“We must do and reinvent the unthinkable to restore peace” – Graça Machel

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“We must do and reinvent the unthinkable to restore peace” – Graça Machel

1:37 CAT | 15 Sep 2016

epa04817959 Activist Graca Machel, widow of Nelson Mandela, delivers a speech in Girona, northeastern Spain, 25 June 2015. Machel demmanded a higher number of women in high-ranking positions. Machel will attend the Princess of Girona Foundation's awarding ceremony later today. EPA/ROBIN TOWNSEND

Magazine Independente / Graça Machel

Mozambican social activist and politician Graca Machel yesterday called on the country’s leadership of to take “courageous” and bold steps to bring about peace and stability.

Machel, speaking during a lecture on the “Life, Thought and Work of Samora Machel” for students of the Higher Institute of International Relations, called for the country to “do the unthinkable” to create solutions to the current military hostilities.

“When it comes to protecting national sovereignty and the citizen, courage to act and to do what at first glance may seem unthinkable to restore peace is necessary,” she said.

Machel went back in time to the Inkomati Accords, signed in 1984 between the Mozambican government and the apartheid regime, which although controversial at the time, was crucial for the defence of national sovereignty.

“At one point it was unthinkable to negotiate with apartheid, but we negotiated. Here we also need to reinvent the unthinkable in order to restore peace, but a lasting peace,” Machel urged.

Machel challenged the youth in particular and the country in general to reflect on the real causes of the prevailing conflicts, since, she said, the causes of the “war of 16 years” had already been addressed.

“Negotiations began in 1984; we are now in 2016. We must ask ourselves, sincerely, what is behind [the conflict] and what we as Mozambicans have to do to reconcile ourselves as a Mozambican family, because now Rhodesia has gone, apartheid has gone, but the conflict continues,” she said.

According to Machel, for the country to be reconciled again, a serious and more inclusive dialogue was necessary.

“You have to depolarize this conflict. We need Mozambicans to find a space where everyone, absolutely everyone, can sit and look each other in the eye to identify what makes us equal today. We must work on that basis, expanding the sense of identity among Mozambicans and together eliminating what sets us apart,” she urged.

The lecture took place yesterday as part of the 30th anniversary of the death of Mozambique’s first independent president and brought together students, researchers and academics to discuss interventions required to address the absence of peace and stability in the country.

Source: O País