by Bayano Valy – SANF 04 no 84
Southern Africa can remain conflict-free if the youth who become future leaders learn from the experiences of the recent past and draw inspiration from the scars left on the memories of the current generation of leaders.
President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique chose a solemn occasion to make this eloquent appeal to the younger generation, and to urge them to respond positively to future peacekeeping challenges on the continent.
The occasion was the ceremony for repatriation of fallen Tanzanian soldiers who died in the conflict in Mozambique in the 1970s and 1980s, fighting side-by-side with their allies against apartheid South Africa.
Speaking at the Heroes Acre in the central city of Quelimane in Zambezia province, Chissano said it was a noble occasion to recognise some of the best sons of Africa, and he called on the youth to seek inspiration in the fallen soldiers in order to respond to peacekeeping challenges and avoid future conflicts.
He appealed to the younger generation in southern Africa to remember the scars left on their parents and grandparents by conflicts that ended only a decade ago.
In the late 1970s, Tanzania sent troops to help Mozambique fight against the aggression from neighbouring Rhodesia. More troops followed in 1987, when the apartheid regime in South Africa backed rebels operating from Malawi to overrun much of Zambezia province
All Tanzanian military units returned home in 1988. However, 99 soldiers who died during the war were buried on Mozambican soil.
The conflict in Mozambique ended in 1992 with the signing of the Rome Peace Accord between the government and the then-rebel movement, the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo), and the first democratic elections were held in South Africa in 1994.
The fallen Tanzanian soldiers had been buried in four Mozambican provinces, mostly in the centre of the country. After exhumation, the bodies were taken to Quelimane, the capital of Zambezia province where 60 Tanzanians had died. Twenty-one died in Tete province, 15 in Manica and three in Gaza.
The remains of the Tanzanian soldiers killed during the 1970s and 1980s conflict with apartheid were then flown home after almost two decades in Mozambique.
Thousands of people attended the ceremony at Quelimane’s Heroes’ Acre to honour the soldiers. The large gathering bore testimony to the solidarity that existed between the Tanzanian soldiers and the local population.
The soldiers came at a time when the population could hardly grow crops because of the raging war, so they distributed food rations, clothing and money to impoverished families. Most of these supplies were donated from small contributions by Tanzanians at home, in a people-to-people campaign.
Residents of Zambezia who were children at the time recall that the soldiers – known by the Kiswahili greeting word, Jambo – would assemble the children and distribute cookies and sweets to them. However, some adults would jump the queue, to which the soldiers would say in Kiswahili mixed with the local language: “Wewe Kumbwe. Mimi dá inthotho!” (You’re an adult. I only give to children!)
The current Tanzanian Minister for Local Administration and Social Affairs, Hassan Nguilizi, who was commanding officer of the troops deployed in Mozambique, said the act of repatriating the remains would cement the cooperation and friendship between the two countries.
The ceremony was attended by high-ranking military officers from Mozambique and Tanzania, and dignitaries from Malawi and Zimbabwe.
Chissano said that “the transfer of the remains of these heroes from Mozambique to Tanzania is just a transfer from one place to another, within the same home and same family because their memory will be preserved eternally by the Mozambican people.”
Julius Nyerere’s government in The United Republic of Tanzania had previously displayed the same sense of regional solidarity back in the 1960s, by providing rear bases in the war against Portuguese colonial rule when Mozambicans joined together to form the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo).
Other military cooperation between the two countries occurred when a contingent of Mozambican troops and artillery fought alongside Tanzanian troops in Uganda in 1979 following the invasion of Tanzania by the military regime of Idi Amin, resulting in his defeat and he fled into exile in Saudi Arabia.
Chissano was among the Frelimo leaders based in Tanzania in the 1960s who fought for the liberation of Mozambique, and he later served as interim prime minister during the 1974 transition to independence. He became president in 1986 after the first President, Samora Machel, died in a plane crash widely believed to have been caused by the apartheid regime. Chissano is retiring from government and is not a candidate in national elections later this year.
Bidding farewell to his colleagues in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) at their Summit of Heads of State and Government in Mauritius in mid-August, Chissano recalled that several member states had been victims of apartheid’s wars of destabilisation. This led to massive economic destruction and loss of life, leaving deep scars on the memories of a generation.
It is because of this tragic past that SADC has placed the issue of peace and security at the top of its agenda, within the framework of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation.
“We are sure that, through this forum, we are collectively on the right road towards a SADC free of conflicts, one of the conditions sine qua non for us to focus our efforts and resources on the struggle against poverty,” Chissano said. (SARDC)
