Another journalist says she had resigned to fate
Silence Charumbira
Radio Mozambique reporter, Charles Mangwiro kept thinking he would be next to be tortured by the police as he heard screams of other victims at an undisclosed base after being arrested in the protest ridden Maputo Thursday.
Mangwiro, who turns 50 on Saturday, said he thought he was going to die. He kept thinking he would face the same fate of fellow Mozambican journalist Ibrahim Mbaruco, who was “arrested” in the northern province of Cabo Delgado on 7 July 2020 never to be seen again.
As a local, Mangwiro probably faced more danger than his visitors from South Africa, Bongani Siziba and camera person, Sbonelo Mkhasibe.
“A journalist is an enemy for the police in Mozambique and that I was with foreign journalists meant I was helping ‘spies’ who are tarnishing the name of the country outside the borders,” Mangwiro told Africa News 24 on Friday evening.
Amid all the trauma, Mangwiro defiantly finds humour.
“I had ducked bullets before, and I had even been teargassed but, I had never been arrested. I guess this is the full circle for my journalism career as I turn 50 tomorrow (Saturday),” he said dryly.
“I had heard these stories from others and would see other journalists being harassed or arrested and this time I was in the same situation. I could hear in a room close to where we were sitting people crying and screaming while they were being tortured. In my head, I kept thinking I would be next. I also kept replaying in my mind that I would just disappear in the same fashion that Mbaruco disappeared in 2020. I kept counting down to my death.
“We were treated like hardcore criminals and the anti-riot police officers who detained us were armed to the teeth with heavy guns like they were handling war criminals.”
His crime, associating with foreign journalists.
“They wanted us to confess that we were spies and they kept telling us if we were not going to speak willingly, they would make us speak.”
Siziba was certain she would die.
She had travelled with Mkhasibe on duty for the Lagos headquartered News Central TV Thursday morning. As they landed in Maputo, they decided to drive to an accreditation office and on their way, they started taking pictures. Unbeknown to them, there were police officers among the people whose pictures they were taking. That is when all hell broke loose as the police officers pounced on them and took them to a police station.
They were kept at the station for a while before “a group of huge men in plain clothes arrived”, bungled them onto a vehicle and drove them to an unknown location.
“The men were huge and they had very big guns. We were blindfolded with cloths and when we were about to arrive at the unknown destination, we were made to face downwards. I remember praying to God and asking that a destiny helper comes to help us,” Siziba said on Friday.
When they arrived, they were made to sit outside facing the a wall.
“At that point, I remembered all those movies where people would be executed while they were facing the wall.”
They sat there for several hours before they were interrogated. But while seated facing the wall, they would hear people screaming and weeping in a room close to where they were.
“It was clear that people were being tortured. We didn’t know who they were or why they were being tortured. I had managed to shift my blindfold slightly and could see the heavily armed men walking about the place. I shifted the blindfold because I wanted to at least see their faces.
“Earlier I had been praying but now I had resigned to fate and I wanted to at least see their faces but also being cautious to make sure that they would not see that I was seeing what was happening. A short distance away, we would hear gunshots at intervals. I just saw my death.
“Mkhasibe is diabetic and has hypertension but he was denied access to his medication. I literally saw him withering the few times that my blindfold was removed and now he is so sick because he went for over 24 hours without medication.”
With phones and other belongings seized, it was by chance that the High Commissions of South Africa and Nigeria in Maputo heard of the journalists’ detention. They immediately set out to try and locate them. But since they had been moved to an unknown site, they could not locate them.
They only managed to locate them around 2pm on Friday.
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And Mangwiro is grateful to the governments of South Africa and Nigeria for leaving no stone unturned until they were released.
“I am certain if it wasn’t for those countries, I would have died. We all would have been killed. Mbaruco was arrested in similar fashion and no one knows where he is even now. I am certain that the plan was to kill us,” Mangwiro said.
The journalists expressed their gratitude to the South African and Nigerian High Commissions for securing their freedom.
“We have received support from all over the world. Apart from the Nigerian government through the High Commission in Mozambique, I am grateful to the Directorate on International Relations and Corporation of South Africa, we also received a call from a lady from Botswana, I cannot remember where she said she was calling from because I was still disoriented. She called to make sure we had been released. We have seen stories published, social media posts and received moral support from all over the world. We are so grateful,” Siziba said.
They may have been released, but Siziba is now cagey about the mission.
