Mozambique has asked Namibia to speak and we will

Statement by the Shadow Minister of International Relations and Trade

1. The Independent Patriots for Change has received an urgent legal and human rights appeal from Mr Venâncio Mondlane, President of the ANAMOLA Party and leader of the opposition in Mozambique, dated 12 September 2026.

2. It is addressed to the International Bar Association, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation, and to parliaments across the world.

3. Ours is one of them, it was sent to us because somebody in Maputo expects Namibia to answer it. We are answering.

4. The appeal sets out a chronology running from the killing of the journalist Carlos Cardoso in November 2000 to that of the Morrumbene mobiliser Ilídio Facitela Gustavo, reported on 12 September 2026.

5. It records the killings of Elvino Dias, Mr Mondlane’s own lawyer, and of the PODEMOS electoral representative Paulo Guambe on 18 and 19 October 2024; approximately 400 deaths during five months of post-election protest between October 2024 and March 2025; and over 450 further cases of violence between March 2025 and July 2026, at least 57 of them deaths.

6. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Lusa have separately documented incidents within that chronology. The IPC has not verified these accounts independently and does not present them as the findings of any court. We present them as what they are: a sustained and unanswered record placed before the world by a registered opposition party.

7. So here is the pattern that should concern every Namibian. The appeal states that four reports went to Mozambique’s Public Prosecutor’s Office and Ministry of Interior over more than a year, and that no response came back.

8. Commitments recorded from meetings with President Daniel Chapo in March and May 2025, on ending violence, medical assistance, compensation and the release of detainees, are reported as unfulfilled.

9. ANAMOLA’s request to join COTE, the commission implementing the political agreement, is reported as unanswered since 21 August 2025. The violence is half the story, the silence that follows it is the other half, and the silence is what turns an incident into a system.

10. Mozambique is a SADC member state, a neighbour and a fellow liberation-era republic. The world looks at Mozambique and sees a liquefied natural gas frontier. Mr Mondlane’s charge is that the commercial story is being used to bury the political one, and that investor confidence has become a reason not to ask questions.

11. A market trader in Quelimane does not experience a promising energy frontier. She experiences whether it is safe to attend a meeting. Namibia reaches its own first oil in 2029, and we should understand better than anyone what happens when resource revenue buys a government immunity from scrutiny.

12. The IPC supports the core requests of the appeal: permanent independent human rights monitoring, independent investigative missions, international observation of judicial proceedings involving opposition figures, protection for victims and witnesses, and accountability for the deaths recorded.

13. We call on the Namibian Government to raise this at the SADC Organ and the African Union, to receive the appeal. Namibia’s freedom was secured because other Africans refused to treat our suffering as an internal affair. We do not get to enjoy the benefit of that principle and then decline to extend it.

Namibia is all we have
Namibia is not for sale
We must and can save it!

Back to rodneycloete.com.na · Earlier on this site: Statement on the EIPAP public hearing with the Bankers Association of Namibia (11 September 2026)