He played an important role as leader of the national liberation movement in campaigning for Namibia's political independence from South African rule. Nujoma became involved in anti-colonial politics during the s. In , he co-founded and served as the first president of the Ovamboland People's Organization OPO , a nationalist organization advocating an independent Namibia. In December he was an organizer of the Old Location resistance and was arrested and deported to Ovamboland.
In he escaped and went into exile in Tanzania where he was welcomed by Julius Nyerere. Namibia finally achieved independence from South Africa in , holding its first democratic elections.
He was re-elected for two more terms in and He published his autobiography Where Others Wavered in He is the eldest of his parents' eleven children. Nujoma spent much of his early childhood looking after his siblings and tending to the family's cattle and traditional farming activities.
He started attending a Finnish missionary school at Okahao when he was ten and completed Standard Six, which was as high as possible for blacks during the time. In , at age 17, he moved to Walvis Bay to live with his aunt, where he began his first employment at a general store for a monthly salary of 10 Shillings. While there he was exposed to world politics by meeting soldiers from Argentina, Norway, and other parts of Europe who had come during World War II.
After the war, the League of Nations officially assigned the former German colony to the United Kingdom as a mandate under the administration of South Africa. When the National Party won the election in South Africa, it passed laws establishing racial segregation known as apartheid. It applied these laws to South West Africa as well, which it governed as the de facto fifth province of South Africa. Nujoma became involved in politics in the early s through trade unions.
