Rosa Namises

Visolela Rosalinda "Rosa" Namises (born 1958), nicknamed the "Rosa Luxemburg of Namibia", is a Namibian politician, human-rights activist and chief of a faction of the ǀKhomanin, a clan of the Damara people. She is a former member of Parliament and founding member and former secretary-general of the Namibian Congress of Democrats (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 of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. She grew up with her father until she was 15 years old and attended the Augustineum Secondary School in Windhoek. After graduating she worked first as a cleaner, then as a nursing assistant, and in parallel she completed her matric through a correspondence course with Sukses College.

Her political activism first landed her in jail and then led her into exile, In 1985

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". Portrait einer beeindruckenden Frau [Portrait of an impressive woman], by Dora Borer