David Sheehama

David Enghali Sheehama (14 August 1933 – 14 March 1980) was a prominent Namibian businessman and philanthropist. Owning several successful business enterprises in Namibia's northern Omusati region, he was considered a pioneer for trading businesses in the region.

Early life David Sheehama was born in on August 14, 1933, the second child of Mwaehamange Josef Nehunga and Mhingana Wilhelmina Shiweva in Oshihenye shAnyanya, a village less than a kilometer South of Ombalantu's northern town Outapi in Omusati Region. Educational opportunities were very limited during Namibia's colonial times. In the early 1940's, most young men from Kavango and the northern region left their homes to work as contract labourers on farms and industries in southern Namibia.

After securing employment as a household aide with a Van Zyl family in Windhoek,

However, the late 1960s saw a decline in his transportation business due to the railway extension to Ombalantu and Ruacana. Sheehama shifted his focus entirely to trading, using his accumulated capital to expand and open new shops. He established branches in Okalongo and, during the 1970s, acquired and gifted two BBK Wholesalers near Outapi to his family members. Additionally, he opened shops in Oshakati and Ongwediva, recognizing their potential as new market towns in the north. This decade witnessed significant growth for David Sheehama's trading enterprises, extending across northern Namibia. and holistically supported the PLAN combatants with clothing, food and hospitality in his own home. He on occasions voluntarily transported PLAN's armed caches from Angola to Namibia and became one of the few business persons known personally by combatants in Ombalantu.

As a man of great influence in the community, Sheehama was endlessly prodded to abdicate his patriotic obligations. He had been asked to join the colonial Bantustan and puppet government which consisted of informants and accomplices of the apartheid government, reporting on the works of the PLAN liberational unionization efforts to weaken and destabilize the Namibian War for Independence. After several failed attempts to lure him, in the early morning hours of 14 March 1980, while sleeping next to his pregnant wife and two-year-old daughter, he was assassinated (supposedly) by the Koevoet. He was shot several times with an AK - 47 automatic rifle, his wife and unborn child were left wounded but he was pronounced dead on the spot. His house and car was set on fire on that fateful night. Sheehama was ranked one of the richest black men in Namibia during the 1970s together with Frans Indongo, Eliakim Namundjembo and Thomas Nakambonde.