“𝐈 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐅𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐋 𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐁𝐔𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐓…”
When Mandume yaNdemufayo ascended to the throne as Ohamba (king) of the Oukwanyama kingdom in 1911, he inherited kingdom which had been divided by the German and the Portuguese colonial administrations with a ruler and the stroke of a pen in 1884. Half of his kingdom lay in what was then known as German South West Africa and the other half in Angola.
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He used World War I as an opportunity to weaken Portuguese control in southern Angola by attacking isolated Portuguese outposts and military patrols. The Portuguese administration responded by sending a force of several thousand soldiers under General Pereira D’Eca to defeat the king. Mandume’s forces failed to halt the Portuguese army advance and suffered a large number of casualties after a fierce three-day battle at Omongwa in August 1915. One Portuguese officer and 15 troops were killed in the battle, while several troops were wounded.
After gaining control over South West Africa during World War I, the British South African administration exploited Mandume’s defeat and convinced him to enter into a ‘treaty’ which would ‘protect’ the Oukwanyama kingdom against the Portuguese. In terms of the treaty he had to move his capital from Ondjiva to Oihole which was situated in a neutral zone. The 11-km-wide zone was created after a dispute about the exact degree of latitude of the border arose between the Portuguese and German governments.
Mandume continued to exercise his power north of the neutral zone – which was prohibited in terms of the ‘treaty’. Following the shooting of a Portuguese soldier in late October 1916, the Portuguese administration launched an attack against him. The commanding officer, 16 Portuguese soldiers and a civilian driver were killed in an ambush.
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Meanwhile, the South African administration began building up a military force at Namacunde under the pretext of the ‘protection treaty’ and tried to convince the king that there was no need for the Ovakwanyama to be armed. His refusal to surrender his weapons and to submit to the authority of the South African administration was viewed as acts of defiance. When asked whether he wanted peace or war, he responded by saying, “If the English want me, I am here. They can come and fetch me. I will not fire the first shot, but I am not a steinbok of the veld. I am a man, not a woman. I will fight until my last bullet is expended.”
A 270 strong South African force, the Ovamboland Expedition, moved into Oukwanyama on 3 February 1917 and attacked Mandume’s palace at Oihole on 6 February. His bodyguard of between 200 and 300 men resisted the attack fiercely but eventually ran out of ammunition and could not withstand the superior firepower of the South African force.
The South African official account states that Mandume was killed by machinegun fire, but according to Ovakwanyama oral tradition the king committed suicide rather than surrendering or being captured alive. Oral tradition also has it that the king was decapitated and that only his body was buried at Oihole in southern Angola, while his head was taken to South West Africa.
Mandume’s role in resistance to Portuguese and South African colonial rule was recognised when one of Windhoek’s main streets was named in his honour after independence. He is also honoured as one of the country’s national heroes of the early anti-colonial struggle with a symbolic grave at the Heroes’ Acre on the southern outskirts of Windhoek.
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A bust of Ohamba Mandume yaNdemufayo was unveiled at Omhedi in 2017 during the centenary of his death. The Omhedi Cultural Landscape was declared a national heritage place in September 2011 and there are plans to build a museum in honour of Mandume yaNdemufayo close to the palace.
He is also honoured as a hero in Angola where several institutions and streets have been named after him. The shrine erected in his honour at Oihole was inaugurated in February 2002.
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