Lurdes António, 68, didn’t have access to formal education in her childhood, like most women in rural Mozambique at that time. She was recruited to the Minga base of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) in 1982, at the age of 26. She underwent military training in Mandie, in the district of Guro, in the province of Manica.
At the height of the civil war, she spent time at five military bases belonging to the guerrillas, producing food in the civilian and military fields and cooking for the company, where she later met her husband, also a former guerrilla.
“My job was to carry the soldiers’ luggage and cook for them on their missions. If they told us we were going somewhere, we just carried their luggage and went on, and once the programme was over – whether it was reconnaissance or an attack – we returned. Then they’d send us home and we’d be called up when there was a new programme,” she says.
Drought and severe famine hit Mozambique at the end of the 1980s, and “terrible suffering” shook her company when she and her husband decided to abandon the war and travel to settle in Nhamadjiua, in the administrative post of Nhampassa, in the district of Barué, Manica province, where they were later demobilised with the end of the war in 1992.
“In 2012 we once again answered ‘the call of the revolution’, summoned by the historic leader Afonso Dhlakama,” who had already been denouncing serious flaws in the implementation of the Rome General Peace Agreement (GPA).
Lurdes António was demobilised again with her husband in 2021, as part of the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process of the former Renamo guerrillas in Barué.
Since then she has dedicated herself to farming and has learned new agricultural techniques introduced with the DELPAZ Programme, which is ensuring the economic and social reintegration of all ex-combatants, their families and rural communities affected by the conflict in order to achieve lasting peace in Mozambique.
“DELPAZ has come and is teaching us. We used to grow crops in a rudimentary way, with traditional seeds, and we had a lot of losses, but now we’re using improved agricultural techniques, we use lines for the pits when sowing, and we already have income to educate our children,” she explains, thrilled with her new achievements.