Nuyoma, Sam

From the ovambo tribe. Born May 12, 1929 in the north of the country in a peasant family, in the village of Entuda. He was the first child of eleven Daniel Uthoni Nuyoma and Helvey Mpigangana Condombolo. His father was a laborer. The future president recalled the early years as follows: "All my childhood passed in the care of the livestock that our family kept - cows, goats and sheep. I was engaged in physical labor from 1949 to 1957." In 1948 he graduated from the Finnish missionary elementary school Okahao, in Walvis Bay he studied English from the Anglicans, in 1954 he studied at a high school in Windhoek. In 1949-59, the future leader of the country worked in the Namibian branch of the South African Railways, then in the system of trade and other institutions of the capital. He recalled that period: “He served as an errand boy - a messenger. He carried folders, papers into cabinets. Skilled work was not assigned to Africans. The railway was run by South Africa and racial discrimination was felt especially strongly. I had to clean the premises, sweep, wash the floors, take out the garbage for baskets. And yet these were happy years for me. I studied English and graduated from Standard 7, which allowed me to enroll in a correspondence trans-African college in South Africa. ” On May 6, 1956, S. Nujoma married a girl from the Herero Covambo people, Theopolina Kachimune, they had four children - three sons and a daughter. Since the second half of the 1950s, he actively participated in the revolutionary movement.

In 1958, he was one of the initiators of the creation of the Ovamboland People's Organization. In 1960 he became one of the founders of the SWAPO party, which advocated the independence of Namibia from South Africa and the transfer of power into the hands of a black majority. In 1959, organized protests against the relocation of Africans from the Old Suburb of Windhoek to the Kattura reservation. At a rally on December 2, Nujoma said to authorities: "Why don’t you move to South Africa yourself after you have demonstrated that you cannot control us? Move and let us control ourselves." The crowd at the stadium began to chant "Boers go away to your home in Kakamas" (one of the outbacks in the Cape. They hinted at one of the main principles of apartheid according to which Africans were to live in the so-called "national fatherlands" - homelands or bantustans. December 10 Nuyoma was arrested among 14 activists "Katuturskogo boycott" and, together with other leaders of the Ovambo and Herero expelled from Windhoek since 1961 -. The emigration. 1966 led the guerrilla resistance, which took Shafiishuna name, ie lightning since 1971. the supreme commander of the People's Liberation Army of Namibia.

Sam Nuyoma lived 10 years in Tanzania, 9 years in Zambia and 10 in Angola as a refugee. He met with African leaders Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkruma, Franz Fannon, Patrice Lumumba. He repeatedly visited the USSR, attended the XXVII Congress of the CPSU, spoke at the Mayak radio station. His three sons studied military affairs in the Soviet Union. SWAPO maintained close ties with the German Democratic Republic, Mongolia, as well as with the socialist countries that declared their independence from the Soviet Union: Yugoslavia, Romania, the PRC, the DPRK, Cuba, as well as with the Swedish and Norwegian Social Democrats, and some US organizations. In Western sources, there is a statement about the close relations of UNITA and SWAPO during this period. There is a legend that Jonas Savimbi gave Sam Nuyoma his first pistol. The Namibian leader himself denies this.

After holding free elections under UN control in 1989 and granting Namibia independence, he unanimously elected the first president of the country and was sworn in as UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar on March 21, 1990 . He set the main goals of the presidency to combat drought with international support and transfer of the land of white farmers to blacks. He expressed support for the agrarian reform of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He was criticized by human rights activists for the repressions against the Caprivi separatists. Established economic ties with countries such as the USA, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, France. At the same time, he maintained ties with regimes considered to be outcasts in the West: Cuba, Libya, Iran, North Korea, as well as with China. Recognized the Republic of Macedonia under its official name. Settled relations with South Africa, solving the problem of belonging to Walvis Bay port, at the same time relations with Botswana escalated due to the influx of Namibian refugees. Namibia opposed the actions of NATO in Kosovo, supported Laurent Kabila during the civil war in the DRC. This, as well as border disputes in the Orange River area again aggravated relations with South Africa in 1998-99. Nuyoma signed an agreement with the Russian company ALROSA on joint exploration and production of diamonds (April 1998), the Namibian firm De Beers lost its monopoly on diamond production. In 1999-2000 Parliament passed the Diamond Act and amendments to the Mineral Exploration and Mining Act, which facilitated the access of foreign investment to the diamond mining industry and strengthened state control over diamond mining. Nuyoma was popularly re-elected in 1994 for a second term, and in 1999 he changed the constitution in order to run as an exception for a third. In 2001, he released an autobiography: Nujoma S. “Where Other Wavered. The Autobiography of Sam Nujoma. London: Panf Books 2001 ”T:“ Where Others Wince: Autobiography of Sam Nujoma - My Life in SWAPO and My Participation in the Liberation Fight of Namibia ”, which tells about the author’s life from childhood to the presidency, and contains attacks against M. S. Gorbachev and Marty Ahtisaari . According to the book of Nuyoma in the USA, a film is set.

In 2004, he supported the candidacy of his party member, Vice President of SWAPO Hifikepunya Pohamba , who became the new president, and in 2007 - the chairman of SWAPO . In February 2010, Nuyoma came to Moscow to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. He was received in the Kremlin by President Medvedev, who met with him during his visit to Namibia in July 2009. At a rally in memory of Fidel, Castro said that the ideas of the Cuban leader were relevant to Namibia. Sam Nuyoma is one of the characters in the novel by Alexander Prokhanov, “The Choice of Weapons,” he is mentioned in the poem by Mikhail Weller, “Duma about the opera Sanya”. The portrait of Nuyoma was painted by the honored artist of Russia Peter Yolkin.

His son Utoni Nuyoma became Minister of Foreign Affairs of Namibia in March 2010 . ^[3]

We cannot reconcile with any white government, no matter liberal or extremist. We are also not interested in this multiracial nonsense. We intend to remove from the face of the earth all traces of a white civilization. We need neither reform, nor bantustans, nor improvement of the conditions of the indigenous population. All we want is complete independence. Black rule - or nothing!

- Sam Nuyoma, President of SWAPO , at a speech in Tanzania, 1970 ^[4]

“A man was born free, so he must not first become educated in order to demand freedom and self-determination”

From a speech at a session of the UN General Assembly in 1960.

• Order of Good Hope