Mateus Pinho Gwenjere A Revolutionary Priest

By Lawe Laweki

The book “Mateus Pinho Gwenjere: A Revolutionary Priest” depicts the life story of a Catholic priest from central Mozambique who in 1967 joined the Mozambique liberation movement, FRELIMO, in Tanzania, and was abducted from Nairobi, Kenya by the FRELIMO government agents in 1975 and summarily executed. Since his life was intertwined with the Catholic Church and the struggle for independence, the book also deals with such.

The book sheds light on his religious thoughts as well as on his social and political activities. According to him, the Catholic Church in Mozambique was divided into two Churches: Mgr Gouveia’s “Salazarist Church” which defended the interests of the Portuguese colonial regime and Mgr De Resende’s “Prophetic Church” which defended the Mozambican people’s rights to self-determination. “The Church cannot only have mystical concerns. It should also be concerned with social issues ... The Portuguese missionaries are harming Christianity by failing to fulfill the mission entrusted on them by the Church”, he told his audience at the United Nations in New York in 1967.

He was involved in the struggle for independence as soon as he was ordained to priesthood, defending people’s rights, their culture, and their language; mobilizing people for civil disobedience, notably exhorting people to refuse to grow cotton and to be forcefully removed from their lands; and sending Mozambican youths to Tanzania to join FRELIMO.

The book is an appeal for the healing of wounds and for a genuine reconciliation among the Mozambican family, which necessarily entails the FRELIMO government revealing where Father Gwenjere and other nationalists, notably: Rev. Uria Simango, Paulo Gumane, Lázaro Nkavandame, Dr. Joana Simeão, and many others, were executed and buried so that their relatives can accord them a suitable burial.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawe Laweki
• Release date: Jun 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463678336

Book preview

About the Author

After his early studies at Zóbuè Seminary in Mozambique, at Instituto Moçambicano in Tanzania, and at St. Teresa’s Boys Secondary School in Nairobi, as well as at Shimo-la-Tewa High School in Mombasa, Kenya, Lawe Laweki, better known as João Baptista Truzão, went to India, where he received a BA Degree in Economics from Poona University in 1977.

Upon returning from India, he worked briefly as a secondary school teacher at Central School, after which he worked for the BBC Monitoring Service in Nairobi, Kenya, from 1977 to 1983. He then left for Mbabane in Swaziland where he worked for the American Embassy from 1983 to 1998. He is the holder of a Master’s Degree in Development Studies from the University of South Africa (UNISA). He returned to his home country, Mozambique, in 1999. In Mozambique, he has written many economic, political, and real estate articles which have appeared in Zambeze and Canal de Moçambique newspapers, as well as in Moçambique para Todos Blog.

Acknowledgements

I have been overwhelmed by the support I received from various quarters as I began to write this book on Fr Mateus Pinho Gwenjere. I am particularly indebted to three men of God: Fr Frank Nolan, who introduced me to Dr Josef Pampalk, who, in turn, introduced me to Fr Michael Lapsley.

Fr Nolan continuously encouraged me not to give up. He provided me with photographs of the Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers) based in Mozambique and read part of my manuscript, providing me with feedback. I would like to thank the Missionaries of Africa in London for forwarding my letter to Fr Nolan when I asked them to provide me with photographs of the White Fathers in Mozambique.

Through Fr Frank Nolan, I came to know Dr Josef Pampalk, who was a Missionary of Africa in central Mozambique. Dr Pampalk has been acting as my teacher and mentor, providing me with unending inspiration and constantly urging me to moderate my harsh language. Most of the photographs that have enriched this book have been provided by him.

Fr Lapsley is a South African Anglican priest who lost both hands and the sight of his left eye when the South African apartheid regime sent him a letter bomb in 1990, while he was living in Zimbabwe. I was particularly moved by his willingness to share his testimony with the Mozambican people, despite having no hands to write it. As rightly noted by Dr Pampalk, his testimony, which opens this book, provides us with ‘experiences which are relevant to us today’.

I would equally like to thank other men of God who have been supportive of my project: Fr Fernando Pérez Prieto and Sister Maria Helena Soares, who have provided their testimonies in this book, as well as Fr Fidel Salazar for his co-ordination effort to make the existence of my manuscript known to other churchmen.

My special thanks go to Dr António Disse Zengazenga based in Germany. When I asked him for authorisation to use Zóbuè Seminary photographs that appear in his book, Memórias de um Rebelde, he said ‘no’. When I told him that I was writing a book on Father Mateus Gwenjere, he paused and then asked, Who are you? I will send you all the photographs you want. Since then, it is as if we have known each other for years. We are in constant contact to exchange views.

My very great appreciation goes to Dr Eric Morier-Genoud for providing me with several documents and for his intellectual support. I would like to thank him for his willingness to give his time so generously. My thanks also go to João Cabrita, the author of Mozambique – The Tortuous Road to Democracy, for his encouragement and for providing me with a bunch of documents from his collection, as well as for his feedback after reading my manuscript.

I am greatly indebted to my two great friends, Abel Gabriel Mabunda and Marcos Fortuna Muledzera, for their encouragement and for proofreading my manuscript, and providing me with constructive criticism and valuable comments on various aspects. My thanks also go to Pita Dola from Murraça, who was very helpful in gathering indispensable information material from his home area. I am equally indebted to Fr Gwenjere’s relatives and other Murraça residents who gave me their time and stories.

My special thanks go to my family, notably to my wife, Mónica, and to my three daughters – Kelia, Tchiva and Chenice – for their encouragement, continuous support and love throughout the writing of this book.

Table of Contents

About the Author

Acknowledgement

List of Annexures

List of Abbreviations

Foreword

The Healing of Memories

Introduction

Part I Origins and Education

1. Family Tree

2. Catholic Church Along Zambezi Valley

3. Seminary Life

Part II The Catholic Church

4. Two Catholic Churches

5. Catholic Church–State Relations

6. The Missionaries of Africa

7. Father Charles Pollet

8. As a Priest at Murraça

9. The Catholic Church’s ‘Prophetic Mission’

Part III Links With Frelimo

10. Gwenjere’s Links With Frelimo

11. Arrival in Tanzania & Testimony at UN

Part IV Crises in Frelimo

12. Confronted by Reality

13. Continued Rivalries

14. Crisis at Mozambique Institute

15. Gwenjere’s Split With Mondlane

16. Tactics to Fight Dissenters

17. Frelimo: After Gwenjere

Part V Appeal for Reconciliation

18. Abduction and Detention

19. Appeal for Reconciliation

Conclusion

Bibliography

Endnotes

Annexure

List of Annexures

ANNEXURE 1: Fr Gwenjere’s Letter to Beira Bishop Mgr De Resende

ANNEXURE 2: Father Gwenjere’s Testimony at the UN General Assembly

ANNEXURE 3: Mondlane’s Address on ‘Causes of the Difficulties at M. Institute’

ANNEXURE 4: Students who Benefited from Fr Pollet’s Assistance, as for PIDE

List of Abbreviations

Foreword

The testimony of Father Michael Lapsley, which appears at the beginning of this book, provides us with his experiences, which are relevant to us today: his perceptions as a priest involved in the South African liberation movement as well as his current work as a ‘healer of memories’ in present-day South Africa and in many other countries affected by political violence and unresolved conflicts.

Fr Michael Lapsley is an Anglican priest born in New Zealand who arrived in South Africa in 1973, at the height of apartheid repression. Struck by the injustices he found in the country, he took a stand in defence of school children being detained, tortured and shot by the apartheid regime. He was expelled from South Africa during the Soweto Uprising in 1976.

Fr Lapsley went to live in Lesotho, where he became a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and its chaplain in exile. He travelled worldwide, mobilising faith communities to support the liberation struggle and oppose the apartheid regime, which was abusing the Christian faith to justify internal oppression and external destabilisation.

In 1982, after a police raid in Lesotho’s capital, Maseru, in which many people died, Fr Lapsley relocated to Zimbabwe. It was in Zimbabwe where, in 1990, three months after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, the Civil Co-operation Bureau, a covert unit of the apartheid security forces, sent him a letter bomb hidden inside two religious magazines. He was badly injured in the blast, losing both hands and the sight of his left eye.

He fought his way back to life and, after a long medical treatment, he went to Cape Town in support of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). His work led to the establishment of the Institute for Healing of Memories (IHOM) in 1998.

The IHOM has allowed many South Africans to tell their stories and to work through their trauma. It has been running workshops worldwide in regions affected by unresolved conflicts. Since the scars of the past continue to shape the attitudes of people, his work remains important not only in South Africa, but also in many other conflict-ridden countries.

Nelson Mandela wrote the following about Fr Michael Lapsley: We read about a foreigner who came to our country and was transformed by what he saw of the injustices of apartheid. His life is part of the tapestry of many long journeys and struggles of our people.

Josef Pampalk

Vienna, Austria

The Healing of Memories

Testimony of Fr Michael Lapsley SSM

The day I arrived in South Africa, I stopped being a human being. I became a white man. Every single aspect of my life was decided by the colour of my skin, not by my common humanity… the toilet I could use, the restaurant I could enter, the suburb I could live in, the university where I could study and… and… and…

For me, joining the liberation struggle was about wanting to recover my humanity in solidarity with black people fighting for their basic human rights. I also realised that the individual prophet would not end apartheid and did not threaten the survival of the regime. What did threaten the regime was the disciplined action of the many acting in concert to bring about the end of apartheid.

I would also distinguish between the choices of a priest to join a national liberation movement as opposed to a political party. Furthermore, in the South African context, the struggle was also a theological struggle, because the apartheid state justified itself theologically. Even in the last white constitution, it claimed divine guidance. I also concluded that the ANC’s goals of a non-racial, non-sexist democratic society were consistent with gospel values.

My stumbling block was that I was a committed pacifist. It was the killing of school children in 1976 by the police that caused my pacifism to fall apart. I became convinced that, in our context and with our history, the armed struggle had become morally legitimate and justifiable.

I regarded the apartheid regime as morally illegitimate and the ANC as morally legitimate representatives of the people of South Africa. By becoming a member of the ANC, I understood that I was taking citizenship in the South Africa for which we were still struggling. In September 1976, I was expelled from South Africa and went to live in Lesotho. It was there that I joined the ANC and was one of its members and a chaplain in the liberation movement for the following 16 years.

For several years before that, I had armed guards at my house as a consequence of being on a South African Government hit list. Although at times I experienced fear, my prayer for myself was that my actions would be determined by my deepest beliefs and convictions rather than my fear.

When the letter bomb exploded, I knew instantly that the apartheid regime had got me. I also had a sense that God was with me. The letter bomb sent to me was supposed to kill me, but I was alive. They had lost and I had won… the rest of my life has been about appropriating that victory.

Through the prayers and love of people around the world, I realised that, if I was full of hatred and bitterness and desire for revenge, I would be a victim forever. They would have failed to kill the body, but they would have killed the soul. However, losing your hands is like losing a loved one. Although I am not consumed by it, grief is a permanent part of my life.

In our institute, we focus on the psychological, emotional and spiritual effects of the past. However, this has to be seen as complementary to the political, social and economic. As a nation, we face giant challenges of poverty, unemployment, inequality and corruption. On top of that, we are the most unequal society on Earth in terms of wealth distribution. In such a context, we cannot be at peace with ourselves.

There is also a great deal of evidence that suggests that we are still a traumatised nation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave us a giant head start for what needs to be an intergenerational journey of national healing. Once the commission was over, we did not sufficiently take on the work of truth and reconciliation… something that is the responsibility of every citizen and every sector of society.

I think there is a renewed consciousness in the nation that indeed we are a damaged and wounded people. This recognition creates new possibilities for healing. President Ramaphosa has articulated very clearly the ‘woundedness’ of the nation, which helps to place the healing of the nation back on the national agenda.

For any country to heal, it firstly has to begin by admitting that it is wounded. The question we all need to ask in every context is how the past of the nation has affected and infected us. The temptation is to seek to bury and to forget the past, which has never worked, ever, anywhere in the world. The evidence is that the unhealed wounds of the past come back to bite us, whether as individuals, communities or nations. We need to remember the past without being its prisoner.

People often ask in different parts of the world if they should have a truth and reconciliation commission. The bigger question that we need to ask is how we deal with the past. It is desirable that, as far as possible, there is acknowledgement and apology wherever the moral order has been transgressed.

However, also as far as humanly possible, the whole nation needs to have a comprehensive picture of exactly what did happen in the past, particularly what was done secretly. Discoveries about what really happened often continue across generations and change how people view what happened and one another.

Whilst there can be no moral equivalence between colonialism and those who fought against it, that does not mean that the liberators did not transgress the moral order even as they fought for freedom. And, of course, there have been new wounds created since independence, which are in need of healing.

When it comes to dealing with the past, it is important that we are able to address not just the political, social and economic, but also the psychological, emotional and spiritual dimensions of the nation and of individuals.

So often the poison lies not in what we think about the past, but in what we feel about the past. For this reason, it is important that people are able to express themselves emotionally and travel a journey of detoxification.

Healing a nation from a past of war and conflict is intergenerational. We have to ask ourselves what we can do in our generation. In post-conflict societies, there is often an escalation of gender-based, sexual and domestic violence. It is important for us to see the connection between what has happened in public space and what happens in private space.

Healing of memories is also about breaking the chain that turns victims into victimisers. As we look into the mirror as nations and individuals, we can confront ourselves and begin journeys of healing.

Figure 1: Fr Michael Lapsley in Vienna, Austria, in 2015 – signing his book, Redeeming the Past. Source: Dr Josef Pampalk.

Institute for Healing of Memories

Director Father Michael Lapsley SSM

5 Eastry Rd

Claremont, 7708

Cape Town

South Africa

Tel: [phone]

Cell: [phone] or [phone] (USA)

Website: www.healing-memories.org

Introduction

During Mozambique’s struggle for national independence, nationalist freedom fighters wasted a lot of energy fighting each other rather than fighting the Portuguese colonial regime. Within a year of independence, Mozambique was plagued by a long and violent civil war, bringing untold suffering to the Mozambican people.

The real causes of these conflicts need to be known to prevent them from recurring in the future. This book presents the life story of Father Mateus Pinho Gwenjere. Since his life was intertwined with the Catholic Church and the struggle for national independence, the book equally deals with these. My main purpose in writing it is to appeal for the healing of wounds and for a genuine reconciliation among the Mozambican family in order to guarantee lasting peace and stability in Mozambique.

Much has been written about Father Mateus Gwenjere. However, very few people are aware of his activities at Murraça Mission, as a FRELIMO militant in Tanzania, as well as of his activities after leaving FRELIMO. The official FRELIMO government version prevails in almost all the books written by academics and historians. Whenever his name is mentioned, it is always in the context of FRELIMO’s accusations that he was a racist, an agent of the Portuguese security service (the PIDE), and responsible for the 1968 crisis at the Mozambique Institute in Tanzania. None of these accusations are true, as will be demonstrated in this book.

Having known Father Gwenjere well since his ordination in 1964 and counting myself among Mozambicans who witnessed important events in the history of the FRELIMO movement, I take the initiative to recount his life story and the events that took place in the FRELIMO movement until the 1970s.

I first met Father Mateus Gwenjere in September 1964 when, together with other seminarians, I was returning to the Minor Seminary of Zóbuè, in Tete Province, after end-of-academic-year holidays in my home area, Manga, on the outskirts of the City of Beira.

The train we boarded stopped at Mutarara Railway Station for longer than the normal period. Suddenly, a black man dressed in a black cassock entered our train compartment. It was the first time I was seeing a black priest – Father Mateus Pinho Gwenjere from Murraça Catholic Mission. The priest was moving from one compartment to another looking for something he had lost. It was not long before the two boys who had stolen his briefcase were caught.

The punishment they received from the black priest seemed very strange indeed: the priest ordered that the thick, kinky hair of the two young thieves be shaved off. Meanwhile, on his orders, the train waited as the sentence was being carried out beneath a tree, amid laughter and applause from the seminarians who were returning to Zóbuè Seminary.

We learnt later that day that, like us, the black priest’s destination was Zóbué Seminary. Having arrived at the seminary, we were surprised by the presence of two other black priests – Manuel Mucauro from Beira diocese and Domingos Ferrão from Tete diocese.

The following day during Mass, the newly ordained black priests were introduced to us by Seminary Rector Father Theodor Prein, who constantly referred to them as ‘my children’. With good reason, the three were his first seminarians from Zóbuè to be ordained priests in 1964. Their visit was aimed at encouraging us, young seminarians, to continue to embrace religious life.

After Mass, while waiting for breakfast outside the chapel, each one of the three priests was surrounded by seminarians coming from their areas of origin, seeking to understand the difficulties they had gone through before they became priests. Belonging to São Benedito de Manga Mission, I joined the group of Father Manuel Mucauro. However, the laughter that was coming from the group that surrounded Father Gwenjere caused me and other colleagues to leave and join that group.

A white priest, one of our teachers at the seminary, also joined Gwenjere’s group to understand the reason for so much laughter. Addressing the newly arrived priest who stood close to him, Gwenjere said, You are too close, man! You are going to poke me with your long nose! There was much laughter to that. The priest had a sharp sense of humour and was endowed with a rare gift of storytelling.

Our paths would cross again four years later at the Mozambique Institute in Dar es Salaam, where I was a student in 1968. Father Gwenjere arrived in the Tanzanian capital in September 1967, having fled from Central Mozambique due to his ‘anti-Portuguese’ activities. I arrived in that city at the beginning of 1968 to pursue further studies at the Mozambique Institute, after a military training period at FRELIMO’s Nachingwea Military Training Camp in Southern Tanzania. At Nachingwea Military Training Camp, I belonged to the ‘Second Special Mbeya Company’, a big group of seminarians who had fled from Zóbuè Minor Seminary in 1967 to join the FRELIMO liberation movement in protest over the expulsion of the Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers) teaching there.

At the Mozambique Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, students, particularly former Zóbuè seminarians, on many occasions would surround Father Gwenjere to listen to what he had to say, whenever he went there after classes. The priest would never stop talking, to the astonishment and amusement of all those who listened to him. At times, some members of the institute’s management also joined the group to listen to him. Doubting their good intention, the priest would not miss the opportunity to philosophise and to speak in parables. Convinced that his intention was to embarrass them before the students, they always ended up withdrawing from the group.

Father Gwenjere, who had unrealistically great expectations about the FRELIMO liberation movement, was confronted with reality soon after his arrival in Tanzania. The priest, who wasn’t acquainted with the history of internal conflicts and power struggles within FRELIMO, joined the movement at a time when it was in turmoil following the murder of FRELIMO Secretary of Defence and Security Filipe Samuel Magaia by one of his military officers on 10 October 1966.¹

The problems that arose in the aftermath of Magaia’s murder made the priest question some FRELIMO policies. These included the ill-treatment and summary executions of freedom fighters loyal to the slain military leader; the prioritisation of the policy of ‘protracted war’;² the concentration of political and military power around the group of ‘Southerners’;³ the appointment of white Mozambicans of Portuguese origin as teachers at the Mozambique Institute; and the movement’s failure to convene any congress to resolve its serious internal problems. FRELIMO’s second congress, which, according to statutes, was scheduled to be held in 1965, was only held in July 1968 at Father Gwenjere’s insistence.

With Gwenjere’s bold stand, at a period when FRELIMO militants feared the movement’s military leadership, which often resorted to the force of arms to resolve internal differences, the priest began to win respect and support from various quarters, notably from members of the Council of Elders (Baraza-la-Wazee),⁴ from Mozambique Institute students, from disaffected elements in the movement, and from Tanzanian