Gorongosa, Mozambique, June 29 (AFP/APP): As Mozambique battles a brutal insurgency, the legacy of a decades-long civil war still haunts the African nation where many former rebels refuse to disarm.
“It’s hard to live alone, with nothing, living without family nearby,” said Aurelio Capece Mudiua, who demobilised in 2020 after nearly four decades hiding around the Gorongosa mountains.
“Some of us had children, and they (the fighters) died here without getting to see them,” he said. “I want to tell the others, who are still in the mountains, come join us.”
This area of central Mozambique was a bastion of RENAMO, the rebel movement that battled the government for decades.
Burned-out carcasses of pickups, already overgrown with tall grass, still dot the landscape, vestiges of another time.
Most of the current violence is about 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) to the north. When the took up arms in 2017, RENAMO was still at war with the government, led by the rival FRELIMO party.
Most of the RENAMO rebels are now too old to take up arms, with an average age of 55. But they face an uncertain future in one of the poorest countries in the world.
When Mozambique won independence in 1975, after a decade of fighting colonial master Portugal, the country was plunged into a civil war that served as a Cold War proxy battle.
The United States, apartheid South Africa, and white-ruled Rhodesia supported RENAMO, while the Soviets backed FRELIMO.
The war claimed a million lives, decimated the economy and left the nation littered with landmines.
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