At the time of the invasion, the East German government was implementing one of the largest African agricultural projects in Mozambique. East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republique (GDR), has planned 120,000 hectares of projects in various locations across the country. But the attack stopped everything. A total of eight GDR residents, a Yugoslav development worker, and five Mozambican citizens were killed in the attack. To this day, it is unclear who carried out the armed attacks.
The GDR has sent Manfred Grunewald, an agricultural expert, to the Unango project. Fortunately, he was in the capital of Mozambique, Maputo, at the time of the attack and was about to return to the airport when he heard the news.
The monument to commemorate the victims of the Unango attack is still there today
DW: What really happened on that December morning when the GDR experts accompanied by the Mozambican army left Lichinga, where they live, to Unango, the project site?
Manfred Grunewald: People can say a lot. But in the first three months, we were guarded during the trip to the agricultural production site because, unlike in the past, RENAMO [National Resistance of Mozambique] a rebel movement suddenly appeared in the north. RENAMO does not attack strategically important military targets; instead, they are brutally attack the populationand often forced entire villages to flee.
Did only the GDR experts die?
No, the attackers killed seven Germans on the spot; the other two were seriously injured. A Yugoslav employee and five Mozambican citizens, including two guards, were also killed. It wasn’t that the guards disappeared and didn’t fire at all. They were also killed for fighting back.
Did the two injured people survive?
The seriously injured were brought to Maputo by small plane and operated on there. He died from his wounds ten days later. Someone suspects a dum-dum bullet [a deformation bullet; that expands and tears down body organs and tissue upon entry into body tissue]. That means the attacker used projectiles. They had been banned from war for a long time even then. Another injured person was shot in the leg. He came home with us and survived.
That’s interesting because other deaths are rarely even mentioned in reports here in Germany. What happened in the following days?
We fear that there will be more deaths, but we have yet to find out who else was included in the report. This sudden terrorist attack, which resulted in the deaths of so many people, also meant that the project had to be stopped overnight throughout Mozambique, and the GDR withdrew its entire staff. However, there were snipers at work who didn’t even allow machines and various other work bases to be removed. And the people of Mozambique have not been able to do any further work.
Are there times after your return that you and a bereaved relative have offered to help with the trauma?
As far as I know, the wife of the person who died was sick. Funeral expenses are covered, as are funeral advertisements in the local newspapers. There is also an orphan allowance for children and a widow’s allowance. So far this has been provided within the legal framework of the GDR, but there has been no specific support either before or after the fall of the Wall. There are no offers to deal with trauma.
Manfred Grunewald is a GDR agricultural expert at Unango
On the contrary, it wasn’t even being investigated. So, never did the states, neither the GDR nor the Federal Republic, at the state level, public prosecutors, etc … do whatever it takes to investigate this terrorist attack. What disappointed me the most was that society accepted little or nothing of what was happening there.
Do you still want the attack on Unango to be resolved?
First of all, I want the Germans to not only proceed legally formally but also think about how one could use PR to reward the achievements of the experts at that time. Second, there is still something that can be done to clear up this dilemma. Who is behind it, that our group was attacked in such a way and paid for their efforts to cause good cause with their lives? Incidentally, none of our group hates or dislikes the Mozambican people.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Vocational training away from the civil war battlefield
Skilled workers from African socialist and Marxist-Leninist countries received vocational training in communist East Germany until reunification with West Germany. In 1983 when civil war was raging at home, the Angolans took part in a six-month course at the Central Institute for Industrial Security in Dresden. East Germany supports the Marxist-Leninist MPLA regime.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Solidarity with the African liberation movement
An airplane from the East German airline Interflug at Luanda airport. It brought supplies for Angolan schools. In 1978, other beneficiaries of the East German Solidarity Committee, which coordinated development assistance, included the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), the Southwest African People’s Organization (SWAPO), the African National Congress (ANC), Ethiopia and Mozambique.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Courses for African journalists
East Germany trained hundreds of African journalists from almost every corner of the continent. They attend the ‘School of Solidarity’ run by the Federation of East German Journalists in Friedrichshagen, East Berlin. This course for young journalists from Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe took place in December 1976.
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Africa and communist East Germany
‘Friendship School’
Margot Honecker, minister of education and wife of East German leader Erich Honecker, greets Samora Machel, Mozambique’s first president at the Friendship School in Straßfurt in 1983. Mozambique and East Germany agreed in 1979 that 899 Mozambican children would attend school in East Germany. a four year period.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Dr Agostinho Neto Middle School
When President Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola visited East Germany, Middle School No. 26 in Pankow, East Berlin was renamed in honor of his predecessor, Dr Agostinho Neto. Members of the East German communist youth league, FDJ, welcomed the Angolan president who waved a banner reading “On the side of the Soviet Union, for peace and socialism!”
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Africa and communist East Germany
President of Angola at the Berlin Wall
Angolan President dos Santos (5th from left) also visited the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate in East Berlin. East Germany closed Berlin’s west sector in August 1961 to prevent disgruntled East Germans from fleeing to the West. East Berlin calls the Wall an “anti-fascist barrier.” About 200 people were killed by communist border guards while trying to cross it.
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Africa and communist East Germany
African guest at the East German Communist Party congress
The ruling East German Communist Party (SED) is always happy to welcome foreign guests with the right ideological temperament to their congresses. Guests in 1981 included Ambrosi Lukoki (back row far right), MPLA member from Angola, and Berhanu Bayeh (2nd row back from left), later foreign minister in the Marxist-Leninist Derg dictatorship of Ethiopia.
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Africa and communist East Germany
East German Communist Party (SED) functionaries in Africa
High-ranking African Marxist-Leninists visited East Germany and their East German counterparts returned praise by traveling to Africa. East German politburo member Konrad Naumann (2nd row, right) attends the third-party congress of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) in Bissau in November 1977.
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Africa and communist East Germany
East German and African schoolchildren
Communist indoctrination of schoolchildren in East Germany extends to holidays when they attend camps for the youth organizations of Young Pioneers and Thälmann Pioneers. Visitors from the People’s Republic of Congo are being introduced to Die Trommel, Thälmann Pioneer magazine at the Wilhelm Pieck Pionerrrepublic camp near East Berlin.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Weekend with an East German family
The young African visitor, attending a summer camp in 1982, spent the weekend with an East German family. A special train took them to Schwedt, an industrial city close to the Polish border. Sandra Maria Bernardo from Angola was welcomed by her host Ingeborg Scholz and daughter Petra.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Tractors for the ‘fraternal socialist state’
In 1979 tractors made by the East German tractor factory in Schönebeck were donated to Ethiopia, then a Marxist-Leninist state. The ZT 300-C tractor has been exported to 26 countries, including Angola and Mozambique.
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Africa and communist East Germany
East German textile machinery in Ethiopia
This textile factory in Kombolcha in Amhara province, Ethiopia (pictured: November 2005) produces sheets and towels. It was built in 1984 with support from East Germany and Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic and Slovakia). Almost all machines made by the East German collective incorporate TEXTIMA in the city of Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz).
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Africa and communist East Germany
East German Prefab in Zanzibar
The state of Tanzania was founded by Julius Nyerere in 1964. East Germany supported his experiments in socialism by erecting a long row of precast concrete buildings on Zanzibar. The prefab blocks are transported to Zanzibar by sea and assembled upon arrival. ‘Michenzani’, as it was called, still stands.
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Africa and communist East Germany
Wages were not paid 25 years after East Germany collapsed
About 15,000 Mozambicans worked as contract laborers in East Germany in the late 1980s. Most returned home after East Germany’s reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990. In their hometown, the Mozambican people are called ‘Madgermanes’ – a derivative of ‘Made in Germany.’ The country of Mozambique never paid them for the work they did in East Germany. They have been protesting regularly in Maputo to this day.
Author: Johannes Beck / mc
On the contrary, we know some elements want to interfere with development. And if there is always only war and terror, then humanity cannot develop normally. It’s possible. At Niassa, either under socialism or capitalism, one can produce sufficient food products, also for the market. We have set up two shops selling vegetables and charcoal. Something was really happening there, and it shouldn’t be destroyed. That’s what I blame this devastating Mozambican element.
Ten years ago, there was a film on [German public broadcaster] MDR, and we got involved. A RENAMO representative from Lichinga denied responsibility and said, “a lot is happening in the context of war. But we are not carrying out this attack.” Mozambique was unable to withdraw to that position and said that we have granted amnesty. We’re not investigating anything anymore. We reserve the right to have our rights in Mozambique further examined. Even though these people died long ago, their children are now adults. The dead now have grandchildren. They want to know what happened at that time.
Interview conducted by Johannes Beck
Manfred Grunewald is an agricultural expert from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).
