“Mozambique needs to eliminate ‘hate walls’”

On Thursday 27 October, social activist and former first lady of Mozambique, Graça Machel, argued that Mozambique needs to eliminate the “hate walls” in society, warning that political intolerance has already begun to enter the villages and it is “extremely dangerous”.

“This conflict, the way it is being unleashed, especially in recent times, when you kill a secretary of the neighbourhood, it is no longer only on a political level, is already entering the village and this is extremely dangerous”, said Machel.Stressing the need for the country to start paving the way for reconciliation as a way to end the political and military crisis, Machel said that Mozambicans need learn to live with differences.

“When we disagree, we shall say so, but we will not kill each other”, said the first minister of Education in Mozambique after independence, adding that to overcome the political crisis, the country will need to do the impossible.

“We have to look at each other with the same sense of common belonging and destiny”, said Machel, reiterating the need to immediately stop military confrontations, which have already killed an unknown number of people.For Machel, Mozambique needs to reinvent its own social models, respecting the dynamics and demands of new times, in a climate of tolerance and transparency to ensure the future of Mozambicans.On the subject of the current economic challenges facing the country, Machel said that the issue of hidden debt,contracted between 2013 and 2014, reached “alarming proportions”, calling attention to the fact that the political leaders in Mozambique are becoming increasingly distanced from the people. “From a certain point, we tolerate this way of doing things [corruption] and accepted this way of life as normal”, lamented the Mozambican activist, adding that under these conditions, it will take the country more than 50 years to emerge from poverty.