Mozambique: A revolution born in the search for electoral justice
Another stolen election has sent the people into the streets. They await Venancio Mondlane, the leader of the protest movement. The old elite await a $50 billion resource jamboree. Is this the end of FRELIMO?
Photo courtesy: Venancio Mondlane
Mozambique’s fight for justice, freedom and prosperity is being waged with the blood of unarmed protesters, and the courage of students, syndicates, lawyers, doctors, urban youth and rural communities. At least twenty-five protesters have lost their lives in the last two weeks, while thousands have been shot and injured by the police. At least 149 remain jailed.
The results of the 9 October elections remain disputed. The Comissão Nacional de Eleições (CNE) declared victory for the ruling party, FRELIMO, with 195 parliamentary seats and a 70 percent sweep for its presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo. Opposition candidate, Venancio Mondlane, whose Partido Otimista pelo Desinvolvimento de Moçambique (PODEMOS) parallel count places Mondlane as the winner of the presidential race with 53.38% and with 138 out of 250 seats in parliament, followed by Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo at 35.66% and 91 seats. PODEMOS won all the provinces except Niassa and Gaza. All other opposition parties also contested the official results. International and local observers also noted that the polls were beset by multiple and major irregularities.
Whereas the CNE has only provided tabulations from the provincial level, Podemos has released detailed results sheets from 70 percent of the country’s 25,000 polling stations, reports Africa Confidential – results that raise serious questions about the CNE’s tabulations and indeed, its credibility. Now, Lúcia da Luz Ribeiro, president of the Constitutional Council has ordered the CNE to produce the results sheets of every polling station.
It is a moment of reckoning both for the CNE and FRELIMO, and it is fuelling the street protests, which are morphing into something far more consequential. They are decentralised, unrelenting, and spread across several provinces despite the efforts of the repressive security apparatus.
7 November was billed as the day of revolutionary consolidation. Opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane, who has claimed victory in the 9 October elections, simultaneously called for general strikes, stay-aways and street protests. The country responded with mass protests and civil disobedience in the large urban areas of Maputo, Matola, Nampula, Quelimane and Beira as well as in the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Zambezia. Anger and revolutionary fervour were palpable on the videos, posts and comments going viral on social media. Chanting ‘People in Power’ and ‘Save Mozambique’ thousands of protesters demanded the fall of the ruling party FRELIMO. The street protests were captured in videos posted on social media showed policeman and military allowing protesters through barricades, indirectly supporting them, and they marched to the Presidential palace.
Mondlane, who fled Mozambique for South Africa following death threats, was expected to return to the country on Thursday, 7 November. Intelligence sources indicate that over 100,000 protesters were making their way from across the country to meet Mondlane in Maputo. One video showed hundreds of civilians crossing a river after police barricaded the bridge in an attempt to restrict their movements. Mondlane has now stated he will remain abroad. The protesters remain underterred. Other sources online tracking President Nyusi’s plane FAM002 on FlightRadar reported that it made four flights to Pemba in which he took top FRELIMO leaders to the North under the protection of trusted troops and Rwandan forces.
FRELIMO, like the MPLA in Angola, ZANU-PF in Zimbabwe and other liberation movements-turned authoritarian ruling parties, has made numerous mistakes since the advent of democracy after the end of the civil war in 1992. There is evidence that FRELIMO allegedly stole the 1999 elections. The results indicated that 240,800 voters or nine percent of the electorate, had ticked only the presidential ballot and none of the others, in an election many say was won by the opposition movement, RENAMO, which had been backed by apartheid South Africa and the US during Mozambique’s 15-year civil war. Subsequent elections might well also have been stolen.
After the end of one-party rule in 1992, FRELIMO, contrary to expectations after the ceasefire of a modicum of power-sharing with RENAMO, continued to dominate all state institutions, deepening partisan control, while the management of public finances became more opaque, press freedom plummeted, and citizens became increasingly disenfranchised. Over the next three decades, the country became a hub for crime syndicates, influence peddling, and narco-trafficking.
FRELIMO marginalised the central and northern provinces, which partly explains why the Islamist insurgency grew, even as the same areas were being exploited for rubies and other minerals. The discovery of natural gas in Cabo Delgado became an accelerant for FRELIMO’s corruption; political elites were linked to business opportunities and multi-million dollar companies, to sudden, unexplained wealth.
When the Islamist insurgency threatened the gas-fields the government called for mercenaries, first the Russian Wagner group and then the Dyck Advisory group that was accused of committing war crimes. Later, Rwanda and SADC deployed military missions to stabilise the situation. In 2021, the Abu Dhabi-based South African Paramount Group, became the Defence Ministry’s largest arms supplier, having sold several combat and transport aircraft, including the Mwari unmanned surveillance aircrafts.
The conflict with the Islamists has since 2018 cost the state over $1.5 billion – even before factoring in the damage to destroyed infrastructure and delayed investments. The economic windfall from gas and critical mineral exploration, anticipated at $50 billion has not reached the population, half of which live in extreme poverty, ranking Mozambique 185th (out of 191 countries) on the Human Development Index. Since August 2023, the civil service and the defense forces have faced delays in payment of salaries, while youth unemployment in cities has reached 36%. Beset by corruption scandals, ordinary Mozambicans believe that FRELIMO siphoned and profited while the country became heavily indebted, poorer and more violent.
Now the population is demanding a reckoning.
Mozambique President Felipe Nyusi (r) congratulating Inhambane provincial governor, Daniel Chapo on his victory at the FRELIMO presidential primaries in June 2024. Photo courtesy: FRELIMO.
Regional intelligence operatives I spoke to expect FRELIMO to be ousted. They are studying the strategy used by protesters who began simultaneously emerging from villages and neighbourhoods in small groups making it difficult for the police to coordinate a response. This explains why a crowd of protesters was allowed to march within minutes of reaching the Presidential palace, only to be violently disbanded by a panicked reaction force unit stationed nearby at the Egyptian embassy. Although the police force now numbers 50,000-strong, including the paramilitary Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR) deployed to fight RENAMO in 2013 and then the Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado in 2017, they are outmatched by the level of popular revolt. Disorganised and exhausted, security forces and intelligence services are rapidly being overtaken by events.
Venancio Mondlane on the campaign trail, 26 September 2024. Photo courtesy: Venancio Mondlane.
There are many pieces at play in what has become a complex theatre of operations and a level of miscalculation and desperation by FRELIMO. Attacks on the opposition and civil society began with the murders of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe on the 19th of October by a death squad sparking protests. Mondlane was forced to leave Maputo on the 24 October after receiving deaths threats. Internet shutdowns that began the following day became a regular phenomenon limiting access to social media and frustrating coordination efforts by protesters.
Three days later, the police opened criminal proceedings against Mondlane for threatening the security of the state. In the meantime, Mondlane’s party PODEMOS handed in evidence of election fraud to the Constructional Court.
On 2 November, spy chief Bernardo Constantino Lidimba, was killed in a car accident in the province of Gaza. Canal Moz, a local media outlet, revealed that Lidimba travelled to meet his counterpart in Zimbabwe while the chaos was unfolding. Angolan intelligence believe that he was murdered as he was preparing to stage a coup. Under his control, the domestic intelligence service SISE has more operatives (over 20,000) than the Mozambican armed forces, estimated at 12,500. Lidimba’s death reveals factional in fighting that is further eroding Nyusi’s control of the party, reports Africa Confidential.
On the evening of the 5 November, the Defence Ministry warned of an attempted coup organised by internal and external forces and began preparing for a state of emergency. Civilians accused Rwandan troops of combating protesters in the north and in the capital, Maputo, dressed in Mozambican army uniforms. The Mozambican army command and police that stands, like FRELIMO itself, divided on whether to implement orders to clamp down violently on the protesters, makes this a perfect storm of chaos and instability. As a result, SADC is calling for an emergency meeting even as pressure from the international community for dialogue grows. All of this escalation could have possibly been avoided had FRELIMO read the mood of the masses and allowed the elections to be free, fair and transparent.
The words of Frantz Fanon, deeply resonate with the moment Mozambique is facing. In 1961 he wrote “We have realized that the masses are equal to the problems which confront them…experience proves that the important thing is not that three hundred people form a plan and decide upon carrying it out, but that the whole people plan and decide even if it takes them twice or three times as long.”
FRELIMO would be wise to listen to its citizens and step down without any more bloodshed, preparing a political transition and allowing the country to self-correct.
