The life and times of Sam Nujoma
Sam Nujoma, the founding president of Namibia, has died at the ripe age of ninety five at a time of widespread global anxieties and unease. Popularly regarded as the father of modern Namibia, the former freedom fighter is also credited with giving his country the relative peace and stability it badly needed to progress after decades of war with apartheid South Africa and the lingering trauma of German colonial atrocities in the old South West Africa. Without any doubt, he was the last of the Mohicans, a group of revered African titans who had physically fought for the liberation of their respective countries and whose words carried a lot of weight and clout on the continent and far beyond. The Namibian leader left at a point Africa needs these avatars to navigate the inclement weather and rough seas ahead.
As President Donald Trump tightens the economic screws on the global jugular, it is obvious that the world is on the threshold of new developments. The American president and his billionaire bouncers do not have what it takes to bend the world to their will, but they can be a major disruptive force particularly for vulnerable Third World economies and their stalled political momentum. Every dark silhouette often leads to light just as many highways end in a cul de sac. It is then left to human grit and ingenuity to plot the way out of the maze. Apocalyptic suffering and improbable miseries sometimes bring out the best in a people. It is like a furnace which purifies and makes them stronger. The leadership is energized and ennobled by the tumult and tempest.
Although it is often said that there is no point arguing the order of precedence between a flea and a louse, or between two types of colonial dominion, it must also be noted that there is colonization and there is colonization. In one species of colonization, reliance on overwhelming physical coercion and routine physical liquidation leads to genocide. Genocide is described as the deliberate and systematic killing or destruction of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Genocide has always been part of history and the human condition, depending on the stage the human capacity for self-elimination has reached. From the biblical annihilation of the Jews by the ancient Egyptians, the extermination of the native Indian populace by the Spanish conquistadors after the destruction of the Inca Empire, the ethnic cleansing of the American populace to the systematic liquidation of the of the original inhabitants of the old Kongo Empire around present day Angola by the Portuguese invaders, the world has grown accustomed to human inhumanity to fellow human-beings.
As the very last colonial power to emerge from the bowels of rapidly modernizing Europe, the Germans fed themselves with the delusion that their historic tardiness and lateness to dinner was as a result of their attention to details, Teutonic proficiency and superior abilities. They had famously carped that while the Brits and the French only managed to behead their kings, they (the Germans) had decapitated a whole European intellectual tradition through a succession of gifted and brilliant master-philosophers, Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach and Karl Marx. Despite the bombast and balderdash, the fact remains that at that point in time, Germany, compared to their European rivals, was a backward nation-state relying on the fabled firepower of their military machine but lacking in any template for humane governance of their overseas dominions and for a more just and egalitarian society.
In the event, they went after their colonial subjects in Africa with such gusto and brutality resulting in memorable bloodshed and genocide of the local populace in Namibia and old Tanganyika. Before the Germans were expelled after losing the First World War, the entire Namib corridor was foaming in blood. Many natives perished. Repeatedly massacred for refusing forced labour and the confiscation of their land, the Herero and Nima populace fled northwards and eastwards to join their ancestral cousins in Botswana and Angola never to return to their original homesteads. Even then it took another major global conflagration before America and the European masters could resolve the German Question.
Unfortunately for the Namibians, it was a case of double jeopardy. The Apartheid apparatus that had seized the territory from the Germans was not any better position to rule with compassion and political justice and the situation soon escalated into a full blown war with SWAPO linking up with other forces of liberation and self-determination in the region. This was the violent and combustible crucible that threw up Sam Nujoma. Barely formally educated like Patrice Lumumba who had only four years of regular education before being thrown into the melee and political maelstrom, Nujoma pursued private education and self-improvement with vigour and vengeance until it became impossible.
Nujoma had to endure the private humiliation of working as a cleaner and sweeper in Windhoek. But with his unwavering commitment to the liberation and emancipation of his people, it did not take him long to establish his credentials as the natural leader of the new movement. And naturally too, it did not take the authorities much longer to come for him. He was arrested and sentenced to jail for three years. But he escaped to Tanzania where he was warmly welcomed by Nwalimu Julius Nyerere. Thus began for the future president, a long period of exile which was to last about three decades. His wife was only able to join him after spending two decades in the most humiliating and degrading of circumstances in Namibia. It did not bend or make Nujoma to waver. With his winning and winsome smile and the charismatic swank of a natural aristocrat, Nujoma was very prepossessing indeed. But his calm and friendly mien hid a ruthless streak which would not be lightly crossed. It helped very much that his mother was a princess of one of the most fabled clans in the land. His father was famous for his integrity and for saying it as it is. Shortly after his son’s incarceration, the elder Nujoma was also summarily impounded by the authorities who sent him to jail in Pretoria. He was later to die from tuberculosis contracted in prison.
For this writer, the most iconic and enduring image of Sam Nujoma was of the hero of the Namibian struggle kissing the tarmac at Windhoek Airport in 1990 upon his return to his native land after a three decade exile. Moments later, he was to extend the same courtesy to his mother who had been part of a cheering crowd to welcome him. Mother and son had not seen each other in thirty years. Talk of the heroism and sacrifices at the behest of a beloved nation! It was not a surprise that Nujoma’s chronicle of his heroic exertions was titled, Where Others Wavered. Needless to add that in elections held later that year, Nujoma and his party, SWAPO, romped to victory. There was no need for rigging or vote-buying. He went on to rule his country for the next fifteen years, serving three consecutive terms against the constitutional stipulation of a maximum of two terms. But this did not alienate him from his compatriots who remained grateful for his selfless struggle for their emancipation and for the international prestige, political stability and relative prosperity he has brought the country.
The passing of this great son of Africa is an opportunity for reflection, particularly as Trump’s unilateralism and isolationist globalism unleash their contradictions. We are entering another epoch of colonization this time marked by extreme economic aggression against weaker nations. Nationhood will count for nothing. African countries struggling with stability and unable to feed their populace will have a hard time convincing Trump that the real estate should not be put to better use. The current travails of the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has ceased to exist as an organic country with scant international attention is an indication how much the international community attaches to flag independence.
Perhaps this is the time to rediscover the visionary magic and political idealism of Africa’s founding fathers, particularly those who fought for the independence of their countries. As we have seen in Africa and the rest of the world, nations that start off with a coherent set of ideals and political goals often retain a residual discipline and cohesion long after they might have gone into ideological abeyance or the recession of radical vision. Even where political careers ended in failure, the architecture remains as a beacon of hope amidst the ruins of aspiration. Such countries tend to handle the politics of succession and the threat to stability much better. Perhaps this is the whole point of politics with conviction and parties with ideological foundation. African countries without such a core foundation will continue to roil in political instability and economic miseries until something gives. Nujoma should be commended for bequeathing a country to his people.
