Background
Mishake Muyongo was born on April 28, 1940, in the Caprivi Strip at Linyant, a village 70 miles from Katima Mulilo.
Mishake Muyongo was born on April 28, 1940, in the Caprivi Strip at Linyant, a village 70 miles from Katima Mulilo.
Educated first at the Roman Catholic Mission School at Katima Mulilo then the priests sent him W 1957 for secondary education in Rhodesia at the Roman Catholic Cokomero Mission School at Fort Victoria.
He was awarded a local authority bursary to go to Kilnerton College, near Pretoria, South Africa in September 1968 to prepare for his university entrance examination. Political ambitions clashed with his academic interests. He turned his back on a place at Lesotho's University College and went borne to teach in April 1962.
Soon after he started teaching he organised his fellow masters into the African Teachers’ Union with himself as president. A few months later he led a strike for higher pay which closed the schools. The education authorities ytelded pay increases but removed him as an “agitator" by giving him a scholarship to teacher's training college at Mafeking, South Africa. On his return to the Caprivi Strip in November 1963 he became a teacher at his old school at the Katima Mulilo Mission.
His political career began in January 1964 when he went canvassing from village to village for a conference of 2,500 Africans to launch the Caprivi African National Union in March 1964. He became vice-president under Breden Simbwaye as president and both were at the head of a big protest march to the government buildings at Katima Mulilo in August 1964. Fighting broke out. The police opened fire, killing two Africans and injuring many others. Simbwaye was arrested and sent to indefinite detention. In the first weeks of September 1964 Muyongo escaped into Zambia.
Recognising the need for a united African nationalist front to work out a strategy for independence, he wrote to Nujoma and suggested negotiations for a merger between CANU and SWAPO. Negotiations led to an agreement on a merger at Dar es Salaam in November 1964.
Muyongo went to Lusaka as SWAPO representative in Zambia for two years. In 1966 he was appointed SWAPO’s secretary for education and spent four years persuading sympathetic governments in Africa and Eastern Europe to give scholarships to South-West Africa students in exile. He was promoted to vice-president at the SWAPO congress held at Tanga, Tanzania, in 1970.
Co-founder of the Caprivi African National Union, he negotiated the merger with SWAPO in exile at Dar es Salaam in November 1964. A tall, lean, studious nationalist leader with ruthless determination. More of a left-wing radical than other SWAPO leaders, he preaches vigorous direct action against “the oppressors”. One of his most important political achievements has been the establishment of the foundations of a new Namibia by securing scholarships abroad for South-West Africans to become engineers, doctors, teachers, economists and lawyers.