SWAPO (South West African People's Organization)

Abstract

The South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) was formed in the 1950s in contemporary Namibia among a group of about 200 Ovambo workers who had maneuvered their way through the bureaucratic maze of the migrant labor system to reach Cape Town where they faced the constant danger of falling foul of the repressive South African pass laws. Under the leadership of Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, this group established connections with white and black members of left and liberal South African opposition groups, such as the African National Congress, the Communist Party, the Liberal Party, the Congress of Democrats, and the South African Coloured People's Organization. In 1957 the South African government removed Toivo to Ovamboland, where he continued campaigning for political independence and petitioning the United Nations. The Ovambo People's Organization (OPO) emerged from this set of connections between Namibian and South African activists and against the background of the increasing internationalization of anti‐colonial resistance in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1960 it was transformed into SWAPO. Unlike other emerging leaders of the independence movement, such as Sam Nujoma, Toivo did not go into exile. In 1966 the apartheid government sentenced Toivo to 20 years in prison. He was released in 1984 and joined SWAPO in exile, which in the meantime had been recognized as the sole representative of the Namibian people under the organization's energetic president, Nujoma.