Translated from Portuguese. The Portuguese version prevails. Ler em português
Read in full the keynote lecture (Aula Magna) delivered by the President of the Federal Supreme Court of the Federative Republic of Brazil and of the National Council of Justice, Justice Luiz Edson Fachin, this Tuesday, 21 July 2026, at the Rui Ferreira Auditorium in the Palace of Justice, Luanda.
The lecture, on the theme "Constitutional Democracy and Judicial Independence", formed part of the programme of the official working visit that the President of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) is paying to the Republic of Angola at the invitation of the Constitutional Court. —————————
Your Excellency the President of the Constitutional Court of Angola, Justice Laurinda Prazeres,
Your Excellencies the Justices,
Directors of the Constitutional Court of Angola,
Professors of the Faculties of Law gathered here,
Dear students,
Other authorities present,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Allow me to begin by expressing my thanks for the honour of the invitation to be on Angolan soil.
A land that History has made — and continues to make — a sister to Brazil.
I ask memory's leave to be in Angola.
Here, time has roots.
Here there are trees that span the centuries, silently guarding what time has been unable to carry away.
Beneath their canopies, memory rests.
In their roots, History remains alive.
I come from Brazil and, in this land, I bow with respect before the history, the resistance and the dignity of the Angolan people.
Perhaps this is one of the secrets of the embondeiro: to pass through time without abandoning the land from which it came.
To keep, in its roots, the memory of what we were.
To sustain, in its trunk, the courage of what we are.
And to open, up high, its branches to what we may yet become.
Because a true future exists only where memory has roots.
I always like to recall that the African presence is constitutive of Brazilian identity.
Brazil cannot be fully understood without Africa.
And Africa, for us Brazilians, is not merely a distant geography.
It is ancestry.
It is culture.
It is language.
It is memory.
It is part of us.
I also like to recall that, in 1975, Brazil was the first country to recognise the independence of Angola.
That gesture says a great deal about the historical and institutional depth of what unites us.
In the legal sphere, this closeness is nourished by decades of cooperation, of exchanges, of agreements between universities, faculties and courts.
I therefore wish to thank in particular the Constitutional Court of Angola, in the person of its President, Justice Laurinda Prazeres, for the most timely initiative of bringing together, in this academic moment of my official visit, representatives of various Faculties of Law in Luanda.
I am deeply grateful for this gathering.
I am, to this day, a professor.
And I say this not in reference to a past activity.
I say it as a matter of identity.
Because those who teach Law know that they never truly leave the classroom.
Contact with young students and with professors renews us.
It challenges us.
And it reminds us of something essential:
the Law remains alive only when one generation agrees to hand it down — and another agrees to transform it.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I invite you to keep hold of an image.
A single image.
Not so that it may replace the legal concepts we shall examine, but so that it may accompany us discreetly throughout this reflection.
I am referring to the embondeiro, as it is called here in Angola — a tree which, in Brazil, we know above all by the name of baobab.
An ancestral tree.
A tree that passes through time.
Tradition has it that it is the tree of life.
It impresses not only by what can be seen.
It impresses, above all, by what cannot be seen.
By its capacity to endure.
To resist.
To come through droughts, storms and profound transformations of the landscape.
And it is precisely this capacity to endure that interests me today.
Because institutions, too, are tested by time.
Democracies, too, face droughts.
Constitutions, too, weather storms.
And they, too, depend on foundations that are not always visible.
It is in this sense that I propose to reflect on two inseparable themes:
constitutional democracy and the independence of the Judiciary.
If constitutional democracy is what we see — elections, institutions, Parliament, governments, courts, political participation — there are less visible foundations that support this entire edifice.
Among them is judicial independence.
It is rarely noticed when everything is functioning normally.
But its absence becomes dramatic when crisis arrives.
And crises, as History has taught us, always arrive.
Let us keep hold of this image.
I shall return to it only at the end.
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In discussing judicial independence, we must begin with a prior question:
what do we mean by democracy?
Democracy cannot be confused with the simple rule of the majority.
The counting of votes is indispensable.
Without free elections, there is no democracy.
But elections alone are not enough.
This is perhaps one of the great political lessons of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Democracy, understood solely as a procedure for forming the political will by the majority, is a necessary condition.
But it is not a sufficient condition for a truly constitutional regime.
History has shown, painfully, that electoral majorities can be used to erode the very conditions that made their free formation possible.
And herein lies one of the most important transformations of our time.
For much of the twentieth century, we learned to recognise democratic ruptures by their outward signs.
Tanks in the streets.
The closure of Parliaments.
The suspension of Constitutions.
Open censorship.
Political imprisonment.
Today, however, democracies can also die in another way.
They can die from within.
They can be progressively hollowed out, even by making use of the apparent forms of legality.
Governments may come to power legitimately through the ballot box and then gradually dismantle the institutions intended to limit them.
A power here.
A guarantee there.
A change in the composition of a court.
A restriction on the press.
Pressure on judges.
An alteration of the electoral rules.
An exception presented as temporary.
And, by the time society notices, democracy may retain its institutional appearance but have already lost a substantial part of its essence.
That is why we speak of constitutional democracy.
The word “constitutional” is not an ornamental adjective.
It is a condition.
Constitutional democracy means that the will of the majority is recognised, but also legally limited.
Limited by fundamental rights.
By the separation of Powers.
By due process of law.
By the protection of minorities.
By review of constitutionality.
By institutions capable of saying “no” when the exercise of power exceeds the limits established by the Constitution.
The Constitution, therefore, is not merely the document of a founding moment.
It is something deeper.
It is a pact between generations.
A pact that establishes not only how to govern, but also what no government may legitimately destroy.
There are rights that cannot depend on the popularity of those who hold them.
There are guarantees that cannot depend on the political convenience of the moment.
There are limits that cannot disappear merely because a majority wishes to exceed them.
The majority governs.
But the majority, too, meets limits.
It is precisely in this tension that democratic constitutionalism lives.
The Constitution enables politics.
But it also limits politics.
It allows the exercise of power.
But it prevents power from becoming absolute.
And it is precisely at this point that the Judiciary enters.
Not as an adversary of democracy.
Not as a substitute for politics.
But as one of the institutions responsible for preserving the conditions that make democracy itself possible.
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This discussion is not new.
It goes back, among other important moments in constitutional theory, to the famous controversy between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt over who should be the guardian of the Constitution.
For Schmitt, ultimately, the head of State should occupy that decisive position.
For Kelsen, the protection of the Constitution should fall to a judicial body, set apart from immediate political dispute and capable of exercising legal control over the exercise of power.
The History of the twentieth century gave that debate an answer of enormous significance.
After the experience of totalitarian regimes and, especially, after 1945, many democracies began to build robust systems of constitutional jurisdiction.
Constitutional courts became central elements of democratic architecture.
Not because judges are superior to the people.
Not because courts own the Constitution.
But because historical experience has shown that power without limits tends to exceed its own limits.
Constitutional jurisdiction is thus born of a healthy distrust of power.
Of all power.
Including democratically elected power.
It is in this context that contemporary constitutional doctrine developed the idea that fundamental rights function as veritable trumps in the face of ordinary political decisions.
There is a core of rights that cannot simply be sacrificed to calculations of convenience.
Fundamental rights do not exist only for calm days.
They exist, above all, for difficult days.
It is when protecting rights becomes unpopular that we discover whether they truly are rights.
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I come, then, to the central point of this address.
The independence of the Judiciary.
It is common to hear, in certain contexts, that judicial independence is a prerogative of judges.
A corporate benefit.
A kind of privilege granted to the judiciary.
This understanding is profoundly mistaken.
Judicial independence does not belong to the judge.
It belongs to the citizen.
It does not exist to protect judges.
It exists to protect those who will be judged by them.
Citizens need to know that, when they enter a courtroom, they will find someone who is able to decide without taking orders.
Without fear of the government.
Without fear of economic power.
Without fear of the press.
Without fear of social media.
Without fear of the hierarchical structure itself.
Without fear of deciding against the majority.
That is the essence of judicial independence.
It is not a privilege.
It is a guarantee.
And it is a guarantee for those who come before the courts.
We can distinguish two fundamental dimensions of this independence.
The first is institutional, or external, independence.
It is the capacity of the Judiciary, as a Power, to exercise its functions without undue subordination to the other Powers of the State.
This involves administrative autonomy.
Budgetary autonomy.
Objective criteria for entry, appointment and promotion.
Guarantees against external interference.
The second dimension is decisional, or internal, independence.
It protects each and every judge at the moment of deciding.
It means that the judge owes obedience to the Constitution and to the laws.
Not to political interests.
Not to economic interests.
Not to media campaigns.
Not to popular pressure.
Nor to undue pressure from within the judicial structure itself.
These two dimensions complement each other.
A Judiciary that is institutionally strong, but made up of judges who are individually vulnerable to pressure, is not truly independent.
Likewise, judges of integrity placed within structurally fragile institutions will hardly be able to sustain their independence in the long term.
That is why institutional guarantees exist.
Security of tenure.
Irremovability.
Irreducibility of remuneration.
Administrative autonomy.
Budgetary autonomy.
These guarantees do not exist to create a judiciary distant from society.
They exist to enable a judiciary capable of declaring the Law even when declaring the Law comes at a cost.
Independence reveals its true value when being independent has a price.
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There is yet another contemporary challenge that deserves attention.
Diversity in the composition of courts.
Courts that are socially, culturally or geographically homogeneous may run the risk of regarding as universal experiences that in fact belong to specific groups.
Diversity does not replace merit.
But it broadens perspectives.
It enriches deliberation.
It allows different human experiences to enter the process of constitutional interpretation.
Brazil and Angola are societies profoundly marked by diversity.
Plural societies.
Multicultural.
With complex histories.
We therefore have a common responsibility:
to build institutions capable of recognising the plurality of the societies they serve.
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Allow me, at this point, to make special reference to the Angolan constitutional experience.
Constitutionalism is usually presented, in textbooks, on the basis of the European and North American experiences.
The French Revolution.
The American Constitution.
Post-war European constitutionalism.
All of this is fundamental.
But constitutional history does not belong only to the North Atlantic.
It has also been written — and continues to be written — in the Global South.
In Africa.
In Latin America.
In societies that had to build, simultaneously, independence, the State, institutions, citizenship and democracy.
Angola recently celebrated fifty years of its constitutional journey, which to a large extent is intertwined with the very construction of the independent Angolan State.
The 1975 Constitutional Law, promulgated in the context of independence, represents the inaugural milestone of that journey.
The following decades reveal a profound process of institutional transformation.
From a constitutionalism marked by the revolutionary experience and by the construction of the new State, Angola advanced towards an order committed to the principles of the democratic State governed by the rule of law, the protection of fundamental rights and democratic institutionalisation.
The 2010 Constitution occupies a central place in this path.
It brings together, in a comprehensive text, values relating to democracy, peace, human dignity and institutional stability.
But the Angolan experience also teaches us something fundamental:
no Constitution is born ready-made.
Constitutions are texts.
But constitutionalism is culture.
Constitutions can be promulgated in a day.
Constitutional culture takes generations to build.
Angolan constitutionalism was forged by the liberation struggle, by conflicts, by the building of peace, by national reconciliation and by the challenges of development.
So too, in its own circumstances, was Brazilian constitutionalism.
Our experiences are not identical.
But they share an essential characteristic:
our Constitutions carry History.
And precisely because they carry History, they must be able to preserve their roots while continuing to engage with universal values:
liberty.
equality.
dignity.
democracy.
justice.
the rule of law.
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Ladies and gentlemen,
It would not be intellectually honest to defend judicial independence without confronting one of the most serious objections levelled at constitutional jurisdiction.
The so-called counter-majoritarian difficulty.
The question is well known.
And it is legitimate.
If democracy rests on popular sovereignty, how can it be justified that judges who are not directly elected by the people may invalidate decisions taken by democratically elected representatives?
This question should not be avoided.
It must be confronted.
I believe the answer involves three ideas.
The first:
the legitimacy of constitutional courts is not an electoral legitimacy.
It is a constitutional, procedural and argumentative legitimacy.
Courts do not replace the popular will.
Their function is to ensure that this will is exercised within the limits that the political community itself has established in its Constitution.
There is a classic image from philosophy here.
Ulysses asks to be tied to the mast of his ship in order to resist the song of the Sirens.
He limits his own freedom in a moment of lucidity because he knows that, at a certain moment, he may desire that which will destroy him.
Constitutions do something similar.
Democratically mature societies set limits for themselves.
Not because they distrust democracy.
But precisely because they wish to preserve it.
The second idea concerns reasoning.
Judicial legitimacy is also deliberative.
Judges must justify their decisions.
They must set out reasons.
They must explain.
They must give grounds.
A judicial decision cannot legitimately say only:
“We have decided thus because we have the power to decide.”
Judicial power requires public reasons.
And those reasons can be criticised.
Reviewed.
Challenged.
Compared with precedents.
Examined by academia.
Debated by the press.
Subjected to the scrutiny of society.
Whoever exercises power must explain why.
This is a republican requirement.
The third idea is perhaps the most important for our time.
The counter-majoritarian difficulty is a real problem.
But there is another problem that may be even more serious:
the capture of institutions by transient majorities.
Contemporary literature speaks of authoritarian constitutionalism, democratic erosion and autocratic legalism.
These are different phenomena, but they share one feature:
the use of institutions themselves to weaken institutions.
It is not necessary to repeal a Constitution in order to destroy its normative force.
Courts can be weakened.
Their composition altered.
Their powers reduced.
Appointment processes manipulated.
Financial dependence created.
Judges intimidated.
Institutions systematically discredited.
All of this can occur under the appearance of legality.
That is why one of the great contemporary threats to democracy is not only the coup that breaks the constitutional order.
It is also the slow erosion that preserves the façade while hollowing out the foundations.
Democracy can die without its death ever being officially announced.
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It is fair to acknowledge, however, the force of another criticism.
There are those who argue that transferring fundamental decisions on rights to a panel of judges deprives citizens of the right to deliberate, to err and to learn from their own mistakes.
This objection deserves respect.
Democratic politics needs space.
Parliament needs space.
Society needs space.
Not every political question should be automatically converted into a judicial question.
Not every social disagreement finds its best answer in a court.
The Constitution did not turn the Judiciary into society's permanent guardian.
But it must also be recognised that legislative processes, especially in contexts of extreme polarisation, do not always offer the ideal deliberative conditions that theory presupposes.
The challenge, therefore, lies not in choosing between democracy and constitutional jurisdiction.
It lies in building a balance.
An independent Judiciary.
But not a sovereign one.
Strong.
But not self-referential.
Capable of acting.
But also capable of recognising its limits.
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This leads us to an indispensable distinction.
Independence does not mean unaccountability.
Nor does it mean infallibility.
Judges err.
Courts err.
Constitutional courts err.
Judicial independence cannot serve as a shield against transparency, criticism or accountability.
A truly republican Judiciary must coexist with control mechanisms compatible with its autonomy.
Publicity of decisions.
Reasoning.
Transparency.
Collegiality.
Legitimate disciplinary mechanisms.
Institutional oversight.
Academic criticism.
Journalistic criticism.
Public scrutiny.
All of this is compatible with independence.
More than that:
all of this can strengthen independence.
Because transparent institutions are institutions better able to earn trust.
However, two profoundly different things must be distinguished.
It is one thing to criticise a judicial decision.
It is another to intimidate those who decide.
Criticism is democratic.
Intimidation is anti-democratic.
Disagreement strengthens institutions.
Threats seek to destroy them.
Judges cannot be above criticism.
But nor can they decide under fear.
This balance is essential.
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Self-restraint is also part of judicial responsibility.
Constitutional jurisdiction is not a blank cheque.
The constitutional judge must recognise that there are matters in which the legislature has greater institutional capacity.
There are decisions that involve technical choices.
There are public policies that require specialised knowledge.
There are legitimate spaces for political choice.
Deference may, in certain circumstances, be a constitutional virtue.
But there is a caveat.
Deference cannot mean omission.
Prudence cannot mean silence.
Self-restraint cannot mean abandoning the Constitution.
When fundamental rights are gravely violated, judicial omission may also be a form of decision.
And, at times, a very grave one.
The challenge lies in balance.
Neither government by judges.
Nor judges subservient to the government.
Independence with responsibility.
Authority with reasoning.
Prudence without omission.
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There is yet another dimension that I consider fundamental.
Dialogue between the Powers.
Mature constitutional courts should not see themselves as institutions hierarchically superior to the other Powers.
The Constitution does not establish a political pyramid with the Judiciary at the top.
It establishes distinct functions.
The Legislature.
The Executive.
The Judiciary.
Each with its own legitimacy.
Each with its own responsibilities.
Each subject to the Constitution.
Constitutional democracy works best when these Powers are able to establish a permanent institutional dialogue.
Parliament legislates.
The Executive governs.
The Judiciary reviews.
But the decisions of one Power produce responses in the others.
This dialogue can correct excesses.
Improve policies.
Produce more stable solutions.
And strengthen democratic legitimacy.
The Constitution is not a monologue by any one Power.
It is a conversation between institutions and society.
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Ladies and gentlemen,
We come, then, to the challenges of our time.
We are living through a technological transformation of extraordinary speed.
Information circulates instantly.
So does disinformation.
Digital networks have amplified voices and democratised spaces for expression.
But they have also created mechanisms of polarisation, radicalisation and manipulation on an unprecedented scale.
In this environment, traditional institutions face a global crisis of trust.
And the Judiciary is not immune.
Constitutional courts are called upon to decide ever more complex questions.
Digital platforms.
Data protection.
Artificial intelligence.
Electoral integrity.
Minority rights.
Public health.
Climate change.
Environmental protection.
Issues involving science, technology, economics, ethics and politics.
The so-called judicialisation of politics cannot be explained solely as an expansionist desire on the part of the courts.
In many cases, it stems from the constitutional expansion of rights itself.
In others, from the inability of the other Powers to provide answers, or from their delay in doing so.
But the greater the space occupied by the Judiciary, the greater its responsibility.
More power demands more reasoning.
More visibility demands more transparency.
More authority demands more prudence.
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Artificial intelligence adds a new layer to this challenge.
It offers extraordinary opportunities.
It can increase efficiency.
Reduce repetitive tasks.
Facilitate access to case law.
Help overburdened judicial systems.
But it brings risks.
Algorithms may reproduce biases present in the data.
Automated systems may appear neutral without actually being so.
And decisions may, little by little, be shifted from those who bear constitutional responsibility to those who design technological systems.
We need to be clear about one principle:
technology can assist Justice.
It cannot replace the human responsibility of judging.
A judicial decision involves reason.
But it also involves context.
Prudence.
Responsibility.
Humanity.
And, above all, someone who answers for the decision taken.
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Another challenge is the growing exposure of judges to campaigns of intimidation.
Social media have profoundly changed the relationship between institutions and public opinion.
Criticism is legitimate.
Criticism is necessary.
No democratic institution should wish to live without criticism.
But there is a boundary.
When criticism turns into threat;
when disagreement turns into persecution;
when campaigns are organised to instil personal fear;
when the aim is no longer to contest the decision but to constrain the one who decides;
then we are no longer speaking only of freedom of expression.
We are speaking of judicial independence.
And it must be said clearly:
a judge who is afraid is not fully free to judge.
And a society in which judges cannot judge freely is a society in which citizens, too, lose their freedom.
I return, therefore, to the central idea:
judicial independence does not protect the judge.
It protects the citizen.
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I now address myself especially to the students present here.
You will be the jurists of a difficult era.
But also an extraordinary one.
You will inherit institutions that other generations built.
Some strong.
Others fragile.
Some consolidated.
Others still under construction.
And you will have a choice.
You may treat Law merely as a profession.
Or you may also understand it as a public responsibility.
That is why I insist on the civilising importance of legal education.
Faculties of Law do not merely train technicians capable of interpreting norms.
They form people who, in the future, may decide on liberty.
Property.
Equality.
Power.
Rights.
And even on the very survival of democratic institutions.
Law is not merely a technique.
It is a responsibility.
Judicial independence is not sustained solely by well-written Constitutions.
Although they are indispensable.
It is also sustained by the legal culture of each generation.
By what professors teach.
By what students learn.
By what lawyers defend.
By what judges practise.
By what institutions tolerate — or refuse to tolerate.
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This calls for reflection on legal education.
Teaching centred exclusively on memorising codes may produce professionals capable of repeating norms.
But it may not produce jurists capable of recognising when legality itself begins to be used against the rule of law.
That is one of the greatest challenges.
The most dangerous threats do not always arrive announcing that they are threats.
Sometimes they arrive dressed as normality.
With legal language.
With formal procedures.
With seemingly reasonable justifications.
Historical education is needed.
Critical thinking.
Comparative law.
Constitutional theory.
Philosophy.
Ethics.
Because a jurist needs to know not only what the law says.
A jurist needs to understand what sustains the Law.
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Allow me, therefore, to suggest four virtues to the young people present here.
The first:
technical rigour.
There is no solid independence without competence.
One must study.
Know legal dogmatics.
Master method.
Understand hermeneutics.
Respect the facts.
A technically weak decision undermines the authority of the Law.
The second:
integrity.
The independence of institutions is made up of thousands of small personal independences.
Decisions taken every day.
Often without witnesses.
Often when no one is watching.
That is where integrity reveals itself.
The third:
republican ethics.
Holding public office means understanding that power does not belong to those who exercise it.
It is entrusted temporarily.
To serve.
Never to serve oneself.
And the fourth:
prudence.
The ancients called it phronesis.
Practical wisdom.
The capacity to understand that applying general principles to concrete situations requires discernment.
Neither blind rigidity.
Nor voluntarism.
Prudence.
These virtues are not learned from books alone.
They are also learned by example.
And each generation of jurists is responsible for the example it will leave to the next.
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Ladies and gentlemen,
The experience of Angola and Brazil also invites us to another reflection.
Much of the constitutional theory studied in our universities was produced on the basis of the experience of a relatively small number of North Atlantic democracies.
This intellectual heritage is valuable.
We must study it.
Kelsen.
The American constitutional tradition.
European constitutionalism.
Contemporary theories of fundamental rights.
All of this belongs to us as the universal heritage of legal thought.
But we must not confuse universality with uncritical importation.
Angola has its History.
Brazil has its History.
Cabo Verde has its History.
Mozambique has its History.
Each society builds institutions within its own circumstances.
Nations marked by colonisation, by independence, by inequality, by diversity and by the relatively recent construction of their democratic institutions face specific challenges.
We have much to learn from other democracies.
But we also have much to learn from one another.
The Global South should not be merely a consumer of constitutional theory.
It can also be a producer of constitutional thought.
Our experience matters.
Our History matters.
Our challenges matter.
And our solutions can teach, too.
This is, in my view, one of the deepest meanings of cooperation between Angola and Brazil.
Not merely transferring knowledge.
But building knowledge together.
Not merely repeating models.
But engaging in dialogue about experiences.
Not merely looking to the North.
But also looking to the other side of the Atlantic.
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And here I come to my final point.
I promised to return to the image from the beginning.
I return to it now.
To the embondeiro.
Here, in Angola, it passes through time.
In Brazil, we know trees of this same ancestry mainly by the name of baobab.
But the name matters here.
Because we are in Angola.
And because words, too, carry memory.
The embondeiro teaches that what endures is not always what is most on display.
A tree spans centuries not only through the canopy that everyone sees.
It endures through what silently sustains its existence.
So it is with constitutional democracy.
We see elections.
We see governments.
We see Parliaments.
We see courts.
But, beneath this institutional surface, there are foundations that must remain firm.
The Constitution.
Fundamental rights.
The separation of Powers.
Democratic culture.
And judicial independence.
When all is well, we may scarcely think about these foundations.
But when the storm comes, we discover their importance.
And institutional storms do not belong only to the past.
As I often say:
History is back.
That is why each generation must decide whether it will merely receive the institutions built by previous generations or whether it will also take care of them.
Democracies are not inherited for ever.
They must be rebuilt every day.
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There is one last lesson.
No democratic institution survives entirely on its own.
Courts learn from courts.
Universities learn from universities.
Jurists learn from jurists.
Nations learn from nations.
Angola and Brazil have much to learn from each other.
Our histories were separated by an ocean.
But they were never truly strangers.
The Atlantic that separated us also connected us.
Across it passed suffering.
Across it passed people.
Across it passed languages.
Cultures.
Memories.
And today, across it, knowledge, cooperation and hope may also pass.
To you, young law students of Luanda, I leave an invitation.
Study deeply.
Think freely.
Doubt intelligently.
Defend institutions without idolising them.
Criticise them in order to improve them.
And never confuse independence with privilege.
Because when a court is truly independent, the one who is protected is not the judge.
It is the citizen.
When a Constitution is respected, the winner is not a Power.
It is society.
And when democracy remains standing in the face of the storm, it is not one generation that wins.
It is the future.
That is why I began this address by asking memory's leave.
Because memory is not only what has been left behind.
Memory also tells us where we must not return.
It keeps the pain.
It keeps the struggles.
It keeps the achievements.
And it hands us a responsibility.
The responsibility to carry on.
Angola knows this.
So does Brazil.
Two nations.
Two histories of their own.
An ocean between them.
And so many roots of memory, language, culture and destiny that cross that ocean.
That is why, in concluding, I do not ask leave to depart from Angola.
Once again, I ask memory's leave.
I ask memory's leave to be in Angola.
To hear what the History of this land has to teach.
To recognise what unites us.
And to reaffirm a simple conviction:
there is no democracy without memory.
There is no Constitution without limits on power.
There is no freedom without institutions.
And there is no truly free Justice without independence.
May Angola and Brazil continue to cultivate, each on its own soil, institutions capable of standing the test of time.
Institutions with enough memory to know their roots.
Enough courage to face the storms.
And enough hope to open themselves to the future.
Because, after all,
a true future exists only where memory has roots.
Thank you very much.