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Call it witchcraft if you like, but such rural healing is a major reason that nearly 95,000 demobilized soldiers and 5 million refugees have been absorbed back into society. In less than five years, Mozambique (pop. 18 million) has forged cohesion out of the animosities that tore it apart. The revered practices of communal tradition have succeeded, better than any modern forms of psychotherapy, in restoring a sense of unity to Mozambique's deeply riven clans. "National reconciliation started in the communities themselves," says Roberto Chavez, the World Bank director in Mozambique. "They were the main factor in bringing the country back together."
The Frelimo government was smart enough to help too. Anxious about the potential for trouble from 90,000 unemployed guys with guns, it contracted with the United Nations to develop a plan that would rapidly resettle soldiers and refugees in their home villages. In 1994 the government and donor countries scraped together $20 million to pay all demobbed soldiers a minimum salary for two years to help them rebuild their shambas (farms) and restock their corrals. "We wanted to get them out of the military and make them civilians right away," explains Sam Barnes, a program administrator. "We wanted the soldiers to be part of rebuilding the country from the ground up."
Recovery from the ravages of war is the baseline against which Mozambique's progress must be measured. Almost from the day the former Portuguese colony won independence in 1975, it was dragged into a vicious struggle between its new rulers, the Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front, known as Frelimo, and a rebel movement called Renamo that was trained, armed and supplied mostly from sources in South Africa. Sixteen years of guerrilla warfare devastated the country. A million men, women and children died. Two million people fled across the borders; 3 million more moved off their farms into safer urban enclaves. When hostilities ceased, some 2 million unmapped mines laid waste the nation's arable lands.
That is where more rural magic comes into play. The newest local healer lumbers into the countryside on 17 tons of armor plate and giant steel wheels. The Frelimo government has invested its scarce cash to bring in a fleet of Casspir demining vehicles, operated by a private subsidiary of the South African army, to get rid of the mines that keep farmers and herders off the country's lush lands.
As fast as the vehicles roll over the acres around Sabie, west of the capital of Maputo, destroying the mines, the farmers stream in behind, planting corn and squash, grazing goats and cows. Francisco Mucavele is one of them. For 10 years he was confined within the perimeter of the little settlement of Chavane, bounded by fear of the minefields. "We felt like prisoners in the village," he says. "Now I can go anywhere I want."