Matola raid victims honoured
Presidents Filipe Nyusi and Jacob Zuma inaugurated a monument in tribute to SA freedom fighters killed by the apartheid regime at Matola in 1981.
|||Paul Fauvet
MAPUTO: The Mozambican and South African presidents, Filipe Nyusi and Jacob Zuma, on Friday inaugurated a monument in the southern city of Matola in tribute to the South African freedom fighters killed by the apartheid regime in a commando raid against Matola on January 30, 1981.
The raid was against three houses that were a transit centre where members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, would stay before setting off for operations inside South Africa.
The commandos killed 12 ANC members on the spot, and a 13th died later. Two others were kidnapped and taken back across the border into South Africa, where they were killed. A Portuguese electrician named Jose Ramos was also killed. It is thought the raiders mistook him for Joe Slovo, the chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Slovo had been at the Matola houses earlier in the day, but left three hours before the raid. The most senior Umkhonto commander killed in the raid was Mota “Obadi” Mokgabudi.
The centerpiece of the monument consists of three red obelisks, on which are written the names of the Matola dead. Adjacent to the monument is a multimedia information centre, containing photographs and documentation on the anti-apartheid struggle and on the solidarity between the Mozambican and South African peoples.
Addressing the ceremony, Nyusi said that in the January 1981 raid, “the apartheid regime once again showed its true cruel and inhuman face”.
The attack was “a clear affront against our territorial integrity and sovereignty, our peace and all forms of human rights”. The monument, he added, “summarises our struggle against colonial and racist regimes. It makes immortal the achievements of men and women who wrote the noblest pages in our common history through the sacrifice of their own lives”.
Nyusi also regarded the monument as a tribute to the man who was president of Mozambique at the time of the raid, Samora Machel, “who taught us that our independence would never be complete while there were other oppressed peoples in our region”.
“We defeated the apartheid regime because we were united, determined and clear about our objectives”, he continued.
“Today, united, we can also defeat divisiveness and the poverty which is our enemy number one.”
Zuma said that Nelson Mandela had pledged in 1996 that South Africa would never forget the sacrifices made in the anti-apartheid struggle.
“Today we redeem that promise,” Zuma said. “We built this monument so that we will not forget. This moment is symbolic of the triumph of the human spirit.”
Echoing Nyusi’s words, Zuma said: “We must together grapple with the strategic questions facing our peoples, such as unemployment, inequality and poverty. We must work together as we face these challenges.”
Earlier in the day, the two presidents visited Maputo’s Lhanguene cemetery, where the victims of the Matola raid are buried. Here they unveiled a large collective gravestone for the South African freedom fighters who died at Matola and in later apartheid bombings and incursions into Mozambique.
ANA