Rampholo Molefhe
3 July 2009
Book Review: Biography of Armando Guebuza, "A Passion for Land". Author: Renato Matusse. Publisher: Macmillan Mozambique Publishers, 2006. Pgs 340.
The biography, stylistically written in the genre of the anti-colonial liberation literature of the 1960s, would have been criticised for its clinical descriptiveness, lacking balance in the emotional content that western writing has trained the reader to accept as the central part of the life of any person who has been involved in public life of any sort.
I had first met Guebuza through the accolades accorded to him by members of the Southern African Students Movement who wanted to rekindle the spirit of the liberation movement in South Africa, without which no part of the region would have been truly free.
They described him as a hospitable guerrilla leader with immaculate credentials. I also had vague perceptions about the role that he might have performed next to Samora Machel, the famed leader of the guerrilla struggle against Portuguese colonialism that earned him the position of first president of the republic.
It was not his record as a FREELIMO cadre that I was searching for. I had heard enough to satisfy that part of my curiosity about his work as a soldier. Rather, it was that account of his personal experiences on the ground that I yearned to read about. I was keen to hear more about his personal relationships with the founder of FREELIMO, Eduardo Mondlane, for whom he worked as personal secretary, his comradeship with Machel and the manner in which he responded to the trials and tribulations of walking hundreds of miles to join earlier contingents who wanted a free Mozambique. Matusse was not oblivious of this expectation.
"The first difficulty was that, like many other FREELIMO leaders, Guebuza does not like to speak about himself outside of the collective context, whereas an autobiography necessarily implies the use of the first person in describing facts and processes," confesses Matusse.
He abandoned the idea of the autobiography also because Guebuza would be too busy as presidential candidate for the organisation in the 2004 election to contribute as much time as to be required to make contributions to the book project.
That should explain the major deficiency that troubles the reader in the middle section of the book, when the formalities of stating place of birth, age and family members have been done with.
There is also something grim about the quality of pictures that are so generously presented, even if they capture some of the most telling moments in the life of a great freedom fighter.
There surely must be photographs of this man with Mondlane and his family, Machel, the other freedom fighters in Tanzania - which is the only real place that the reader is told about apart from a few references to China, a little of Zimbabwe and the Soviet Union - and other places where there was action.
The book does not offer enough in that regard, perhaps for the reasons already offered above by the biographer.
For this reader, a consumer of the western literary works of the writers that American culture has trained us to revere, the book starts at Chapter IV: 'In the Armed Struggle for National Liberation".
Given the constraints that the author admits to in the early pages, he does provide useful insights into what he refers to as the 'the horrors of 1968-69' when Guebuza rose to the position of political commissar. Mondlane was killed by a letter bomb in Tanzania where he lived.
Two others - Matheus Muthemba and Paulo Kankhomba - were also murdered by gangsters, apparently agents of the Portuguese colonialists in Dar es Salaam. Lazaro Kavandame had infiltrated FREELIMO, sowing seeds of dissent and disillusionment among the cadres with the able assistance of a certain Father Mateus Gwenjere. "In an attempt to solve the crisis, at the movement's second congress in 1968, Dr. Mondlane had co-opted Uria Simango to become Deputy President of FREELIMO. His decision ran counter to the opinions of the progressive forces within the liberation movement. Later, Dr. Mondlane was quoted as saying: 'We have thousands of Simangos in Mozambique. It is necessary to win them over to the revolutionary cause'.
"Subsequent events which led to the death of the party's president revealed that Uria Simango may not have understood Dr. Mondlane's decision in the same light. On the contrary, Simango seemed intent on assuring his automatic ascension to the presidency of FREELIMO. An article in the London Economist of 10 December 1970 entitled "The left leaves Uria behind" claimed that Simango's actions reflected 'pure ambition' on his part.
"Contrary to Simango's expectations, at the third session in 1969, the FREEELIMO central committee opted for a collegial form of authority. This decision and others of a similar nature ... removed from the enemies of the freedom movement any political initiative they might have had," Matusse writes.
The book also sheds light on the wrangling between the British colonial authorities in Swaziland, a reliable route of escape from Mozambique, and the Bechuanaland Protectorate over the imminent repatriation of revolutionaries who wanted to proceed to Zambia and Dar es Salaam to pursue the cause of the liberation of their motherland.
One group among them, immediately following the contingent that had left with Guebuza, were duped into surrendering to South African intelligence, agents who in turn passed them on to their Portuguese counterparts in Mozambique, PIDE.
Matusse documents the transitional process to full independence for Mozambique, after which Guebuza would play a leading role in the transformation of the FREELIMO fighting forces into a regular conventional army, also establishing a police force of a new type; one that would be friendly to the citizens of Mozambique, not their enemy.
Matusse also highlights Guebuza's work as a diplomat who deplored the civil war that took the lives of many Mozambicans as the FREELIMO government fought to ward off the RENAMO insurgency initially sponsored by Rhodesia, and subsequently by South Africa.
His negotiating prowess earned the admiration of African statesmen like Julius Nyerere, who wanted him as part of his mediating team in the effort of the Organisation of African Unity to bring peace to Burundi.
Nyerere died, creating space for South Africa to appoint Nelson Mandela, and then Thabo Mbeki as chief mediator, although Mandela insisted that Guebuza's experience should not be allowed to pass with Nyerere's death.
Guebuza should write an autobiography that explains the relationships between the pre-independence southern African liberation movements, FREELIMO's final leaning to ZANU even though they were initially part of the Soviet sponsored 'Big Six' and the relationship of the revolution in Mozambique with the collapse of Portuguese colonialism on the continent, which also played a part in the collapse of the fascist regime in Portugal.
These books will be a crucial part of the library that will support a course at the University of Botswana and the tertiary institutions of the region, on the de-colonisation of southern Africa.
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