Mozambique: Mondlane Threatens More Unrest

Maputo — Mozambican presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane has again threatened to bring the country to a standstill in the pursuit of what he calls “the truth about the elections’.

The Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, is due to proclaim the final results from the 9 October general elections on Monday.

In his latest live broadcast, transmitted from an undisclosed location via his Facebook page, Mondlane ordered a one day general strike for Monday, so that the entire county could listen to the chairperson of the Constitutional Council, Lucia Ribeiro, as she delivers the result.

Nobody should try to go to work on Monday, demanded Mondlane, and, since there are a large number of young men who treat his every word as law, the formal sectors of the Mozambican economy will once again close down, rather than face attack and vandalism.

This will not be as damaging as previous stoppages, since the government has already decreed an informal public holiday (“tolerancia de ponto’) on Christmas Eve, 24 December. Many employers are likely to cut their losses and shut down until after Christmas, only re-opening on Thursday.

Mondlane is threatening a further round of rioting which he has baptised “Turbo V8′. He tried to thrust the blame for future rioting onto the Constitutional Council, since the Council could avoid any future unrest as long as it proclaims him the next President of the Republic.

In a piece of shameless blackmail, Mondlane said “if we get the electoral truth, we will go towards peace. If it is an electoral lie, we will bring the country down to a precipice, chaos and disorder.” What Ribeiro says will “determine whether the country will move towards tranquillity or towards the precipice’.

For Mondlane “electoral truth’ means declaring that he has won the Presidential election, and that the main party backing him, Podemos, has a majority in parliament. Anything else will be an “electoral lie’.

The Constitutional Council has been working its way through thousands of polling station minutes and results sheets (“editais’) for almost two months. While the votes were counted and the results announced within a couple of days in other southern African countries, such as Botswana and Mauritius, in Mozambique there is still no definitive result more than 70 days after the votes were cast.

The only feasible explanation for the delay is that the Council is trying to weed out the more obvious frauds, without suggesting that the entire process is so flawed that the elections should simply be annulled.

Mozambique’s neighbours, particularly South Africa, have become alarmed.

According to the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), US intelligence officials flew into Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport on board a C-17 Globemaster aircraft on 12 December. They met with representatives of South Africa’s National Intelligence Coordinating Committee in a hotel in Krueger Park.

The press was briefed that that the main agenda of the meetings was to prepare for possible instability in Mozambique. Plans included possible evacuation of foreign citizens and embassy staff.

But Mondlane’s rioters have not attacked foreign embassies, or foreign citizens in general. For South Africa, the real risk is continued disruption of South African trade, particularly in chromium and coal, through the port of Maputo.

This was certainly high on the agenda when Foreign Minister Veronica Macama met her South African counterpart Ronald Lamola in the South African town of Malelane last Wednesday.

Mondlane once again insisted that he will be inaugurated as President on 15 January in Maputo. For Frelimo, this is the date when Daniel Chapo will take the oath of office.

Mondlane also repeated a string of orders for what should happen between now and 15 January. All mining and all logging operations should stop. All vehicles, of whatever type, should pass through the toll gates on the main roads without paying the tolls. Informal traders should be allowed to bring whatever goods they liked into the country without paying any duties.

Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters

Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox

Success!

Almost finished…

We need to confirm your email address.

To complete the process, please follow the instructions in the email we just sent you.

Error!

There was a problem processing your submission. Please try again later.

Mondlane says he has proof of his victory, but he has not published it. Nor has the CNE published the basis for its claims of a 70 per cent victory for Chapo.

Without analysing the polling station minutes and result sheets, it is impossible to say who won. But the fraud reported during the elections was so extensive as to cast doubt on the authenticity of many of the editais.

Prior to the 2019 elections, a coalition of NGOs and religious bodies, known as the “electoral observatory’, provided a useful check on the honesty (or otherwise) of the CNE, by undertaking an independent parallel vote count, which was regarded as highly accurate.

But the Electoral Observatory no longer exists, and there is no generally accepted parallel vote count.

________________________________

ADVERTISEMENT