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The Conflict with Renamo, 1976-1992
«December 1988»
Dossier MZ-0020
106. MNR's Lisbon Spokesperson Chanjunja Chivaca João Surrenders to the Government
Above: Chanjunja Chivaca João was an MNR/Renamo spokesperson in Lisbon, and surrendered to the authorities in Maputo in a blaze of publicity in late 1988.
In an interview with the weekly Domingo, a long-serving FPLM soldier Bernardo Cadeado testified that he had been present during four days of intense fighting in Gorongosa in 1979, when the MNR leader Andre Matsangaíssa had been killed by the shrapnel from a mortar bomb ("uma mina de morteiro estilhaçou-o"). Matsangaíssa's body was removed by helicopter, presumably Rhodesian, according to Cadeado.
At a press conference in Maputo, Chanjunja Chivaca João, who had turned himself in under the terms of the amnesty law, claimed that he had been about to be appointed chief information officer within Renamo. The movement had been caught flat-footed by a meeting between President Joaquim Chissano and the South African State President, F. W. de Klerk, in September, which was regarded by Renamo as a "stab in the back". João also described factionalism among the group's members in Portugal, with Ivete Fernandes, the widow of Evo Fernandes, killed earlier in the year, running a "parallel office" out of her home in Cascais, a suburb of Lisbon.
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 December 1988.
