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Hidipo Hamutenya

Namibian politician (1939-2016)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ557014
Source-derived summary

Hidipo Livius Hamutenya (17 June 1939 – 6 October 2016) was a Namibian politician. He died aged 77 after a short illness. A long-time leading member of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), Hamutenya was a member of the Cabinet of Namibia from independence in 1990 to 2004, serving in several important ministerial portfolios. He was defeated in a bid for the party's presidential nomination in 2004 and left SWAPO to form an opposition group, the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), in 2007. He was elected to the National Assembly of Namibia with RDP in the 2009 general election. He was forced to step down as RDP president on 28 February 2015 and rejoined SWAPO on 28 August 2015.

Early life and education

Hidipo Livius Hamutenya was born in Odibo in the Ohangwena Region of northern Namibia. His father, Aaron Hamutenya, was a founding member of SWAPO. Hamutenya attended primary school at Odibo and Engela and then participated at the Augustineum Teachers Training College in Okahandja from 1959 to 1961. He met other political activists there and participated when the 1959 Old Location Uprising spilled over from Windhoek to Augustine. At the end of 1961, aged 22, he went into exile in Tanzania.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hidipo Hamutenya” is namibian politician (1939-2016). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hidipo, Hamutenya and Namibian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1939, 2016, 1990, 2004—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1939-06-17. For this dossier, Hidipo, Hamutenya and Namibian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “namibian politician (1939-2016)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q557014. VIAF identifies the subject as 76076645. The Library of Congress control number is no2006094835. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2016, 1990 and 2004.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Hidipo Hamutenya”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hidipo Hamutenya primary sources, Hidipo Hamutenya archive and Hidipo research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Hidipo Hamutenya”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Hidipo Hamutenya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.