By 
Sam Nujoma, the revolutionary leader who guided Namibia to independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990 and served as its first president for 15 years, has died at 95.
Hailed as Namibia’s “founding father”, Nujoma passed away on Saturday night following a three-week hospitalisation in the capital, Windhoek, according to the Namibian presidency.
“The foundations of the Republic of Namibia have been shaken,” the presidency said in a Facebook post announcing his death. There will be a period of “national mourning”, it added.
The following are some of the things to know about the late Nujoma.
1. Nujoma was revered in his homeland as a charismatic father figure who steered his country to democracy and stability after long colonial rule by Germany and a bitter war of independence from South Africa.
2. He was the last of a generation of African leaders who led their countries out of colonial or white minority rule that included South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and Mozambique’s Samora Machel.
3. Nujoma headed the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) that led the liberation struggle since its inception in 1960.
4. While SWAPO has remained in power since independence, Nujoma finally quit in 2007 at the age of 78, two years after standing down from the presidency.
5. Born to poor farmers from the Ovambo tribe in a tiny village in northwestern Namibia in 1929, Nujoma traced the awakening of his political consciousness to his teenage years when he moved to the harbour town of Walvis Bay.
6. Arriving aged 17, he lived with an aunt in a Black township and was privy to adult conversations about the plight of Black people under white-minority rule.
7. The eldest of 10 children, Nujoma’s first job was as a railway sweeper near Windhoek in 1949 while he went to night school, according to an autobiography published in 2001.
8. It was there that he was introduced to Herero tribal chief Hosea Kutako, who was lobbying to end apartheid rule in Namibia, then known as South West Africa.
9. Kutako became his mentor, shepherding the young Nujoma as he became politically active among Black workers in Windhoek who were resisting a government order to move to a new township in the late 1950s.
10. At Kutako’s request, Nujoma began life in exile in 1960, first to Botswana, leaving his wife and four children behind.
11. The same year, he was elected president of SWAPO, later shuttling from capital to capital in the quest for support and launching a low-level armed struggle in 1966.
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