Episode
396: What if you were held captive by child soldiers?
- Podcast
- This Is Actually Happening
- Published
- Mar 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4259
- Processing state
not_requested
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Summary
When a family sailing journey ends in capture by child soldiers during Mozambique’s civil war, a man must protect his children while confronting the unsettling truth that his captors are both perpetrators of violence and children shaped by it. Today’s episode featured Dave Muller. Dave has written about his experiences in a book entitled, “Not Child’s Play”, available where books are sold or at https://notchildsplay.co.uk/ You can email Dave at [email protected] Dave is on Instagram @davenotchildsplay, on Facebook @Dave Muller and on YouTube @DaveMuller-NotChildsPlay In the 1960s and 1970s, both South Africa and Mozambique were part of the larger decolonization of Africa, with South Africa gaining full independence from Britain in 1961 and Mozambique gaining independence from Portugal in 1975. However, in the decolonization process, both were thrown into proxy battles, between old structures clinging to power and the larger global cold war between communist and capitalist superpowers. South Africa, even after independence, was still ruled by a white minority government, under the National Party. The National Party was populated mostly by the white ethnic group known as Afrikaners who spoke a language called Afrikaans. The National Party instituted apartheid, a brutally oppressive system of institutionalized racial segregation and white supremacy enforced in South Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. South Africa shares a northeastern border with Mozambique. When Mozambique gained independence in 1975, they were ruled by the Communist party known as FRELIMO. FRELIMO became a major force opposing apartheid in neighboring South Africa. The South African apartheid government, in response to FRELIMO’s opposition, actively destabilized Mozamb…