Republic of Mozambique President Armando Guebuza has warned of foreign interference in the internal affairs of this Southern African state. The country has recently been the focus of natural resource exploration., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.
Mozambique govt to hold talks with rebels
Friday, 12 April 2013 00:00
Afonso Dhlakama admitted he ordered attacks in the central province of Sofala last week that left seven people, including four police officers, dead.
MAPUTO. — The Mozambique government has announced that it will meet a delegation from the ex-rebel group Renamo today, amid threats of violence that threaten to throw the country back into the destructive civil war that raged between 1975 and 1992.
The meeting comes on the backdrop of an admission by Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama that he ordered the attacks in the central province of Sofala last week that left seven people, including four police officers, dead.
A spokesman for the defence ministry said the interior minister, Alberto Mondlane would receive the Renamo delegation today.
Tension between Renamo and the Frelimo-led government escalated last year after Dhlakama set up camp in the Gorongosa Mountains where he began retraining former guerrilla fighters.
Renamo is demanding a renegotiation of the terms of the 1992 peace accord.
Earlier this month, Renamo members attacked a police command post in the town of Muxungue, just hours after the police raided the group’s office with tear gas and arrested 15 leaders.
Dhlakama has said that he is open to a ceasefire as long as the government pulls back its security forces from the perimeter of his bush camp in the Gorongosa Mountains and releases the 15 detained supporters.
Renamo claims one of its members was killed in the attack.
“They (the police) dispersed the meeting but with the intention to kill,” Dhlakama said on Wednesday, confirming he ordered the revenge attack,” Renamo is tired of not responding,” he said.
Dhlakama has declined a face-to-face meeting with President Armando Guebuza, claiming such encounters had in the past led to speculation that he was receiving pay-offs from the government.
The deadliest attacks in Mozambique in more than a decade have rekindled memories of the civil war between 1975 and 1992.
The situation has deteriorated over the past few days, raising fears that Mozambique’s two decades of peace may be under threat.
Speaking to DW, Fernando Veloso, director of the Mozambican online portal Canalmoz, said the police premises were attacked and there was an exchange of heavy gunfire.
The attack was in response to a raid on a Renamo gathering in Muxungué that resulted in the arrest of 15 of its supporters.
According to police, the group was carrying out military drills.
Tensions have also been growing in other areas such as Gondola in Manica province in central Mozambique and in the former rebel stronghold of Sofala province.
Sofala was where the rebels had their main headquarters “Casa Banana” during the civil war, located in the middle of Gorongosa national park.
Analysts have largely dismissed Dhlakama’s threats of a return to civil war as bluster, aimed at regaining some of his depleted political power.
But Sultan Mussa, a programme officer at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Mozambique, which monitors Renamo’s activities, said there was the possibility of civil war flaring up again as the government has not been taking dialogue with the Renamo very seriously.
“It is true that Renamo is represented in parliament but is too weak to wield any influence in decision-making,” he added.
Not all Renamo rebels were disarmed after the peace agreement was signed between the Frelimo government and Renamo in 1992.
The government wanted to avoid further armed confrontation and was unwilling to break up Dhlakama’s elite unit of some 400 fighters. His base in Maringué, in Sofala province just north of the Gorongosa National Park, was kept under close surveillance by the police.
Access to the Maringué base was generally not possible, even for independent observers.
Renamo showed no interest in disarming, making the threat of a possible return to war credible. In 1999 at the first election after the signing of the peace agreement,
Dhlakama garnered 47.7 percent of the vote, failing by a narrow margin to prevent President Joaquim Chissano from being re-elected.
In the years that followed the gap between Renamo and the rest of the population grew wider. In urban areas in particular, voters had little time for the persistent emphasis on the figure of Dhlakama.
Dhlakama withdrew from the public eye, living in seclusion in Nampula in the north of the country in recent years, but retaining the party leadership.
The price he paid for isolating himself was a dismal performance at the polls, securing just 16.4 percent of the vote in the 2009 election.
Renamo has announced that it will not be participating in municipal elections in November. It is the only one of three parties represented in parliament that is not competing. Renamo says it is protesting against the composition of the Electoral Commission, which it claims is stacked against it.
The party’s secretary general Manuel Bissopo said Renamo “will not allow the elections to take place, without a transparent, free and fair control of the electoral process.”
With such tactics Renamo is maneuvering itself further and further into the political wilderness. It doesn’t run a single municipality in the whole of Mozambique.
In the 2009 poll, Renamo fared badly in its former strongholds of Beira and Quelimane, losing its position as the main opposition party to the newly-formed Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM).
The MDM was founded by Daviz Simango, formerly the Renamo mayor of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city.
- AFP/dw.de/Mozambique-government
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