Andimba Toivo ya Toivo

Herman Andimba Toivo ya Toivo (22 August 1924 – 9 June 2017) was a Namibian anti-apartheid activist, politician and political prisoner.

Andimba Toivo ya Toivo was born on 22 August 1924 as second of seven children in Omangundu in Ovamboland, northern South West Africa.

He attended the church school at Onayena but was herding cattle often, as was common for boys in this area.

He trained to become a carpenter at Ongwediva Industrial School between 1939 and 1942.

In 1942 during World War II Ya Toivo voluntarily joined the Native Military Corps, a unit of the racially segregated army of the Union of South Africa.

He fought on the British side of the Allied Forces.

and attained the rank of a corporal during his service.

After growing up in northern Namibia, Ya Toivo spent some time in Cape Town in the 1950s.

He became politicised there and joined the African National Congress (ANC).

Back in Namibia he became one of the early petitioners to the United Nations, advocating for the independence of Namibia.

He completed Standard 6 but stayed on until 1950, graduating as a teacher, whereafter he successfully operated a store at Ondangwa.

Toivo taught at St Cuthberth's School at Onamutayi and St. Mary's Odibo before travelling to South Africa for further studies in 1951.

Toivo left for Cape Town in 1951 and was employed as a railway police officer between 1952 and 1953.

He joined political movements such as the Modern Youth Society (MYS), where he met Denis Goldberg.

He became the deputy chairman of the MYS, which organised festivals, lectures, discussion groups and night schools for activists who pursued further education.

He joined the African National Congress (ANC) at Cape Town in 1957.

Later that year, he co-founded the Ovamboland People's Congress (OPC), forerunner of the Ovamboland People's Organization (OPO).

He also established close contacts with the two South African parties the Congress of Democrats and the Liberal Party.

The OPC sought to fight for the rights of migrant workers, some of whom had defected from the South West African Native Labour Association (SWANLA).

The organisation also mobilised against the incorporation of Namibia into South Africa, and therefore shared a political allegiance with other organisations in South Africa.

In December 1958, Toivo, with the assistance of Goldberg, sent a tape to Mburumba Kerina and Michael Scott documenting human rights violations in South West Africa, after Chief Hosea Kutako was refused permission by the South African authorities to represent his people at the United Nations.

This was used to petition the United Nations.

Consequently, he was deported from Cape Town, first to Keetmanshoop and Windhoek and later to Ovamboland, where he was placed under house arrest in his home village Okaloko.

Toivo stayed in constant close contact with Leonard Auala from the Evangelical Lutheran Ovambo-Kavango Church (ELOC).

Because of OPO's deep roots in the Ovambo people, ELOC subsequently gave its support to this national liberation movement.

Members and supporters of OPO were also members of the congregation.

The people, church and national liberation movement coincided.

Ya Toivo was active in the pre-independence movement, and is one of the co-founders of the South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) in 1960, and before that, its predecessor the Ovamboland People's Organization (OPO) in 1959.

When he was tried for terrorism in the 1960s he remembered his motivation thusly:

"My lord, you found it necessary to brand me a coward. During the Second World War, when it became evident that both my country and your country were threatened by the dark clouds of Nazism, I risked my life to defend both of them, wearing a uniform with orange bands on it. But some of your countrymen, when called to battle to defend civilisation, resorted to sabotage against their own fatherland. I volunteered to face German bullets, and as a guard of military installations, both in South West Africa and the Republic, was prepared to be the victim of their sabotage. Today, they are our masters and are considered the heroes, and I am called the coward."

After the war he worked on a farm near Kalkfeld until he came back to Odibo and attended school at St Mary's Mission School to learn English.

He had to change his religion from Lutheran to Anglican in order to be admitted.

On its anniversary, 19 April 1960, OPO reconstituted itself as the South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) in New York, Sam Nujoma was reconfirmed President of the new organisation.

After its reconstitution, SWAPO founded its military wing, the South West Africa Liberation Army (SWALA), in 1962, and oversaw the beginning of an armed insurgency against the South African administration in 1965.

Due to his political activism he was tried in 1966 under the Terrorism Act, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

He served 16 years in Robben Island in the same section as Nelson Mandela, to whom he was a personal friend.

He was released in 1984 and rejoined SWAPO as secretary general in exile in Lusaka, Zambia.

Ya Toivo returned to Namibia in 1989 in the wake of the country's independence and served as a member of parliament and as cabinet minister in Sam Nujoma's first government.

He retired from active politics in 2006.

Ya Toivo is a national hero of Namibia.