When Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah joined the Swapo resistance movement at the age of 14, her sight was not set on becoming the president of Namibia, which was then known as South West Africa and under the occupation of South Africa, but on December 3, 2024, she made history by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the South African country.

Nandi-Ndaitwa recorded a total of 57% of votes cast to beat her closest rival, Panduleni Itula, who earned 26% of votes.

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah was born in 1952 as the ninth child of her parents’ thirteen children in the northern village of Onamutai in Namibia.

One would expect that being the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, she would desist from resistance moves against the apartheid government, but she joined the Swapo very early at the age of 14 and was made the leader of the movement’s Youth League while in high school.

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However, she was forced to flee Namibia after a crackdown on Swapo by the apartheid government saw her arrested and detained.

She joined the members of the movement in exile, but her patriotic leanings meant she continued the independence movement while in Zambia and Tanzania before travelling to the United Kingdom to obtain a degree in International Relations.

Fourteen years after her departure from Namibia, the country was granted independence in 1988, and she returned to join the post-independence government run by Swapo.

Over the years, she has held several positions in Namibia and worked in the foreign affairs, tourism, child welfare, and information ministries of her country.

She has also earned a reputation as a women’s rights activist through reforms such as pushing for theCombating of Domestic Violence Act in the National Assembly in 2002 and condemning some of her male colleagues for trying to ridicule the Act, reminding them that the Swapo constitution strongly condemns sexism.

Before her election as president, the 72-year-old became vice president of Namibia in February 2024 after the death of President Hage Geingob, whose vice president, Nangolo Mbumba, became president.

She is poised to lead the economic transformation of Namibia.