Rev Heikki Ausiku

It is with a heavy heart that I write about my kamentu (cousin), the late Gideon Nestor Mufenda who departed this earth a few days ago. He was my cousin and we are of the lion totem. 

He is someone I knew from birth to school, cell detention, work, politics up to his deathbed. The late Nestor Mufenda was born the same year with my second brother and my wife at Nkurenkuru. 

He grew up in the outskirt of Nkurenkuru at the village called Siurungu where he started his basic education and continued at Nkurenkuru primary, Rupara Jongenskool, Rundu Secondary School and in South Africa where he went for tertiary education. 

Like all Kwangali boys, Gideon grew up in a village house family. 

He was doing young boys’ chores: looking after cattle, ploughing, hoeing, fetching water, wood, milking cows and the rest of house chores. 

Nestor possessed the character traits of being calm, kind, integrity, self-sacrificial, self-disciplined, selfless, God-fearing and down to earth. 

The late Gideon Mufenda was a freedom fighter too. 

He bravely contributed to the liberation struggle of his motherland Namibia. 

He contributed and assisted PLAN combatants for which he was detained and imprisoned. I recall in October and November of 1983, there was a political crackdown of 30 or more Swapo activists by the racist apartheid regime in the Kavango area.

The following Swapo activists were arrested, on one single day, and detained for two months without trial. 

They were detained at Osire and then at Bethanie and, I was detained at Aus in solitary confinement. 

The detainees were: Heikki Ausiku, Nikodemus Nairenge, Severinus Siteketa, Remigius Siyave Haindongo, Gosbert Sikerete, Maurus Nekaro, Petrus Mbandu, Nimrod Muremi, Alfeus Kangayi, Gideon Nestor Mufenda, Kauko Nairenge, Olavi Makuti, Baby Ihemba, Engelmund Hamutenya, Malakia Muremi, Petrus Shanika, Gideon Siwombe, Eddy Sikongo, Bert Sikongo, Paulus Mangundu, Jaako Kangayi, Silas David, Shikusho Mafred, Benhard Kudumo, Patrik Katanga, Pius Katura, Josef Kandjimi (foromani), Romanus Kandjimi, Jakob Nghilundilwa. 

The reason for our detention and incarceration was that, individually and collectively, we were “hiding Plan fighters in our homes and feeding them, informing them about the whereabouts of apartheid forces and allegedly praying for the fall of apartheid administration”. 

They were detained for up to December 20, 1983. I shared a police cell in Windhoek, with the late Nestor Mufenda when we were dropped there for questioning. 

We would joke about our childhood and reflect on why we were in prison. 

The late Gideon would tell me how he used his vehicle (VW) to transport food and medicine with Nimrod Muremi to the PLAN fighters, the likes of Olly Kazungura. 

The late Gideon was a nationalist, he would mingle with political prisoners from other parts of Namibia. 

His message was that the collective struggle and sacrifice would ultimately break the back of apartheid and Namibia shall be free. 

After independence, the late Mufenda continued to be an active Swapo Party member. In 2014 he was elected as the regional secretary for Swapo Party Elders Council in the then Kavango region and then later became of the Kavango East region until 2017. 

My last meeting with him is when I visited him while in his sick bed in Rundu Private Hospital, on 4 March 2022, when I was standing beside him and put my two hands on his head to pray for him and ended with the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ in which he joined me praying together and said Amen together. 

As family members, relatives, comrades, brothers and sisters, we are and will be celebrating the life well lived by our brother in Jesus Christ, Gideon Nestor Mufenda. 

May his soul rest in peace and his legacy lives on.