THREE DUTCH CAMERAMEN
IN FREE MOZAMBIQUE
I was asked to tell about our experience in Free Mozambique. Should I
write that we were impressed by the smooth way the FRELIMO organisation
is being run? Do I need to tell that we felt friends with the gaerrillas
in their torn uniforms who accompanied us? I think so, I have to
tell indeed that the Portuguese did not bother to track us down, although
they must have known we were there - at one time less than two miles
from their base - that all these eighteen days we were in Mozambique
we crossed at will the country they claim to control, that every  day
that passed made us feel stronger that the sheer incapability to do
something makes a mockery of Portuguese colonialism0 They were ambushed
a few miles from us and some were killed. One evening they fired
their heavy guns into the black night, demonstrating that they were
there but did not dare to leave their isolated post. On a bright day we
saw the debris of a mine-struck truck,
For eighteen days my comrades 7  cameraman Henk Venema and sound engineer
Vim Louwrier and I have been inside Mozambique.- Eighteen days cf marching
from one camp to another - through man-high ruts and following bush
tracks not entirely cut to our size. We have been listening to FRELIMO
leaders discussing the problems of the war with the guerrillas. We
attended crowded people's meetings. We went to bed at sunset, got up
at dawn* We shared tho simple meals with our travel companions and
sometimes we sat together without a meal*
If one asks how we experienced these eighteen days, then the above-
mentioned moments account for them. But this I would call the outside
experience; our inside experience is something else.
We realized that our role of objective observers, what a journalist
professes to be, was transformed into one of active participation. Not
because we were exposed to the same dangers as our comrades: our trip
was organized in such a way that a maximum of safety was guaranteed.
Not because we marched together v/ith the comrades through the same
steaming heat or because v/e climbed the same steep slopes. They, the
bearers, carried our heavy equipment and we took care of nothing but
our waterbags. We felt we were participants in the Mozambican struggle
because of the identity of our aims- related to the fact that the Portuguese
army is trained and equipped by NATO countries.
As citizens of a NATO-member country - Holland - v/e feel responsible
for the material and moral support our country gives to colonial Portugal.
We are backing an army v/hich tomorrow may kill the men v/e met and marched
v/ith. For us, support to Portugal is no longer an academic affair: it
is a matter of either support the fascist forces or support the fighters
for the liberation of a suppressed people.  One cannot prevent anybody