 Riruako was born into the Tjamuaha-Maharero royal family on 24 April 1935 in the settlement of Otjewe in the Aminuis Constituency.His birth name was Issaskar Kakuremdiro; the name Kuaima he assumed later in life after his grandfather.He attended school at St. Barnabas Primary in Windhoek and at the end of the 1960s went on to study at the Kwame Nkumah School of Ideology in Accra, Ghana.