Visolela Rosalinda "Rosa" Namises (born 1958), nicknamed the " Rosa Luxemburg of Namibia", is a

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

n politician, human-rights activist and chief of a faction of the ǀKhomanin, a clan of the

Damara people The Damara, plural Damaran (Khoekhoegowab: ǂNūkhoen, ''Black people'', german: Bergdamara, referring to their extended stay in hilly and mountainous sites, also called at various times the Daman or the Damaqua) are an ethnic group who make ...

. She is a former member of

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...

and founding member and former secretary-general of the Namibian

Congress of Democrats The Congress of Democrats (CoD) is a Namibian opposition party without representation in the National Assembly and led by Ben Ulenga. It was established in 1999, prior to that year's general elections, and started off with a number of notabl ...

(CoD). A prominent voice on gender issues, human-rights violations, and violence against women and children in Namibia, she is the director of Woman Solidarity Namibia and works at the ''Dolam Residential Child Care'' centre, a day-care centre for vulnerable children.

Early life and education

Namises was born on 20 April 1958 as one of nine children to an Angolan father and Damara mother in the

Old Location The Old Location (or as it was known then the Main Location) was an area segregated for Black residents of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. It was situated in the area between today's suburbs of Hochland Park and Pioneers Park. History Upon the ...

Windhoek Windhoek (, , ) is the capital and largest city of Namibia. It is located in central Namibia in the Khomas Highland plateau area, at around above sea level, almost exactly at the country's geographical centre. The population of Windhoek in 202 ...

, the capital of Namibia. She grew up with her father until she was 15 years old and attended the

Augustineum Secondary School The Augustineum Secondary School, established in 1866, is among the oldest schools in Namibia. Originally situated in Otjimbingwe, it was relocated to Okahandja in 1890, and finally to Windhoek in 1968. Previously also known as the Augustineum ...

. After graduating she worked first as a cleaner, then as a nursing assistant, and in parallel she completed her

matric Matriculation is the formal process of entering a university, or of becoming eligible to enter by fulfilling certain academic requirements such as a matriculation examination. Australia In Australia, the term "matriculation" is seldom used now ...

through a correspondence course with Sukses College. Her political activism first landed her in jail and then led her into exile, conditions that forced her to discontinue her education. Only in 1990 when Namibia became independent did she continue to study. She obtained a Diploma in Adult and Basic Education from

UNISA The University of South Australia (UniSA) is a public research university in the Australian state of South Australia. It is a founding member of the Australian Technology Network of universities, and is the largest university in South Australi ...

and a Diploma in Gender Development and Planning from the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

. She further holds a Diploma in Women in Management, has had some paralegal education, and acquired counselling and facilitation skills.

Political career

In the early 1980s Namises joined the then-illegal

SWAPO party The South West Africa People's Organisation (, SWAPO; af, Suidwes-Afrikaanse Volks Organisasie, SWAVO; german: Südwestafrikanische Volksorganisation, SWAVO), officially known as the SWAPO Party of Namibia, is a political party and former ind ...

. She organised meetings, acquired new members, and distributed promotional material. She was caught and spent two months in solitary confinement but soon returned to her activist's activities. In 1985 she lost her job in the hospital after having been seen holding hands in public with a white doctor, violating

apartheid legislation The system of racial segregation and oppression in South Africa known as ''apartheid'' was implemented and enforced by many acts and other laws. This legislation served to institutionalize racial discrimination and the dominance by white people o ...

racial segregation Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crimes against hum ...

. She was also jailed a second time for her political activities, this time for 14 months. Once released she was offered a job by the

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

as community development officer. In the same year Ben Ulenga was released from

Robben Island Robben Island ( af, Robbeneiland) is an island in Table Bay, 6.9 kilometres (4.3 mi) west of the coast of Bloubergstrand, north of Cape Town, South Africa. It takes its name from the Dutch word for seals (''robben''), hence the Dutch/Afrik ...

prison. Namises and Ulenga met and became a couple soon thereafter. When she was pregnant with their second child in 1987 but they still refused to marry each other, Namises was fired. She also abandoned her Catholic faith at that time, and for that reason. Namises then went into exile and worked in Europe and America. She only returned after the

Independence of Namibia The South African Border War, also known as the Namibian War of Independence, and sometimes denoted in South Africa as the Angolan Bush War, was a largely asymmetric conflict that occurred in Namibia (then South West Africa), Zambia, and Angol ...

in 1990. Not long thereafter several past human rights violations by SWAPO were uncovered. When the party subsequently erected a wall of silence instead of reappraising what had happened, Namises ceased her SWAPO membership in 1992. When the

(CoD) was founded in 1999, Namises was one of its founding members. In the subsequent parliamentary elections, the CoD gained seven seats, and Namises as secretary-general became a Member of

for the 3rd National Assembly. When the CoD only gained five seats in the next elections in 2004, Namises was one of the politicians not to return to parliament. However, after the party expelled

Nora Schimming-Chase Nora Schimming-Chase (1 December 1940 – 13 March 2018) was a Namibian politician and Namibia's first ambassador to Germany from 1992 to 1996. After changing her party membership from South West Africa National Union (SWANU) to Congress of Democr ...

in 2009, Namises took her seat for the remainder of the legislative period.

Activism

As Namises went in and out of politics, she spent the time in between as an activist and lobbyist. Her first formal role was her work at the Legal Assistance Centre in the early 1990s, a job she took after quitting SWAPO. She helped to discover and fight human rights violations there, a step she described as "revenge". She is the director of Woman Solidarity Namibia, an organisation fighting violence against women and children. Namises is also the founder and main operator of ''Dolam Residential Child Care'', a day-care facility for vulnerable children. There are 21 children at the centre.

In the media

* ''Rosa und Uria'', a German film about Rosa Namises and Uria Kariere's lives at the eve of Namibian independence * ''Portrait einer beeindruckenden Frau'' ortrait of an impressive woman by Dora Borer

References

External links

The Dolam Children's Home Trust
official site {{DEFAULTSORT:Namises, Rosa 1958 births People from Windhoek Congress of Democrats politicians Living people Members of the National Assembly (Namibia) Namibian feminists Namibian nurses University of South Africa alumni Alumni of the University of London Augustineum Secondary School alumni South West African anti-apartheid activists Violence against women in Namibia Children's rights activists Women's rights activists Feminism and history Namibian people of Angolan descent 20th-century Namibian women politicians 20th-century Namibian politicians 21st-century Namibian women politicians 21st-century Namibian politicians Women members of the National Assembly (Namibia)