097 "Mother"

The Mozambican civil war was one of the bloodiest conflicts of the twentieth century. Lasting for fifteen years, it left a million people dead and millions more displaced. The war was fought with communist Soviet backing on one side, and support from capitalist South Africa and Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe—on the other. During the war, weapons sent from abroad poured into Mozambique, and when the fighting stopped in 1992 the country was left full of foreign guns. One of the big challenges the Mozambicans faced was how to decommission these surviving weapons to ensure they couldn’t be used again. For many, their presence served as a tragic reminder of the war.

The formation of a project called Transforming Arms into Tools provided a positive and powerful response. This programme called for an amnesty which encouraged people to hand in their guns in exchange for useful tools and equipment, such as bicycles, sewing machines and farming implements. It took great courage for people who had suffered so many years of war to give up their weapons, but the objects they received in return helped them to build a new, positive future in peacetime.

A group of local artists in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, had the idea of using the guns in sculptures that celebrated this new peace. This sculpture was made by an artist called Fiel dos Santos. It is named ‘Mother’, and it is in the form of a woman; her handbag is made from the magazine of an AK47. By choosing to create ‘Mother’, the artist has transformed the negative associations of the guns into a nurturing maternal figure representing protection and new life. This echoes the hope shared by all Mozambicans at the end of the war—that peace would remain and guns would never be needed again.