African leaders gather for funeral of Namibia’s ‘founding father’ Sam Nujoma

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By Siyabonga Sishi and Sfundo Parakozov

WINDHOEK (Reuters) – African leaders past and present gathered in Namibia on Saturday to bury the country’s “founding father” Sam Nujoma, who challenged colonialism and a military occupation by South Africa’s racist white minority government.

Dignitaries including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, former President Thabo Mbeki and ex-Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete attended the funeral of Nujoma, who rose from herding cattle as a boy to lead the sparsely-populated, mostly desert southern African country on March 21, 1990.

“We fought under your command, … won the liberation struggle, and forever removed apartheid colonialism from the face of Namibia,” President Nangolo Mbumba said in a speech.

His coffin draped in the red, green and blue national flag, Nujoma was laid to rest – two weeks after his death at the age of 95 – at a North Korean-built war memorial spire called Heroes’ Acre.

The monument honours those who fought for independence from genocidal German colonialism and later – after Germany lost the territory in World War I – South African occupation.

Nujoma served from 1990 to 2005 and sought to project himself as a unifying leader bridging political divides.

However, he faced criticism over his intolerance of critical media coverage, diatribes against homosexuality and over the 1998 constitutional amendment allowing him to run for a third term.

(Reporting by Siyabonga Sishi in Windhoek and Sfundo Parakosov in Johannesburg; Editing by Tim Cocks and Daren Butler)