Solidarity as the shield for freedom of expression in Southern Africa
5 October 2026
Opening Remarks by Dr Tabani Moyo – MISA Regional Director at the Spaces of Solidarity Meeting
Johannesburg, South Africa
As we meet for the 2026 Spaces of Solidarity (SoS) meeting, we commemorate five years of SoS as a Forum. I am happy to say that, as a people, we have every reason to be proud of our historic efforts to establish a collective agenda in response to the challenges facing expression ecosystems in the SADC region.
The progress we have achieved over our five-year period of collective activism and solidarity has laid a solid foundation for the new advances we must and will undertake in the coming years.
These efforts, in which you have all been instrumental, form the core of our annual plans for action and mobilisation.
They are designed to ensure that the people of Southern Africa actively contribute to shaping and advancing the right to express themselves, access information, and engage with a media that is fit for purpose in the face of ever-changing contexts. Even more pressing is the need to maintain the rights-based regime in the digital age and to strengthen the dissemination of verified information to counter the vices of information disorders.
Suffice to say that our region has never, in its entire history, faced such a crossroads in the wake of the USA’s global funding cuts and the shifts in focus by the majority of traditional allies who supported expression as the rubric for the enjoyment of human rights.
The headwinds we faced were further compounded by the debilitating effects of international conflict, the impacts of climate change, and the challenge of navigating the fragmentation of progressive forces amid the rise of right-wing politics and a media ecosystem under existential threat due to these dynamics.
A call for people-to-people solidarity
The combined effects of this age of poly-crises have been felt in the solidarity among the progressive forces of society.
The issues that used to unite the allies as the basic tenets of humanity, such as respect for the right to life, democratic choice, the defence of diverse views, a just and open society, reducing inequality in society, and the protection of vulnerable groups through the strengthening of institutions, are increasingly being questioned.
Even more concerning is the shift in the definition of ‘allies’. Who our allies are is a key question that we need to continually reassess as we journey forward, as the contours are becoming blurry and somewhat frustrating for the movement, with colleagues having to explain themselves repeatedly to erstwhile allies about issues that were commonly shared only yesterday.
We remind ourselves of the worst cases in the general elections held in Southern Africa in recent years, when the standard of measurement was lowered because of the reconfigured geopolitics. These were the most violent elections in the recent past in Mozambique and Tanzania, in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
We have equally witnessed democratic backsliding in the Republic of Zambia, where those holding dissenting views face consequences, including having their passports revoked.
Only recently in Lesotho, our former Regional Governing Council (RGC) member, Kananelo Boloetse, was abducted and tortured and the perpetrators are still at large.
Yet, in all these trials and tribulations, there is greater concern about critical minerals and underhand deals granting access to extraction without accountability, at the expense of gross human rights violations; the harm caused by primitive extraction processes for the very same critical minerals; and a blind eye to labour practices within those communities, in pursuit of narrow bottom-line interests and the profit motive at all costs.
Whither solidarity, Southern Africa?
Subsequently, the solidarity chain is continually strained by these shifts and rapid changes, even when it is needed most to safeguard expression and strengthen its ecosystems in the region.
It is therefore paramount to be pragmatic and deliberate in defining the nature and architecture of solidarity that will hold the lane under these realities.
Celebrating the gains since Windhoek!
Yet in all the trials and tribulations which punctuated the work since Windhoek in September 2025, we have managed to engage in high-level advocacy through our collective efforts, notably:
Engaging the President on Zambia’s Cyber Laws
Engagement with the Malawi Government on the broadcasting regulations, supported by the then Attorney General Thabo Nyirenda, on the imperative need to charge licence fees in local currency
Gained access to challenging contexts such as Eswatini, enabling evidence-based advocacy
Capacity building & continuous learning are critical; hence the strategic intervention through the DW Akademie-supported fellowships that started in 2025.
Pivoting on each other
Given the foregoing, there is an imperative need for the following:
Solidarity and Collaboration: Our solidarity and collaboration efforts should be informed by pragmatism and a deeper understanding of current members’ capacity and realities, having gone through cycles of diminishing support.
Research-based interventions: High-level advocacy and national policy formulation rely on evidence-based interventions; therefore, we need to consolidate gains in AMBs and, where possible, expand to Botswana and Lesotho.
Monitoring and networking are essential for sharing knowledge and experience and organically advancing the struggle to defend expression in Southern Africa. This has kept the movement going even in these challenging times.
With these reflections on the complexity in front of us, some have asked whether we are punching above our weight. Today, I respond by encouraging you to punch at weight and to explore mechanisms that can be applied to strengthen solidarity as a shield for expression ecosystems in Southern Africa.
I thank you
