Mozambican president commends Archbishop Emeritus Jaime Gonçalves for his peacemaking role

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Mozambican president commends Archbishop Emeritus Jaime Gonçalves for his peacemaking role

12:32 CAT | 08 Apr 2016

In File Club of Mozambique / Filipe Nyusi

President Filipe Nyusi has expressed his sorrow at the passing on Wednesday of the retired archbishop of Beira and Catholic mediator of the General Peace Agreement in Mozambique, Jaime Gonçalves.

Speaking without notes at a Human Rights Commission swearing-in ceremony, the Mozambican head of state said that “the country has lost a compatriot who did more than anyone for peace”.

Mozambique, said Filipe Nyusi, will always be based on the values defended by Jaime Gonçalves: peace, harmony, tolerance and national reconciliation.

Jaime Gonçalves was the Catholic mediator of the General Peace Agreement signed on October 4, 1992, in Rome, which ended 16 years of civil war between the Frelimo (Liberation Front of Mozambique) government and Renamo (Mozambique National Resistance).

In his last interview, published by Lusa on February 18, Gonçalves argued that the Rome accords were still the solution to the country’s conflicts and should be revisited at a time when Mozambique is experiencing a new political and military crisis.

“The General Peace Agreement remains the most current document with bearing and is still the light to the solution of conflicts in Mozambique,” argued the author of “The Peace of Mozambicans”.

Renamo does not recognize the results of the October 2014 elections won by Frelimo, and threatens to assume by force the government of six provinces where claims election victory. Renamo has demanded mediation by South Africa, the European Union and the Catholic church as a precondition of resumed talks.

In his Lusa interview, the retired Beira archbishop said that people expect renewed dialogue but were also asking “Where are those who have made the reconciliation?” noting that the Rome agreements “were the work of the Catholic church”.

For Gonçalves, recent events in Mozambique made it clear that “the peace agreement is not being implemented by Frelimo”, arguing that the party’s hardliners were refusing to integrate Renamo’s remaining men under arms, and that there was in fact a plan to kill the Renamo leader.

“For me it was a terrible humiliation when the president [Filipe Nyusi], the highest magistrate of the land, went to Angola to learn how they killed Savimbi,” he said.

Looking back to Rome, the peace agreement mediator attributed to former US president George Bush a decisive role in persuading the Mozambican government to accept direct dialogue with the opposition in 1992. “It was Bush who had that power,” he said.

It fell to Vice-chancellor of the Catholic University, Rafael Sapato, to announce that Jaime Gonçalves, died aged 79 in the early hours of Wednesday morning. He had been suffering from kidney disease, but was not receiving dialysis treatment.

His funeral is scheduled for Saturday.

Source: Lusa