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The Conflict with Renamo, 1976-1992
«July 1985»
Dossier MZ-0020
65. Chissano Predicts Victory by the New Year;
66 killed in Two Ambushes in Manhiça
Above : Women, especially rural women, endured all kinds of abuse during the years of the conflict, losing limbs from landmines, suffering deliberate mutilation, being the victims of sexual violence, and often going hungry. Together with their children, they died in ambushes, starved to death or were trafficked to be the "wives" of Renamo chieftains. This woman, Elisa Tembe, was lucky to survive; she was wounded in an ambush in Matutuíne in early 1989, and was treated in the Hospital Central in Maputo.
In two ambushes on the main north-south highway (Estrada Nacional Nº 1) at the end of June, the MNR killed a total of 66 travellers. The attacks took place at Pateque, in Manhiça district.
Two more Portuguese citizens were arrested in Beira on suspicion of passport fraud, in a series of detentions in recent months for a variety of offences, including counterfeiting, organised robbry, and the practice of candonga or black-market trading, this last considered a serious security crime.
In a BBC radio interview on 25 July, Foreign Minister Joaquim Chissano predicted that the government would win the war by year's end, commenting in response to a question that the MNR was able to move around Mozambique in "exactly the same way" that terrorists operated in Britain or in Italy.
Click on the yellow folder image below to download an unsorted zipped archive of documents and press clippings in PDF format concerning the conflict between the Mozambican government and the MNR/Renamo in July 1985.
