Maputo — Migueis Lopes Junior, one of Mozambique's most controversial journalists, who died of a heart attack on Friday, was laid to rest in Maputo's Lhanguene cemetery on Monday.

Migueis, director of the pro-Renamo newsheet "Imparcial", died on his way to hospital on Friday afternoon, after he had collapsed at home. Migueis was born Teodorico Luis da Mota Lopes (a full name he rarely used in adult life) on 31 March 1945 in the Portuguese town of Valenca. While he was still a child his family emigrated to Mozambique, then still firmly under Portuguese rule.

As from the late 1960s, Migueis was an anti-fascist activist, involved in student radicalism in what was then the University of Lourenco Marques.

His brother, Jose Mota Lopes, was one of a group of left- wing journalists who, in 1970, founded the weekly magazine "Tempo", the nearest thing to an opposition media that could be published in colonial Mozambique. Migueis was taken onto the staff of "Tempo" as from the first issue, and it was here that he first fought against colonial censorship.

Like several other young journalists of European origin, he identified himself as Mozambican, rather than Portuguese, and supported the liberation movement, Frelimo, in its drive for full independence. In the mid-1970s, he was an enthusiastic supporter of the country's first president, Samora Machel, but was critical of Frelimo from the left. Like other intellectuals whose marxism was less than orthodox, he was labelled an "ultra-leftist".

It was an article by Migueis that precipitated a crisis in "Tempo" in 1979. He wrote a piece on a meeting in Maputo of the Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement which depicted the movement accurately, as full of contradictions, and as containing a right as well as a left. This contradicted the official mythology of a united movement: the Frelimo ideology department stepped in, and ordered the withdrawal of that issue of "Tempo" from the street.

The then director of "Tempo", Alves Gomes, was sacked, and Migueis was transferred to the daily paper "Noticias". Among his most outstanding work on "Noticias" was a series of articles on the Western Sahara: he was one of the few journalists taken to the war zones by the Polisario Front, at a time when Polisario was on the offensive and could even strike into southern Morocco.

His talent ensured that Migueis became the paper's chief news editor. But there was constant political interference in the paper, which became worse as the military situation deteriorated.

Frelimo made the fatal mistake of not trusting experienced journalists who should have been its best allies in the media.

In Migueis's case this led to disillusion and exile. He left Mozambique in 1984, and worked for the next nine years in Portugal. Here his politics underwent a dramatic change: he abandoned marxism and became a supporter of Renamo.

When he returned to Mozambique in 1993, he founded "Imparcial", a daily newsheet distributed by fax, which has consistently taken editorial positions hostile to Frelimo, and favourable to Renamo.

Despite his sharp ideological differences with Migueis, Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi sent a message of condolences to his family, expressing shock and sorrow at his death. He described Migueis as a "dedicated professional who stimulated the development of journalism in Mozambique ".