Lawrence Sampofu’s first days after joining the liberation struggle were spent in a Zambian holding cell.
“It was the safest place; the Boers were looking for Swapo all over,” he said. It was September 1975, and although Zambia was already independent and a sovereign state, the Apartheid government could, with impunity, enter Zambia and arrest people suspected of being part of Swapo.
South Africa had a good spy network, targeting would-be freedom fighters.
As a result, when a number of youth, including Sampofu, crossed into Zambia at Sesheke, the authorities detained them for a few days, then transported them to Livingstone, where they were again kept in holding cells for a few days before being handed over to Swapo via the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) the forebear of the current African Union.
At Livingstone, the group was joined by a number of youths who left Namibia via Botswana.
By the time Swapo’s Maxton Ntongolume received the youth to take them to a Swapo camp known as the Farm near Lusaka, the group had grown from being just seven to close to 600 and they required about 23 OAU trucks to transport them. The farm was not the final destination, and the next day they had to continue travelling to Satota (Oshatotwa) via Senanga and Okaoma.
The journey was long and had many obstacles, like the river crossing at Kalongola, which took a whole day to ferry all 23 trucks across the Zambezi river. At Satota, the group was received by the camp commander, Augustinus ‘McNamara’ Nghaamwa, who was accompanied by his deputy, a man called Danger, who spoke Portuguese.
The training at Satota lasted three months, until December 1975. The next month, January 1976, the group was waiting to be armed and deployed for battle when the Shipanga rebellion started.
“The situation was not good at all. The pro-Shipanga people started leaving Satota for Kaunga-Mishi, while the anti-Shipanga people at Kaunga-Mishi started moving out to Satota,” Sompofu remembers.
Swapo president Sam Nujoma then came to Satota, accompanied by Mishake Muyongo, then Swapo vice president, aboard a Zambian military helicopter.
Nujoma then explained that Shipanga wanted to take over Swapo as a whole. Lieutenant colonel Mwanza, the Zambian military official who accompanied the Swapo president, addressed the camp and said his government was worried about potential bloodshed.
As a result, the Zambian army disarmed both the Plan and the Shipanga factions, including those at Kaunga-Mishi.
After all the groups were disarmed, the Shipanga group wanted to negotiate a truce; this group was led by a certain Shafooli, but the Plan leadership at Satota refused. They briefly detained the group, considered rebels or coup plotters, and some were even flogged by the Plan fighters before being released the same day.
After that, training resumed, but the trainees were using wooden poles instead of actual guns.
Andreas Shipanga was arrested and held in detention in Zambia, then Tanzania until 1978.
In July 1976, Satota was attacked by the Apartheid forces at night.
Helicopters flew in and started shooting the unarmed Plan fighters. Many eventually made it to the nearest Zamibian army post, where they got their rifles back. In the morning, while tending to the wounded and burying the dead, they discovered that the South Africans had also left anti-personnel mines in the camp, which kept going off long after the attack was over.
The camp had to be evacuated.
Sampofu only started his actual military operations in 1977, under the command of Lazarus Hamutele. He was the platoon commander responsible for engineering. His role was to lay explosives targeting the enemy.
This period saw him participate in a number of missions, including the March 1977 attack and destruction of the Kamenga military base, which was in the Singalumwe area. Months later, in September, he was also part of the operation to attack the Katima Mulilo base.
“This operation did not go well; at least two shells missed the base completely. We are fortunate there were no civilian casualties,” he recalls.
After the destruction of Kamenga, the apartheid forces moved 20 kilometres eastward to Nukwa, dubbed ‘Nuwe Kwandu’ by the Apartheid forces.
“We also destroyed it,” Sampofu said, adding that the Nukwa base was targeted in February 1978. The base was hidden in a well-insulated, thick part of the forest, which also had high ground. Attacking it with AK-47s was not going to work. Sampofu led a reconnaissance operation, which was conducted at night to locate the base and calculate distances to ensure its bombardment would be accurate.
Ambushes targeting enemy vehicles and convoys were also common during this period.
Then Casinga was hit on 4 May that year.
In retaliation, a plan was hatched to attack the Katima Mulilo base on 26 August 1978, to make a statement.
Sampofu was at this point promoted to detachment secretary, responsible for personnel. But he was still involved in the planning of the attacks.
They found out that the South West Africa Territorial Force (SWATF) commanders of the base got wind of the attack. Timelines were then expedited, and the attack took place three days earlier, on 23 August 1978.
After his successful missions in the Caprivi, he was sent to Tanzania for further training.
There, he was trained as an intelligence officer. At the time, explosive engineering teams often worked closely with the reconnaissance teams.
Upon his return from Tanzania, he was posted at the Tobias Hainyeko Training Centre and was conducting reconnaissance training. In January 1984, he was sent to the northern front as head of reconnaissance and was instrumental in planning attacks on bases in the area.
Notable attacks he played a role in include the attacks on Ohangwena base, Omugwelume base, Ongha and Oindangungu.
He also played a key role in the fight back at the iconic Indungu battle, which he calls “the mother of all battles in Plan”.
Sampofu has now served as Zambezi governor from December 2010 to July 2025. Before that, he served as colonel and chief of army intelligence at the army headquarters in Grootfontein. He represented independent Namibia on peacekeeping missions to Chad, the Central African Republic, Eritrea and Ethiopia.
