Homoine (Mozambique), 9 Oct (AIM) – Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party has promised to erect a monument to the memory of the over 400 people murdered by the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels in 1987 in the town of Homoine, in the southern province of Inhambane, in the worst massacre of the war of destabilisation.
The spokesperson of the Homoine Frelimo District Committee, Admiro Savanguane, said the monument would “make the victims of the massacre live for ever”.
The Renamo attack took place on 18 July. According to eye-witnesses, a heavily armed unit stormed into the town killing everyone they could find. Some were heard to shout “We’ve come to finish off the people of Samora Machel”.
The total death toll came to 424. Renamo did not dispute that a massacre had occurred – but it tried to thrust the blame onto the Zimbabwean troops who were supporting the Mozambican armed forces. But the Zimbabweans had never operated in Inhambane province, and surviving Homoine residents had no doubt that the attackers were “Matsangas” (the nickname for Renamo fighters, derived from the name of the first Renamo commander, Andre Matsangaissa).
AIM interviewed an American Mennonite missionary and agronomist, Mark van Koevering, who later became a bishop in the American Episcopal Church. At the time, he was in Homoine working for the Mozambique Christian Council on a seed multiplication project.
He had no doubt who was responsible. ”This is not a civil war”, he said. “These people are not fighting for any ideal. They’re fighting to create terror”. The claim by right-wing Republican senators in the US that Renamo “is a democratic movement to liberate the people of Mozambique is complete foolishness”, added van Koevering.
Survivors still recall the terror they experienced on 18 July 1987. Hussen Algy said “more than 30 years is not enough for me to wipe away what I saw on that day of massacre”. He lost his girlfriend and other members of his family, and only survived because he hid in a bathroom.
Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the massacre, was that the raiders killed all the patients they found in the local hospital. AIM photographer Sergio Santimano, one of the first journalists to arrive at Homoine after the massacre, recalled that the death toll at the hospital stood at 80.
(AIM)
Jsa/pf (389)
