Southern Africa: Reflections On the Spaces of Solidarity (Sos) Conference Agenda

The strides we have made during our first three years have laid a firm foundation for the new advances we must and will make during the following years.

Esteemed Colleagues

As we open this Second Day’s Session of our Summit, which will straddle the end of the 3rd year of the Spaces of Solidarity as a Forum, I am privileged to say that as a people, we have every reason to be proud of our historic efforts towards setting a collective agenda in response to the challenges impacting on expression in SADC.

It is even more historic for Namibia, the birthplace of the Windhoek Declaration on Diverse and Plural Media and its successor, Windhoek +30–Information as a public good.

The strides we have made during our first three years have laid a firm foundation for the new advances we must and will make during the following years.

These efforts, which you all have been instrumental in, form the core of our annual plans of action and mobilisation. They are designed to ensure that the people of Southern Africa actively contribute to shaping and advancing the right to express, access information, and engage with a media that is fit for purpose in the face of everchanging contexts.

Suffice it to assert that our region has never in its entire history been at such cross-roads attending to high-density saturation of elections, battling and engaging with fast-paced changes in technology, grappling with the debilitating effects of conflict at a global scale, living with the effects of the changing climate; navigating the fragmentation of progressive forces in the age of increasing right-wing politics and an expression and media ecosystem that faces an existential threat due to these vices.

On behalf of the organisers of this year’s Summit broadly and the Spaces of Solidarity, its members and support partner, I express gratitude for the design of the programme, which will see us taking a deep and detailed dive into structuring mechanisms that respond to the confluence of these complex factors.

United in our diversity, we have the capacity to achieve these objectives. With unwavering effort and strength, we can and will build an agile movement with speed!

Let us be like an army standing at parade in solidarity with the cause of the region’s people to imagine, re-imagine and construct a better society predicated on peace, accountability, competitive media, and responsiveness to the citizens.

Thank You

Dr Tabani Moyo

MISA Regional Director