Iipumbu ya Tshilongo was born in 1873 in Onatshiku, a settlement near Elim, today in the Omusati Region of northern Namibia.
[1] Ya Tshilongo also resisted European cultural influence exercised via the establishment of mission stations and administrative outposts.
Having rebuked the Finnish Missionary Society and the South West African Administration for years, he only allowed the Catholic Church to establish a station at Oshikuku in 1924.
[3] Oral history and archival records characterize ya Tshilongo as a despotic tyrant who ruled with an iron fist.
Founding president Sam Nujoma remarked in his inauguration speech on 26 August 2002 that: Chief Iipumbu ya Tshilongo was a true Namibian nationalist ruler who rejected the idea to pay taxes to the South Africa colonial authorities and who refused to cooperate with them.