Obituaries | Sam Nujoma, Founding President of Namibia, Dies at 95
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Sam Nujoma, Founding President of Namibia, Dies at 95
As the self-exiled leader of the South-West Africa People’s Organization, he directed a guerrilla army in a 24-year war for independence from South African rule.
President Sam Nujoma of Namibia in 2003. Mr. Nujoma pursued twin tracks of diplomacy and insurgency in a decades-long quest for the liberation of his country. Credit… Pool photo by Pius Utomi Ekpei Published Feb. 8, 2025 Updated Feb. 9, 2025, 11:17 a.m. ET
Sam Nujoma, the founding president of an independent Namibia, who led a Soviet-backed guerrilla army in an uneven fight against the vastly superior forces of white-ruled South Africa in a victory that owed much to the dynamics of the Cold War, died on Saturday in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital. He was 95.
Nangolo Mbumba, the country’s current president, announced the death. He did not give a cause but said that the former president had been hospitalized for three weeks.
Praising Mr. Nujoma as one who had “heroically marshaled the Namibian people during the darkest hours of our liberation struggle,” he said a period of national mourning would be announced.
A bearded, bespectacled man given to trading his camouflage fatigues for business suits, depending on his audience, Mr. Nujoma pursued twin tracks of diplomacy and insurgency in a decades-long quest for the liberation of his country — a sprawling but sparsely populated former German colony that Pretoria ruled in defiance of the United Nations.
When independence finally came in March 1990, though, it was the product of a United States-brokered deal to secure South Africa’s withdrawal in return for a pullout by 50,000 Cuban soldiers from neighboring Angola, which had provided a crucial rear base for Mr. Nujoma’s guerrillas.
Mr. Nujoma and his South-West Africa People’s Organization, known as SWAPO, which was formed in 1960 after he fled Namibia in exile, played no direct part in the negotiations that led to the agreement. And though Mr. Nujoma adopted a nom de guerre — Shafiishuna, or Lightning — there was no record of his direct participation in combat.
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