Mozambique: when will the massacre end?
by Michel Cahen
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Since independence on June 25, 1975, Frelimo has made Mozambique its private preserve for 50 years. After having been the only authorized party in the country (from 1975 until the introduction of a multi-party system in 1992), it then systematically defrauded all elections, with the partial exception of the very first ones organized by the UN in 1994. But after the last general elections in October 2024, the fraud provoked a real popular revolt. The authorities reacted by unleashing a ruthless crackdown on the protesters, which continues to this day, without any notable reaction from the international community. On October 9, 2024, Mozambique held its seventh general elections (provincial, legislative and presidential) since the introduction of a multi-party system in 1992. Official results gave a clear victory to Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front) candidates, including presidential candidate Daniel Chapo, elected with 70% of the vote (later reduced to 65%). According to international and independent national observers, these were the most fraudulent elections the country had ever seen. A large part of the population is convinced that, in reality, it was the opposition candidate Venâncio Mondlane, officially credited with 20% of the vote (then 24%), who won the election. Admittedly, this is not the first time that Frelimo, in power without interruption since 1975, has maintained itself through fraud and, beyond that, through the complete fusion of party and state, as in the days of the single party (1975-1992), through the systematic practice of authoritarian clientelism (people live much better with a Frelimo card than without it or with another party's card!) and, finally, through the assassination of opponents. This time, however, there was a genuine revolt, rather than resignation, against the lack of respect for the people's dignity shown by electoral fraud. Fifty years of authoritarian paternalism In 1975, Mozambique gained independence and the Frelimo, officially of “Marxist-Leninist” orientation, which drew its legitimacy from its struggle against Portuguese colonial rule, came to power. This was followed by a long civil war (1977-1992) between Frelimo and the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo), which shaped the country's political life for a long time to come. Although the conflict had internal roots in the authoritarian, anti-peasant modernization policies of the government, the Renamo guerrilla movement was supported by the apartheid regime of neighboring South Africa. The violence was terrible, on both sides, but after the war, particularly in the cities (and especially in the South), even disgruntled people would never have voted for Renamo, seen in the hegemonic discourse as the party of “armed bandits”. However, particularly in the inner cities, the middle-class electorate began to vote for a third party, the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), which emerged from a split in Renamo and would very likely have won the 2013 municipal elections in the capital Maputo - were it not for a timely power cut when the ballots were being counted. The head of the list was Venâncio Mondlane, then a popular TV and radio commentator. In the 2014 legislative elections, against a backdrop of renewed internal warfare, Renamo doubled its number of votes (from 16 to 36.61%) and deputies (from 49 to 89 out of 250) compared to the 2009 ballot. But in 2018 (municipal elections) and 2019 (general elections, 21.48% of the vote and 60 deputies), this boom was shattered by the machinery of the state apparatus. The fraud took place well before the elections: the electoral census counted more voters than inhabitants in the pro-power Gaza province, but far fewer in some others. The systematic intimidation of voters (by collecting their voter card numbers) was highly effective. Non-Frelimo observers were rarely accredited, while Frelimo observers flocked to polling stations in their thousands, and so on. Even so, it was clear that this time Renamo had actually won the elections in Maputo and Matola, the other major southern city and historic Frelimo stronghold. But Renamo didn't really organize any protests, despite spontaneous youth marches, playing the legalism card and awaiting the results of its appeals to appeal institutions totally controlled by Frelimo. The Venâncio Mondlane phenomenon and the revolt of Mozambican society With the passing of the years and the passing of generations, we could see that, even in the cities of the South, disaffected voters no longer hesitated to vote for Renamo: memories of the civil war were no longer politically structuring. But Renamo was weakened by the death of its historic leader, Afonso Dhlakama, in 2018, and by the appointment as new president of a former guerrilla general, Ossufo Momade, who proved to lack initiative and leadership. Momade prevented Venâncio Mondlane from being Renamo's candidate in the presidential election of October 2024, but Mondlane ran as an independent, as a new type of candidate, a civilian, an educated man from the city, and also an evangelical (a religious current on the rise in the country). Massively, the Renamo and MDM electorates switched to this new candidate, all the more easily as their previous votes were not so much in favor of these two parties as, above all, against Frelimo. They changed tools. Venâncio Mondlane's campaign, though without a seasoned party to back him, was far better organized than Renamo's had been before. He set up a systematic parallel vote-counting system, with computer equipment, etc., in charge of collecting the thousands of minutes as soon as the counting was completed. This enabled him to claim that he had won the elections with 70% of the vote, whereas the official results gave him around 20%. What is certain is that the frauds were innumerable and that the popular conviction of a totally biased result was widespread. Venâncio Mondlane immediately called for “victory parades”, which were hardly tolerated by the authorities, who were claiming victory for their candidate, Daniel Chapo, an apparatchik who was virtually unknown before the election campaign. The turning point came on October 19, 2024, when two leaders of Venâncio Mondlane's campaign, Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, were murdered in the street and in their car, most probably by members of the Special Operations Group of the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR, militarized police), known locally as the “death squads”. This was a warning to Venâncio Mondlane, who had just called a general strike. From then on, the situation shifted from demonstrations against electoral fraud, such as often occur in various African countries, to a revolutionary process. The permanent mobilization of very poor people, young boys leading demonstrations, young girls organizing prayers in the streets, was observed all over the country, including the small bush towns, where they receive the news from time to time. The middle classes in the “cement districts” were not to be outdone: although they didn't take part in the demonstrations, they did “casserolades” (banging pots during protests) from their windows for hours on end. A very important feature was the complete absence of any ethnic dimension: of course, the civil war had never been inter-ethnic, but Frelimo tended to be the party of the south and the cities, and Renamo the party of the north and the bush. The fact that Venâncio Mondlane was from the South did not prevent demonstrations from taking place everywhere, including in the North, which had already been affected by jihadist guerrilla warfare. The authorities accused the demonstrators of looting stores, but the police were also seen looting... and real shots were fired multiple times. The official proclamation of the results and the announced failure of the last appeals, followed by the inauguration of the official president, Daniel Chapo, on January 15, 2025, did not weaken the mobilization. Venâncio Mondlane, who now considered himself to be the “people's president” and “elected president” rather than the “invested president”, began a tour of the country, gathering large crowds even in the regions most loyal to Frelimo. A new turning point in the revolutionary process began to emerge: people were no longer demonstrating against fraud, but rather against the high cost of living - Mondlane had issued a “decree” to lower the price of cement and other products, and people were mobilizing to enforce it. Communities revolted against the international companies that had set up in the country at the behest of the authorities, because compensation for lost land and homes, mentioned in “contracts” accepted under great pressure, was not respected; protests against the enormous pollution of the Moatize open-cast coal mines regained vigor; the destruction of sacred woods -cut down to avoid interfering with oil sands exploitation- was no longer forgiven. More or less, the entire Frelimo state was challenged, and the revolution underway went from being simply democratic to being social. And the price already paid is heavy: 353 proven deaths, including children or very young boys, or simple passers-by; no doubt at least 40 deaths among Venâncio Mondlane's local executives, like these two young men murdered in their car, at that time, outside any demonstration, in Massinga (Inhambane province), on the night of March 8, 2025, having fallen into an authentic ambush. Massinga had been a hotbed of opposition to the government in the south of the country for the previous few days. Thousands wounded (the number is put at 3,000, but this figure mainly concerns the wounded in the major cities), thousands arrested, many missing (including journalists)... Silence, we kill This revolutionary process took place without any involvement from the opposition parties, who agreed to send their elected deputies to sit in Parliament, while Mondlane called for a boycott. Another notable development was the remobilization of the Naparamas in the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia. The Naparamas are a historic phenomenon in Mozambique, magical peasant militias (vaccinated against bullets) armed with bows and arrows. At the end of the civil war, in exhausted societies, they acted mostly in favor of Frelimo against Renamo. But although they never completely disappeared, this time they have remobilized to serve the mobilized people, whom they seek to protect from the militarized police. Despite their “vaccinations”, they are harshly repressed by the heavily armed police. Faced with this outpouring, the authorities signed a reconciliation agreement with all the political currents... except Mondlane. On the very day the agreement was signed, March 5, 2025, a demonstration in Maputo attended by Mondlane was attacked with live ammunition by the UIR, killing four people and wounding others. At the same time, the official president has hardened his rhetoric. At his first public meeting after his investiture, in Pemba (north) on February 24, 2025, he proclaimed that “even if blood has to be shed to defend the homeland against demonstrations, we will shed blood. We will fight terrorism, fight the Naparamas and fight the demonstrations”, equating any form of challenge to power with jihadism, which has been rampant in the North since 2017. It's important to understand that, in the context of a state that has been totally fused with the party for fifty years, an authoritarian party ready to do anything to keep power, when a president publicly says “we will spill blood”, he then has no need to give the order to kill to the intermediate and local echelons of his forces of repression. They've heard the order. Power is ready for a bloodbath to defeat the social revolution in progress. Who will stop it? What is the international community saying, what are the foreign embassies in Maputo saying?
