Today, we stood together and we wept with those who weep.
This morning, at our Chancery and at the Residence here in Luanda, we gathered. Zambians and Angolans, side by side. The flag was at half mast. The air was still. And we spoke from the heart about what this day means.
Angola is mourning today. Hundreds of families are receiving back the bones of people they lost, in some cases before some of our staff were even born. A mother. A father. A brother who never came home. Today they are coming home.
Zambia knows this story. Not from a distance. From the inside.
When Angola was bleeding, Zambia opened its arms. The people of Chingola, of Solwezi, of Chavuma, of Shangombo, of Mongu, they did not ask for papers or permissions. They saw human beings at the door and they let them in. Angolan families crossed the border with nothing but each other and Zambia said: you are welcome here. Zambia fed them. Zambia schooled their children. Zambia sat with them in their grief and waited with them for peace to come.
That was not policy. That was ubuntu.
And so today when Angola mourns, we do not mourn as outsiders looking in. We mourn as people who held these families when they had nothing. Some of those bones being returned today belong to people whose children grew up on Zambian soil. That connection is real. It lives in us.
I looked at the faces of our team this morning and I was moved. Our Angolan colleagues who have served this Embassy with such dedication. Our Zambian colleagues so far from home. All of us gathered under a flag that flew lower today because that is the only honest thing to do.
To every Angolan reading this today. We see you. We are with you. Your dead are not forgotten. And the Zambia that held you then is the same Zambia that stands with you now.
Luto. Memória. Ubuntu.
-Rev. Dr. Elias Munshya
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Zambia to the Republic of Angola.
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