Namibia’s first Minister of Defence, Peter Mweshihange, has been described as a diplomat, army general, socialite and family man.
Mweshihange was one of the founding members of a group of around 30 to 40 expatriate students and about 200 casual labourers from the former South West Africa (SWA) in Cape Town, South Africa, that formed the Ovamboland People’s Congress (OPC) in 1958.
He is considered as one of the key figures in Cape Town with the likes of Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, Emil Appolus, Fanuel Kozonguizi, who at that time was an African National Congress (ANC) youth league organizer; Solomon Mifima, Andreas Shipanga, and others who made up the ‘barbershop clique’, many of whom were propelled to towering leaders of the Namibian liberation movement.
Mweshihange was born at Epinga on May 5, 1931 in northern Namibia to his father Shilema and mother Naemi. He was the fifth child in a household of 19 girls and six boys.
As a young boy, he looked after the family cattle and lived close to nature, according to National Assembly Speaker Theo-Ben Gurirab, who wrote that Mweshihange saw himself as a traditional healer, presumably for the knowledge of plants he had acquired.
In 1941, Mweshihange started school at St Mary’s Missionary School at Odibo. He left Odibo in 1946 for Tsumeb, where he got a job as a truck driver, and would later become the head of transport services of the South West African Native Labour Association (Swanla), an organisation that recruited migrant labour for mines and farms in southern Namibia. It was while serving Swanla that Mweshihange’s political consciousness grew with first-hand experience of the infamous contract labour system and racism.
By 1954, Mweshihange had tried to go into exile, but he was arrested by police at Rundu, and was taken back to Tsumeb to stand trial.
His case was thrown out of court when a friend of his, a certain Kalushi, ‘doctored’ state evidence against Mweshihange.
After the incident, Mweshihange crossed the Orange River in the south to go to Johannesburg, South Africa.
He worked at a mine for a brief period before he again set out to go to Cape Town, where he worked as a chef for the French Consul-General.
Gurirab reminisced that this experience turned Mweshihange into a culinary master and a “connoisseur of good things in life”.
When Mweshihange heard of Sam Nujoma’s flight out of Namibia, he followed him through the former Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and the then Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
He arrived in Dar es Salaam in 1960.
Between 1961 and 1962, he studied teaching as well as political economy at the Kivukoni Training College. In 1963 and 1964, he went on to study political science and ideology at the Winniba School of Ideology in Ghana. There, Mweshihange was introduced to the fundamentals of Nkrumahism.
It was during this period that Mweshihange became Swapo’s representative in West Africa, as well as in Tanzania.
He was appointed Swapo Secretary for International Relations at the party’s Tanga Consultative Congress held in 1969/1970.
Following the Tanga congress, Mweshihange along with other Swapo members went for military training in the Soviet Union.
According to Gurirab, Mweshihange displayed a flair for military science and classical guerilla warfare during his training. He held the position of Secretary for International Relations until 1986, when Swapo announced a leadership reshuffle after a Central Committee session, and he was appointed as the Swapo Secretary of Defence, succeeding Peter Nanyemba after the latter’s death in a car accident in 1983.
“There was no disruption in the military campaign of the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) from 1986, following this succession, until the ceasefire was signed between Swapo and South Africa in 1989,” wrote Gurirab.
Mathew //Gowaseb in his book ‘Triumph of Courage’ wrote this about Mweshihange’s time as the Secretary of Defence: “[Mweshihange] transformed the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) into a strong and effective combat force that confronted the repressive colonial South African Defence Force inside Namibia.”
“He was an outstanding political leader and military strategist. Those plans and concerted efforts of the Military Council, under the chairmanship of the President of Swapo [Nujoma], paid off decisively at the historic battle of Quito Canavale,” wrote Gurirab. The battle of Quito Canavale, heavily supported by the Cubans and FAPLA (People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola) was a turning point to the bloody impasse between the occupying South Africa and the liberation movement, heralding independence with the adoption of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 435.
Mweshihange became independent Namibia’s first Minister of Defence until 1995, a crucial period during which Namibia’s former enemy troops had to be reconciled and united into the Namibian Defence Force (NDF). In 1996, Mweshihange became the first Namibian Ambassador to China. On March 20, 1998, Mweshihange died while on active duty for the government, leaving behind his wife, Julia, eight children and 11 grandchildren.
– First published in New Era, 2009