OBITUARY

Sam Nujoma obituary: first democratic president of Namibia

Freedom fighter who helped to earn independence for his country
Sam Nujoma, former Namibian president, raises his fist.
Nujoma in 2007 after stepping down as leader of the ruling Swapo party
BRIGITTE WEIDLICH/AFP

For 30 years the ever-smiling Sam Nujoma expertly played the double game of shuttle diplomat and agitator of Namibia’s guerilla war of independence.

Fleeing from the territory in March 1960 to escape the kind of long imprisonment that befell Nelson Mandela in neighbouring South Africa, Nujoma crisscrossed the continent to garner support — and guns — from sympathetic states while working to gain recognition for an independent Namibia from the United Nations.

The territory’s story of colonial exploitation had been as sad and bad as any in Africa from when it was established as the German territory of South West Africa in 1884. Resistance to the colonial yoke from indigenous people led to the first genocide of the 20th century between 1904 and 1908, when

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