Namibia declines to extend Kabaka’s stay - state media

The Namibian government has declined a visa extension request for Buganda King (Kabaka) Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, Namibia’s public broadcaster said, citing a top government official of the South African country.

According to Buganda, its 69-year-old monarch has since April 14, 2024 been recuperating at a health facility in Okunguari, Kunene Province, approximately 700kms from the Namibian capital, Windhoek.

Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) Wednesday reported that the country's Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation had rejected a request to extend the Kabaka's visa, even as Okonguari Psychotherapeutic Centre director Dr Daleen de Lange sought the king’s farther stay at the health facility.

Rejecting the request, Namibia’s Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation Executive Director Penda Naanda stated that the country’s law on immigration provides for a maximum stay of 90 days for non-Namibians, per NBC reports.

"Given the above and having checked the records, I wish to inform you that the request for an extension for Kabaka Mutebi II is declined,'' Naanda responded to Okonguari Psychotherapeutic Centre’s July 9 request.

This development comes barely a month after Windhoek said the conduct of five independently visiting Buganda clan chiefs, who had been preventively arrested in Namibia on intent to see the Kabaka, put Kampala's diplomatic ties with the country on the brink.

Uganda’s envoy to Pretoria Paul Amoru early July told Kampala that Namibia had in June expressed displeasure with the inundation of its missions abroad- and the harassment of its diplomatic agents by some Ugandan nationals over the Kabaka’s stay in Okonguari.

“These individuals alleged that their king had been kidnapped and exiled in Namibia, even though the Namibian government only became aware of the kabaka’s presence through the media and our diplomatic note on May 31,” the diplomat wrote on July 10. 

Uganda reacts

On Wednesday evening, Uganda's state minister for Foreign Affairs Henry Oryem Okello said "Namibia has decided that they are not interested in this kind of bad publicity, and we should respect the Namibian position."

"What Ugandans should understand is that every country is a sovereign state, and we have to respect their rules and ways of life. Since Kabaka went to Namibia, many people have turned the country into--as if a market where they enter as they wish," he added. 

By press time, Buganda authorities had not made any public pronunciations on the said visa denial. 

Meanwhile, sources told Monitor that the five clan chiefs returned to Uganda on the night of July 12. 

King of Uganda’s largest kingdom, Kabaka Mutebi is due to mark 31 years since his coronation on July 31, 2024.

In a pre-recorded video released by the kingdom on July 1, he offered hope to his subjects, saying he “expected to return home soon.”