Fears of fresh civil war dampen Mozambique hopes of economic rise

As Africa and the world eagerly await the results of the long-awaited and just-completed presidential election in Madagascar, the prospect of a renewed civil war in Mozambique is sending chills down many spines.

The possibility of intensified fighting in the country became only too real last Monday when Frelimo government troops reportedly overran Renamo rebel bases. The move triggered the risk of more clashes and raids in the country’s most volatile zones.

With Mozambique’s stability deemed crucial for the stability of the entire southern African region, the possibility of civil war is alarming and bodes badly for everybody concerned. Moreover, the war drums there could put paid to recent euphoria in the country amid a looming oil boom.

Not surprisingly, with regional stability at stake, the international community has called for negotiations between the opposition party Renamo and the ruling Frelimo party. The two parties are, however, unlikely bedfellows steeped in perennial mutual suspicion.

Right at the centre of the storm in Mozambique is battle-hardened veteran rebel chief Afonso Dhlakama, 60, who is also Renamo’s leader. Reportedly driven by festering anger over his four successive election defeats, which he blames on fraud, Dhlakama has persistently complained about what he perceives as Frelimo’s penchant for political exclusion.

ELECTIONS

Clearly, Dhlakama is disenchanted about alleged unfairness in a string of elections that have been won by Frelimo in slightly more than two decades of peace. Tellingly, even before the recent spate of violence, Mozambique was due to hold local elections next month.

The presidential and parliamentary elections are slated for next year. In the meantime, current president Armando Guebuza’s Frelimo, which has governed Mozambique since independence in 1975, continues to firmly exercise power.

Intriguingly, Dhlakama’s core of armed guerrilla veterans reportedly number only a few hundred. That does not however detract from the fact that they are capable of fighting back and wreaking havoc with their trademark hit-and-run raids in different parts of the country.

That fact was amply demonstrated last Tuesday when, in the aftermath of Monday’s government offensive, daring Renamo rebels staged a pre-dawn attack on a police station.

The brazen attack came just hours after the opposition party had declared the end of the peace deal signed 21 years ago, and which is still referred to as the Rome Accord.

16-YEAR CIVIL WAR

As for Dhlakama, the man who once led a 16-year civil guerrilla war against Frelimo, he has ironically gone on record recently as stating that he does not want another civil war. Still, he has retreated to his hideout in the remote Gorongosa mountains amid claims that the ruling authorities were after his life.

It is from that same mountain hideout that Dhlakama once directed the 16-year civil war in Mozambique that threatened the country’s emergence into independence.

The long-drawn civil war, which ended in 1992, saw the adversaries accused of unleashing atrocities against civilians.

Leaving an estimated one million people dead and millions displaced, the war also shattered infrastructure. It also eventually forced the previously Marxist Frelimo movement into a peace pact that established multi-party democracy in Mozambique.

Predictably, over the years there were mounting concerns regarding the perils of a winner-takes-all scenario in the country. In the meantime, opposition die-hard Dhlakama was dismissed by many as a petulant loser and perennial grumbler.

Widely depicted as reactionary, his alleged collaboration with Mozambique’s former colonial masters during the 16-year civil war has not been forgotten.

Tellingly, during the war, the Renamo rebels were largely backed by the then apartheid regime in neighbouring South Africa.
Even more alarmingly, Renamo was born in the 1970s, reportedly as a creation of the then white-ruled Rhodesia’s Intelligence Service.

The latter covertly recruited disgruntled Mozambicans to fight against the Marxist Frelimo liberation movement that eventually took over on Mozambique’s independence from Portugal in 1975.

With sustained armed confrontation recently becoming a frightful prospect in Mozambique, the army reportedly occupied Dhlakama’s Sathunjira camp high up in the Gorongosa mountains.

The opposition leader escaped, however, and was reported to have moved deeper into the mountains. Alarmingly, after the Monday showdown, Renamo party announced it was abandoning the 1992 peace pact.

Already accused of being responsible for the disruption of road and rail traffic this year in some parts of the country, Renamo fighters have also been involved in sporadic attacks that reportedly provoked the government’s response.

As the recent fighting rekindled memories of a brutal war, a vocal Dhlakama has intensified his pleas for reforms to an electoral system he says is flawed.

Further, the ex-rebel has been trying to press Frelimo party to accept Renamo demands for greater inclusivity in the government.