1. Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma was a Namibian revolutionary, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served three terms as the first president of Namibia, from 1990 to 2005.
64 Facts About Sam Nujoma
1. 2.
Sam Nujoma played an important role as leader of the national liberation movement in campaigning for Namibia's political independence from South African rule.
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Sam Nujoma established the People's Liberation Army of Namibia in 1962 and launched a guerrilla war against the apartheid government of South Africa in August 1966 at Omugulugwombashe after the United Nations withdrew the mandate for South Africa to govern the territory.
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Sam Nujoma led SWAPO during the lengthy Namibian War of Independence, which lasted from 1966 to 1989.
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SWAPO won a majority and Sam Nujoma was sworn in as the country's first president on 21 March 1990.
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Sam Nujoma was re-elected for two more terms in 1994 and 1999.
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Sam Nujoma retired as SWAPO party president on 30 November 2007.
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Sam Nujoma received multiple honours and awards for his leadership, including the Lenin Peace Prize and the Indira Gandhi Peace Prize.
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Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma was born at Etunda, a village in Ongandjera, near Okahao, Ovamboland, South West Africa, on 12 May 1929.
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Sam Nujoma was born to Helvi Mpingana Kondombolo and Daniel Uutoni Sam Nujoma.
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Sam Nujoma's mother Helvi was a Uukwambi princess by descent, and this fact would later reinforce Nujoma's charismatic influence during his political career.
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Sam Nujoma was the eldest of his parents' eleven children.
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Sam Nujoma spent much of his early childhood looking after his siblings and tending to the family's cattle and traditional farming activities.
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Sam Nujoma started attending a Finnish missionary school at Okahao when he was ten and completed Standard Six, which was as high as possible for blacks during the time.
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In 1949, Sam Nujoma moved to Windhoek, where he started work as a cleaner for South African Railways while attending adult night school at St Barnabas Anglican Church School in the Windhoek Old Location, mainly to improve his English.
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Sam Nujoma became involved in politics in the early 1950s through trade unions.
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Sam Nujoma had become friends with Toivo and in 1959, he joined with OPC cofounder Jacob Kuhangua to start the Windhoek branch of the organisation, which had by then been renamed the Ovamboland People's Organization.
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In 1960, Sam Nujoma petitioned the UN through letters and eventually went into exile in February of that year.
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Sam Nujoma flew from Bulawayo to Salisbury and on to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia.
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From Mbeya, Sam Nujoma travelled with the assistance of officials of the Tanganyika African National Union via Njombe, Iringa and Dodoma to Dar-Es-Salaam.
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Sam Nujoma met with other African nationalist leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, and Frantz Fanon at the conference.
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Sam Nujoma arrived in New York in June 1960 where he petitioned before the Sub-Committee of the United Nations General Assembly Fourth Committee.
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Sam Nujoma demanded that South West Africa be given its independence by 1963 at the latest.
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Sam Nujoma then returned to Tanganyika in 1961, from where he and a small group of activists developed SWAPO into an international force.
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Sam Nujoma received support from other African nationalists and received strong backing from Julius Nyerere.
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Sam 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.
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Sam Nujoma himself procured the first weapons from Algeria via Egypt, Sudan, Tanzania, and Zambia, from where they were taken to Omugulugwombashe in Ovamboland.
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Sam Nujoma continued his diplomatic rounds as SWAPO set up offices across Africa, Europe, and the Americas.
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Sam Nujoma represented SWAPO at the founding of the Non-Aligned Movement on 1 September 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, as well as at the founding of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 25 May 1963.
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On 21 March 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, Sam Nujoma, accompanied by Hifikepunye Pohamba, chartered a plane to Windhoek.
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In 1969, Sam Nujoma was re-affirmed as SWAPO President at the Tanga Consultative Conference in Tanzania.
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Sam Nujoma recognized that this paved the way for major changes in the way the war was being fought and over the next two years SWAPO's military campaign shifted its base from Zambia to Angola.
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At the 1977 World Conference Against Apartheid in Lisbon, Sam Nujoma underlined the necessity to destroy the colonial system and institutions of the apartheid regime in Namibia to build those that would serve the interest of people irrespective of race, religion, or origin.
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Sam Nujoma warned of the danger of the installation of neocolonialist marionettes who would superficially change the visible colonial regime while the position of the majority of people would stay the same.
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Sam Nujoma led the SWAPO negotiations team between the Western Contact Group, which consisted of West Germany, Britain, France, the US and Canada, and South Africa on the one hand, and the Frontline States and Nigeria on the other, about proposals that would eventually become United Nations Security Council Resolution 435, passed in September 1978.
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Sam Nujoma returned a day before the UN deadline for the Namibia people to register to vote for an election that would draft a constitution when it received its independence from South Africa.
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Sam Nujoma was sworn in on 21 March 1990, in the presence of Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary-General of the UN, Frederik de Klerk, president of South Africa, and Nelson Mandela, just released from prison.
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In 1959, Sam Nujoma co-founded the Ovamboland People's Organization and became its first president.
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In early October 2007 Sam Nujoma said that he had no intention of seeking re-election as SWAPO President and would stand aside in favour of Pohamba.
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Sam Nujoma said that he was "passing the torch and mantle of leadership to comrade Pohamba".
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The planes were bought a few weeks after Sam Nujoma had appealed to the international community for drought aid.
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In 1990, Sam Nujoma initiated a plan for land reform, in which land would be redistributed from whites to blacks.
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The constitution of Namibia was changed to allow Sam Nujoma to run for a third five-year term in 1999; this was justified because he had not been directly elected for his first term, and the change applied only to Sam Nujoma.
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The constitution did not allow Sam Nujoma to run in November 2004 for a fourth term, and there was not much enthusiasm even within SWAPO to change it again.
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Hifikepunye Pohamba, described as Sam Nujoma's "hand-picked successor", was elected as the candidate for the presidential election during the SWAPO congress held on 30 May 2004, defeating two other candidates, Nahas Angula and Hidipo Hamutenya.
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In 1998, Sam Nujoma came to the defence of the Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila when his rule came under threat from rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda during the Second Congo War.
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Sam Nujoma allowed the Angolan military to use Namibian territory to launch attacks on UNITA during the Angolan Civil War, which resulted in UNITA launching cross-border attacks that resulted in civilian deaths.
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Sam Nujoma oversaw the suppression of the Caprivi conflict in August 1999, during which a state of emergency was declared.
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Sam Nujoma was the international patron and a strong supporter of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, based in Namibia.
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Sam Nujoma was a supporter of women's and children's rights, having called for fathers to pay for the maintenance of children born out of wedlock.
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Sam Nujoma opposed the practice of expelling widows from the family home following the deaths of their husbands.
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In 2001, Sam Nujoma announced purges against gays and lesbians in Namibia, saying "the police must arrest, imprison and deport homosexuals and lesbians found in Namibia".
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Sam Nujoma described homosexuality as a "foreign and corrupt ideology".
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Sam Nujoma publicly recognized the epidemic as a major health challenge.
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Sam Nujoma's administration collaborated with global organizations such as WHO and UNAIDS to secure funding and expand support for HIV programs and promoted the gradual expansion of antiretroviral therapy to improve treatment access.
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In 2009, Sam Nujoma earned a master's degree in geology from the University of Namibia.
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The director of the National Society for Human Rights in Namibia claimed in 2007 that Sam Nujoma had connections to the CIA.
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Sam Nujoma was granted an official residence by the government in 2015.
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Sam Nujoma's first-born son, Utoni, is a high-ranking politician and member of SWAPO who has served in both the Cabinet and the National Assembly.
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Sam Nujoma made his last public appearance at the funeral of president Hage Geingob in February 2024.
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In July 2024, Sam Nujoma was hospitalized in Windhoek after feeling ill.
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Sam Nujoma had been hospitalised the previous month due to an illness and had to miss a public engagement.
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On 8 February 2025, Sam Nujoma died at a hospital in Windhoek, where he had been confined for the previous three weeks due to an illness.
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Sam Nujoma's portrait has appeared on some of the country's banknotes since 2012.