He was Mbumba said Nujoma died on Saturday night after being hospitalized in the capital, Windhoek. 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.
He spent nearly 30 years in exile as the leader of its independence movement before returning to be elected his country's first democratic leader in Nujoma, with his trademark white beard, was the last of a generation of African leaders who brought 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. Many Namibians credited Nujoma's leadership for the process of national healing and reconciliation after the deep divisions caused by the independence war and South Africa's policies of dividing the country into ethnically based regional governments, with separate education and health care for each race.
Even his political opponents praised Nujoma β who was branded a Marxist and accused of ruthless suppression of dissent while in exile β for establishing a democratic Constitution and involving white businessmen and politicians in government after independence. Despite his pragmatism and nation-building at home, Nujoma often hit foreign headlines for his fierce anti-Western rhetoric.
He claimed AIDS was a man-made biological weapon and also occasionally waged a verbal war on homosexuality, calling gays "idiots" and branding homosexuality a "foreign and corrupt ideology.
Nujoma built ties with North Korea, Cuba, Russia and China, some of which had supported Namibia's liberation movement by providing arms and training. But he balanced that with outreach to the West, and Nujoma was the first African leader to be hosted at the White House by former U. President Bill Clinton in Clinton called Nujoma "the George Washington of his country" and "a genuine hero of the world's movement toward democracy.
