarding national independence and of building a classless, non-exploitative society based on the ideals and principles of scientific socialism.”

However, as the crisis in the Soviet Union deepened in the 1980s, coupled with the counterrevolutionary wars in Angola and Mozambique and the refusal by the South African apartheid regime to implement UN Resolution 435, it became clear that SWAPO regarded national independence (and not the proletarian revolution) as the primary goal of its struggle. A contributing factor to this shift was SWAPO’s attempt to seek Western support for Namibia’s independence by showing allegiance to market-related economic policies. When SWAPO’s Economic Policy Position Document was released in November 1988, it no longer called for the nationalization of key industries but instead promised “fair and just compensation in those instances where state acquisition of assets from private hands is considered necessary for the rebuilding and restructuring of Namibia’s national economy.”  

Under the leadership of Nujoma and without any significant internal resistance, SWAPO’s socialist rhetoric of the 1970s was replaced by the “pragmatism” of accepting a non-racial capitalist order; the new order was described as a “mixed economy” in the constitution of independent Namibia. Economic structures were left intact, and thus, the mining and fishing industries remained under the control of private foreign capital after independence. Regarding land reform, the approach of “willing buyer-willing seller” was adopted, resulting in a very slow process of market-driven land reform and the retention of farm ownership by white settlers.

This new “pragmatism” and the capitulation to the power of big capital shaped Namibia’s developments after independence. The notion of national reconciliation was promoted to “forgive and forget” (the past), but no systematic policy of redistribution was introduced to redress the enormous social and economic inequalities that had been created during colonial rule. In 1995, President Nujoma even justified the exclusion of Namibia’s Labour Act from the proposed export processing zones (EPZs), which were introduced to create special incentives for foreign investors. This exemplified the shift of SWAPO and Nujoma away from the liberation of workers towards an agenda of creating an investor-friendly environment.

Nujoma’s legacy, thus, is a mixed one. Undoubtedly, he played the leading role in the struggle for Namibia’s independence and would not entertain any compromises that could undermine the achievement of that goal. He dealt with internal dissent swiftly and often ruthlessly. On the other hand, he was extremely loyal to his friends and comrades and often acted upon his conviction. However, in the run-up to independence, he weighed up the balance of forces and became a “pragmatist,” making deals with the imperialist forces to achieve the cherished independence of Namibia.

Nujoma remained steadfast in his pan-Africanist rhetoric and was skeptical about Nelson Mandela, whom he considered as being too accommodating of whites. Nujoma’s line of thought was far more aligned with that of Robert Mugabe, whom he idolized throughout his life. After Namibia’s independence, Nujoma repeatedly talked about economic liberation as the second phase of the struggle. It is probably in this area where his legacy is the weakest. Nujoma and the SWAPO government as a whole presided over a fairly neoliberal approach to economic policy as expressed in the introduction of export processing zones and privatization initiatives alongside the “willing buyer-willing seller” land reform program. These policies continued after Nujoma left office in 2005, which meant that Namibia’s key challenges of unemployment, inequality, and poverty remained unresolved. Being deeply steeped in power politics, Nujoma played a decisive role in the choice of his successor, Hifikepunye Pohamba, and steered the elections within the ruling party towards his desired outcome. Although formally retired, Nujoma remained active behind the scenes and retained influence within the SWAPO Party until his passing. He will be mourned for a long time in Namibia.