WINDHOEK – Hendrik Witbooi was born on 7 January, 1934 at Gibeon in the Hardap Region.
He was the seventh Kaptein of the Khowesin clan and was raised in the pastoral family of Pastor Markus Witbooi and Mother Hatais Witbooi.
He was the great grandson of the late iconic Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi of the same name (1830 – 1905), indicates archival material from the National Archives of Namibia. The iconic Kaptein Hendrik Witbooi (1830 – 1905) is the man whose face is portrayed on the N$10, N$50 and N$200 Namibian banknotes.
In 1976 at the age of 42, Witbooi – the one who died in 2009 – joined the liberation movement Swapo after he realised that freedom, justice and individual rights would not come on a silver platter but that people must join hands across the artificial divides of race, colour or faith to emancipate their motherland.
In his early childhood biography it is stated that Witbooi was educated at the Rhenish Missionary and Wesleyan Methodist schools in Namibia as well as at the Wilberforce Institute in Evaton in South Africa.
He took up employment as a teacher in 1956 working for the government school in Keetmanshoop and he was transferred to Maltahöhe in 1959. He later returned to Gibeon in 1965 at the request of the community and the church to build on the foundations laid by his aging father.
He established a community private school (AME) in March 1979, with the generous support of people who followed him faithfully.
The school was established to provide education to the children of Namibia, in church buildings and under trees. One of his teachers was the current Minister of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture, Jerry Ekandjo.
Apart from being a reverend the late Witbooi was a politician and freedom fighter who contributed tremendously to the liberation struggle.
In 1976 to 1977 he was arrested following the teachers’ strike after he refused to accept a teaching transfer to Maltahöhe.
While in solitary confinement as a political detainee in 1977, Witbooi was elected to the position of Kaptein (Captain) after the death of Kaptein Hendrik Witbook Samuel.
His biography from the National Archives of Namibia says that in March1973 Witbooi sent a telegram to the United Nations Secretary General, asking him to urgently free Namibia from apartheid South African colonial rule.
He became the Acting Vice-President of Swapo in 1983, later becoming Vice-President in 1984.
In 1989, Witbooi became a member of the Constituent Assembly, which drafted the country’s Constitution, and he was appointed and sworn in as Namibia’s first Minister of Labour on 21 March 1990. In 1995 he became the Deputy Prime Minister and he was again re-elected as the Vice-President of Swapo in June 1997.
As a teacher the traditional and church leaders increasingly relied on him in many ways.
He served as secretary and chief political advisor to his predecessor, the late Kaptein Hendrik Samuel Witbooi, and was mainly responsible for the church’s archives. He also served the St Mark’s AME Church in various capacities, from Sunday school teacher to church choir director.
He died of cancer in Windhoek on 13 October 2009 in the Roman Catholic Hospital.
By Mwaka Liswaniso