Nujoma to bow out at 75
2004-05-12 12:13
Windhoek - Namibia's President Sam Nujoma turns 75 on Wednesday, moving closer to retirement from public life after five decades as the southern African country's dominant political figure.
The former liberation hero announced last month that he would not be seeking a fourth term in office in elections to be held in November and will hand over the reins of power when his term ends in March 2005.
For Namibia, Nujoma's departure will be nothing less than a milestone.
"The Namibian nation will always remember President Nujoma as the founding father of the Republic of Namibia and will remain grateful to you for having laid a strong foundation," Information Minister Nangolo Mbumba said in a birthday advertisement published this week in the New Era government paper.
Stern-faced and almost wooden, Nujoma seldom appears relaxed in public.
His wagging finger during public speeches accompanies his repeated scorn at "Boers", "colonisers" and "white settlers".
During a recent trip to Zimbabwe where he linked up with President Robert Mugabe, Nujoma defended his controversial ally and offered to help defend Zimbabwe militarily if needed.
"We want to tell colonialists that we are ready 24 hours if they dare attack any of our countries. They will meet us here," Nujoma warned.
He also does not hide his contempt for European liberalism.
"I detest the way human rights are being put that homosexuals should parade in the streets behaving like animals," said Nujuma in an interview to the BBC in 2001.
What is this madness?
"Now we have women marrying each other and men marrying each other. What is this madness ? You must remain with your cultures in Europe."
Yet Nujoma can look back on some successes under his reign.
While poverty and unemployment at 40$ remain a problem, and water and electricity supply have yet to reach all 1.82 million citizens, there is modern infrastructure, some incentives for foreign investment and moves to diversify the national economy from its agriculture base.
A potential source of worry in Namibia is land reform, with Nujoma drawing some inspiration from Zimbabwe where farms where seized from whites and distributed to blacks, sparking international uproar.
During a May Day rally, Nujoma ranted against "racist farmers" who fired their workers and left them homeless.
"My government will expropriate such land as an answer to this insult," Nujoma told about a thousand people.
His policy on Aids has earned him some international praise but the president has come under fire for refusing to rehabilitate several hundred members of his South West Africa's Peoples' Organisation (Swapo) liberation movement, who were kept in prison in Angola as "spies for apartheid South Africa." No apology has been offered to the families.
The Swapo leader traces back his political consciousness awakening to his teenage years, when at the age of 17 he moved from a tiny tribal village in northern Namibia to the harbour town of Walvis Bay.
There he lived with an aunt in a black township and was privy to many conversations among adults about their plight as blacks under the rule of apartheid South Africa.
Railway sweeper
The son of poor farmers from the Ovambo tribe and eldest of 10 children, Nujoma took up his first job as a railway sweeper near Windhoek in 1949 while going to night school, according to his autobiography Where Others Wavered, published in 2001.
It was there that Nujoma was introduced to Herero tribal chief Hosea Kutako, who was lobbying to end apartheid rule in Namibia, then known as South West Africa.
Kutako became his mentor, shepherding the young Nujoma as he became politically active in the black workers community near Windhoek, organising resistance to an apartheid government order to move to a new township in the late 50s.
At Kutako's request, Nujoma began life in exile in 1960, going first to Botswana, then British Bechuanaland, leaving his wife and four children behind.
That same year he was elected president in absentia of Swapo - a post he still holds today 44 years on - shuttling from capital to capital for international recognition and launching an armed struggle from 1966.
"Swapo became dominated by a military culture, strongly hierarchical, authoritarian and closed," wrote historian Christopher Saunders in his book Re-examining Liberation in Namibia.
That still holds true today, with political analyst Henning Melber recently writing in an opinion piece published in the Windhoek Observer "the transition from liberation movement to a democratic party appears difficult for Swapo."