Two weeks ago, a chronicle appeared on the Facebook wall of Jessemusse Cacinda, a representative of the publisher ‘Ethale Publishing.’ His words serve as a stark and poignant prologue to the present book, ‘To the End of the World – A Diary of Disenchantment and Astonishment,’ and cut to the heart of a national malaise.
Cacinda hails from the district of Memba, in Nampula Province—a name that now evokes not just geography, but a landscape of trauma. In his writing, he relays the stories brought by his mother from the north: ‘The account of a line made of decapitated people, the pain of those who, once again, are forced to take refuge, and the lack of hope that takes hold of everyone’s soul.’ He then reflects on his own childhood, shaped by the scars of the civil war: ruined buildings, the memory of a hospital destroyed by a grenade, and elders for whom war was ‘a close relative.’ ‘We are children of war who dream of peace,’ he writes. ‘Perhaps one day our children will have a different fate, because for now, not even tears are enough.’
This chronicle is a lexicon of despair: ‘war’; ‘decapitated people’; ‘pain’; ‘to take refuge’; ‘ruins’; ‘grenades’; ‘dreams’; ‘Peace’; ‘tears.’ But one phrase burns with particular intensity: ‘lack of hope.’ To understand the gravity of this statement, we must dissect what hope truly is. Hope is not passive wishing; it is the active confidence in a positive future—the fuel for action. It is the emotional belief that translates into a way of life. For the believer, it is the conduct guided by faith in eternal life. For the peasant, it is the energy to clear the machamba (field) and sow corn, trusting the land will yield food.
Hope, therefore, is a fundamental survival mechanism. When it dies, action ceases. If the peasant receives reliable information that his labor will be in vain—that the harvest will be stolen, the land scorched, or the market inaccessible—he will abandon his field. He has lost faith in the fundamental contract between effort and reward. This is the point of societal collapse.
But when does a person, or a people, lose hope? It is not after a single defeat. Hope expires when disenchantment, failure, defeat, and disorientation accumulate in an unbroken chain, exceeding the collective capacity for resilience. It is when astonishment at the absurdity of one’s circumstances throws you into a well with no glimpse of light. Human suffering transforms from a challenge to be overcome into an accepted fatality. The proverbial saying ‘hope is the last to die’ acknowledges the immense, inhuman levels of suffering required to kill it. Tragically, for many Mozambicans, that threshold has been crossed.
The erosion of hope is chronicled in the fundamental, unanswered questions that echo across the nation. These are not queries about policy, but about the very breakdown of social contracts and moral order:
- The Crisis of Leadership: Why have those who voluntarily took the helm of the nation’s destiny led it into a disorienting ‘no man’s land,’ appearing lost themselves?
- The Hypocrisy of Power: Why do the architects of societal rules become their most flagrant transgressors?
- The Betrayal of Stewardship: Why have those entrusted with managing the nation’s common wealth (‘the collective machamba‘) reduced the nation to a private estate for themselves and their clients?
- The State as Enemy: Why have the official guardians meant to defend citizens from danger become indistinguishable from the threat itself?
- Justice as a Source of Conflict: Why do the courts and conflict-resolution bodies issue rulings that, instead of pacifying, sow deeper hatred and division?
- Liberators to Conquerors: How did the liberators of the homeland transform into new conquerors of their own land and people?
- The Unspoken Truth of Conflict: When people whisper that the brutal insurgency in the north ‘has known owners, and these are Mozambicans,’ what profound betrayal does this allegation reveal?
The silence that meets these questions is deafening. With each passing year of non-answers, hope does not merely fade; it ages, expires, and putrefies. It ceases to be an engine for dreams and becomes a source of nightmares—a psychological blockage. The old hope, built on the promises of independence and peace, is now a spoiled commodity. It cannot be revived.
This realization leads to an inescapable conclusion: recovery is not about rekindling a dead flame. It is about striking a new spark. ‘It is now urgent to create a new hope,’ which necessitates nothing less than the refounding of the Mozambican State—a reconstitution of its social, political, and moral foundations. This is the solemn, public declaration directed at the nation’s Technical Commission for Inclusive National Dialogue. The launch of a literary diary of disenchantment thus becomes a political act, a formal testimony that the old compact is broken, and a new one must be forged from the ashes of astonishment.
(Message on the occasion of the launch of the work: ‘To the End of the World – A Diary of Disenchantment and Astonishment.’ Maputo, December 11, 2025)