Uria Simango - Mozambique's Lost Opposition

Mozambique's Lost Opposition

The exact circumstances and motivation for the wholesale liquidation of the PCN in the late 1970s and early 1980s has never been officially investigated by the post-1994 Mozambican authorities.

The Rev. Simango had no connection with RENAMO having been imprisoned before its formation. It is also doubtful, given his pacifist leanings that he would have supported the abuses of civilians during that very brutal insurrection. He may nevertheless have been perceived by FRELIMO as a dangerous rallying point. This view is espoused by Rothwell in 2004

"Dos Santos, a man loathed by Mondlane became vice-president. Simango was later captured, interned and then secretly executed in October 1979, an execution ordered by FRELIMO to prevent him being used as a figurehead by the then emergent rebel movement RENAMO. For many years the Frelimo government did not acknowledge the extrajudicial killing of its former members and even led his relatives to believe that he was still alive".

Brief comments on the executions, in the context of human rights violation in this period in Mozambique, appear also in Maier 1992 . President Samora Machel died in 1986. Few members of the 1975-1986 regime have commented publicly on the death of Simango; one notable exception is the hardliner vice-President Marcelino dos Santos who has spoken quite forthrightly; in a TV interview in 2005 he explained why the executions were kept secret

" Because one must see that at that moment, and naturally, while we ourselves felt the validity of revolutionary justice, the one built and fertilised by the armed struggle of national liberation, there existed, nonetheless, the fact that one had already formed a state, albeit one where FRELIMO was the fundamental power. So it was that, perhaps, which led us, knowing precisely that many people would not be able to comprehend things well, to prefer to keep silent. But let me say clearly that we do not regret these acts because we acted with revolutionary violence against traitors and traitors against the Mozambican people".

As there was no judicial process, it remains unclear what prompted the charge of treason. On his return to Mozambique in 1974, according to his biographer Ncomo, as leader of the PCN, Simango held tentative talks with white settler parties, in a bid to garner strategic support against one-party rule. This pressaged a settlement like that negotiated five-years later in the Lancaster House Agreement for multi-party elections in Zimbabwe but, in 1974, it was viewed as treasonous by Frelimo hardliners. Joana Simeao and Lazaro Kavandame, two of the executed political prisoners, had fled and surrendered to the Portuguese colonial authorities before 1974 (the latter in fear of his life). But not Simango, Gumane or Gwengere who had simply moved to the rival Liberation movement COREMO. The strategic reason for executing Celina Simango, not a prominent political figure, years later in 1982, is even less clear. What the executed leaders had in common was membership of the 1974 opposition party (PCN) and the attempt to challenge FRELIMO hegemony and one-party rule through multiparty elections.

In 2006, Joana Simeao's husband, wishing to remarry after 30 years but unable to prove his status as a widower, sued her for desertion. Joana Simeao was defended against the charge of marital desertion by a government tribunal as there is still no official acknowledgment of her death or of Simango's.