JOSINA MACHEL FIGHTS BACK
Graça’s daughter challenges ex-boyfriend’s acquittal
● When her boyfriend took her to hospital after allegedly punching her so hard in the face that he destroyed an eye, Josina Machel summoned the courage to tell the doctors that he did it — while he tried to convince them that she injured herself in a fall.
Two years after the 2015 attack, Mozambican businessman Rofino Licuco was found guilty of beating Machel, the daughter of Graça and late president Samora Machel. He was handed a three-year suspended sentence and ordered to pay her about $2m (about R33m) in compensation.
But last month, four judges of the appeal section of the judicial court of Maputo said they had to “value” his evidence, and ruled that Machel may well have injured herself while falling because she had drunk alcohol.
They also ruled that the ophthalmologists who testified for the prosecution failed to prove that it was Licuco’s fist that had burst her eyeball.
The judges also threw out Machel’s damages award, saying: “High compensation is found only in situations where the victim has the beauty of the body as a tool for income”, or for sportspeople, “when the injury results in deprivation of the activity”.
And they disregarded the text messages Licuco sent Machel after the attack, one of which said: “I will keep my prayers as high as my heart and soul that will forever wipe this nightmare out of our lives … baby, I’m forever on my knees bent like never in my life praising and praying to Almighty God that punishes me and forgives me for this sin.”
In their judgment, the judges said these could not be construed as a confession, saying it was “good tone to apologise, guilty or not”.
In an interview on Friday, Machel told the Sunday Times that she had this week been granted leave to appeal the court’s judgment in her five-year battle that had left her with a reputation in her home country of a ruthless gold-digger.
Licuco is the CEO of VBC Corp, which has interests in telecommunications, IT, oil, gas, real estate, biotechnology and health care. An e-mailed request for comment via his company went unanswered.
“The narrative that is being painted in Mozambique is that he’s a hard-working young man from a very poor background, who’s now being exploited by a rich brat who just wanted his money,” Machel said.
“This judgment is a regressive step for the women’s movement … How do they say that because it happened in privacy, and there were only two of us, and there were no witnesses, that this doesn’t qualify as genderbased violence?”
After a dinner held in honour of her parents and a night out on the town, it was around 1am on Graça Machel’s 70th birthday in October 2015 that Machel asked Licuco to take her to her mother’s house in Maputo because she wanted to feel close to her. Machel was to take a flight to Johannesburg early that morning to celebrate the milestone with her mother, who was in SA at the time. In a decision she described as an “emotional thing”, she asked her boyfriend of three years to drop her off.
The judgment says it was then that Machel claimed an enraged Licuco called her a “whore” and a “street woman”, and accused her of wanting to return to the Polana Hotel so she could spend the night with another man. He then allegedly punched her in the face three times, bursting an eyeball, ripping off the cornea and detaching the retina so severely that it could not be repaired.
Machel then fled the car and tripped and fell in the street, after which Licuco took her to hospital.
Machel underwent two operations to try to save the eye — one at a Maputo hospital and the other in Barcelona, Spain.
In its judgment, the appeal court said it disregarded the evidence of a doctor who examined Machel a month after the attack, saying they had “some family connection” and that the doctor had examined her at her mother’s home and not in a properly equipped surgery.
The judges also dismissed the evidence of a further four ophthalmologists who examined Machel thereafter, saying they had done so too late to come to any proper conclusions.
“The statements made by the ophthalmologists at no time relate the injury suffered by [Machel] to the alleged assault on fists produced by [Licuco]. Almost all of them limit themselves to saying that the injury suffered by [Machel] was compatible with an aggression made using fists,” the judgment reads.
The judges also took issue with Licuco’s text messages, saying the prosecution’s belief that they amounted to a confession was “presumptuous”.
“Regardless of guilt, any reasonable person would apologise to the injured party. When a friend suffers an injury in our presence, it is good tone to apologise, guilty or not,” they ruled.
After stating that they cannot “choose the version of one over the other”, the judges said that because of insufficient evidence they must “value the dubious evidence in favour of the accused” and “absolve [Licuco] of the crimes of which he was accused and sending him in peace and freedom”.
Machel is determined to fight on, both in court and with a civil society-led campaign, called Justice for Josina in Mozambique and across the continent — not just for her, but for all women who are victims.
“We are just using my face because the loss of my eye is a permanent, visible reminder — but it could be for anybody,” she said.
“This is about the impact that the judgment will have on sentences from now onwards. Also, women who have been victims will see what happened to me and not report their abuse, and the men will think that they can get away with it.”