Dhlakama’s guards to receive police training

Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama

Maputo, 10 Oct (AIM) – Part of the deal ending the Friday confrontation in the central Mozambican city of Beira between the riot police and militiamen guarding Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, is that Dhlakama’s guards will now be recruited into the police and receive police training.

On Friday afternoon, all the 16 guns still in the possession of Dhlakama’s guards were collected and handed over to the police via a group of mediators.

These included the Vice-Chancellor of the Polytechnic University, Lourenco do Rosario, and Anglican Bishop Dinis Sengulane, two of the men who had been mediating the dialogue between the government and Renamo which Dhlakama broke off abruptly in August. They were joined by the Catholic Archbishop of Beira, Claudio Zunna and the Mayor of Quelimane, Manuel de Araujo (who is a leading figure in the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic movement, MDM).

According to the report in Saturday’s issue of the daily paper “Noticias”, in the presence of Sofala provincial governor Helena Taipo, Araujo read out the delivery note for the weapons, and the mediators formally handed the guns over to the police.

The quid pro quo was the release of the eight Renamo militiamen detained earlier in the day, and the promise of police training for Dhlakama’s guards. Dhlakama declared that he regarded these events as “the beginning of integration” (of his men into the defence and security forces).

The government first offered police training for Dhlakama’s bodyguards in the late 1990s, but the Renamo leader spurned the offer.

If the current deal is implemented, the guards will be trained as policemen, and could once again be protecting Dhlakama, but this time in police uniform, using police weapons, and under police discipline.

In August, Dhlakama dispensed with his police escort, and even now he says he would prefer private security to a police guard. Doubtless he would rethink this position if he knows it is own men under the police uniforms.

The mediators promised that they will now attempt to revive the stalled government-Renamo dialogue. But there seems to be a tacit understanding that nothing further can be done before a face-to-face meeting between Dhlakama and President Filipe Nyusi.

Nyusi issued an invitation to such a meeting in August, but initially Dhlakama flatly refused to attend. Now Dhlakama has hinted strongly that he is willing to travel to Maputo to meet the President.

Cited by Radio Mozambique on Friday, Sengulane said he hoped that “the dialogue which happened today can overflow and reach other levels in such a way that nobody will feel intimidated”.

It is not yet clear what will happen to the rest of the Renamo militia, most of whom are currently living in bases in central Mozambique. Disbanding Renamo’s private army is bound to be high on the agenda of any future talks with the government.