Mvula ya Nangolo

Mvula Ya Nangolo was born in Oniimwandi, in the Oshana region of northern Namibia, on 9 August 1943. He attended the Augustineum Training College in Okahandja before leaving for Germany in 1963 for further studies in journalism. After obtaining his Diploma in 1966, he worked for two major radio networks in Central Europe before returning to Africa, first to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where helped to launch “the Namibian Hour” on Radio Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, then to Lusaka, Zambia, where he served as commentator, producer and news reader for the ZBS, Zambia Broadcasting Services, the national radio station. He published feature articles in the Tanzanian Daily News and Sunday News, Zambia’s Times of Zambia and Sunday Times, SWAPO’s Namibia-Today and Africa Magazine in London. His first volume of poetry From Exile (1976) was published in Lusaka, Zambia, and Thoughts from Exile, his second, was published by Longman Namibia in 1991. Besides publishing his poems in international journals, Mvula represented his beloved homeland with “Namibia,” in The Written World, an online global poetry anthology that the Scottish Poetry Library published as part of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, U.K. In addition to poetry, he wrote a political commentary entitled Kasinga—A Story Untold (1995), in which he detailed the brutal massacre of Namibian men, women and children by apartheid South African troops in Cassinga, southern Angola, on May 4, 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications, including such international anthologies as When My Brothers Come Home: Poems from Central and Southern Africa (Wesleyan University Press, 1985) and Bending the Bow: An Anthology of African Love Poetry (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009). Since 1990 he has been employed by the Namibian Press Agency (NAMPA) as Features Editor. Having sung the nation into being, Mvula enjoys his compatriots’ respect as the National Poet of Namibia. After serving the government as Special Advisor to the Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Mvula retired and lived in Windhoek, Namibia until his passing on 25 April 2019.