Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [63]
From 1964 to 1974, Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Mocambique) rebels fought against Portugal for independence, which finally came in 1975. Meanwhile, ZANLA rebels (massing against the Rhodesian government forces) had been using Frelimo camps in Mozambique as launching posts for raids into Rhodesia. The Rhodesian forces came into Mozambique in an effort to quell both Frelimo and ZANLA. To help serve this purpose, they formed Renamo (Mozambique National Resistance) —whose members eventually included disgruntled Frelimo soldiers, Portuguese who had lost their homes and land at independence, and ex-Rhodesian soldiers.
After Mozambique had gained her independence from Portugal in 1975, the Rhodesians continued to fund Renamo, which was now set on overthrowing the Marxist-Leninist government of Samora Machel. In turn, Samora Machel relied on funds and support from the Communist bloc. When Rhodesia gained independence, Renamo was kept alive by the South Africans (who objected to African National Congress camps in Mozambique) as well as by the United States during the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan’s knee-jerk anti-Communist stance appeared to come at any cost to the people whose lives were at stake on the ground.
The civil war in Mozambique finally ended in 1992, soon after the close of the Cold War. By then there had been more than a million military and civilian deaths. An estimated six million Mozambicans had been dislocated and displaced. The savagery reported from both sides was legendary in scope: rape, torture, forced murders, sex slaves—every possible abuse and insult against humankind and nature can be found in the conflict that had exploded on Mozambican soil.
It would be accurate to say that the only thing to come out of the war was some of the most profound misery to be found anywhere on earth. When the war ended, Mozambique was judged by the United Nations to be the poorest country in the world and 1993 statistics showed it, alongside Angola, having the highest infant mortality rate of any country. Land mines contributed significantly to the crippling legacy of the war.
The United Nations initially put the number of mines in postwar Mozambique at two million, but officially revised it down to one million (roughly one land mine for every eighteen people). Before the devastating floods of early 1999 and 2000 (when mines shifted as far as twenty kilometers, and fishermen were catching mines in their nets), it was reported that four people were killed every month by mines. The United Nations estimates that nine thousand Mozambicans have been killed or injured by land mines since 1980. Few maps were made of the mines laid during the civil war, but the entire country contains minefields. The highest concentration of land mines was in its westernmost province, along the Zimbabwean border, where K and I were traveling.
At one time, there was a lively if limited black market trade in signs pilfered from Mozambique that read PERIGO (danger) or HOKOYO CHIMBAMBAIRA (beware of mines), some of which had the added decoration of a skull and crossbones. It wasn’t uncommon to see these signs nailed proudly to the doors of some of the best bathrooms in South Africa. These signs replaced the more mundane WARNING: CROSSWINDS, which had been in vogue in the eighties. The result, of course, is that although a few South Africans had all the warning they needed lavatorially speaking, the poor Mozambicans were left even more clueless than they had been before about the location of the potentially fatal flotsam of their recent conflict. In the absence of signs, the locals resorted to marking known minefields or areas with unexploded ordnance (UXO, in the lingo of the war-weary) with red rocks, rocks of any description, or even branches