Nyusi calls for restraint in disarming RENAMO

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi

Speaking in Moamba, about 60 kilometres northwest of Maputo, during a graduation ceremony for newly trained prison guards, Nyusi put the brakes on the compulsory disarmament of Renamo, calling instead on the Renamo gunmen to hand over their weapons voluntarily.

“I am using this podium to order restraint in compulsory disarmament, allowing everyone to hand over voluntarily that which they think they should not possess”, said Nyusi. “Above all, this is to allow us to work and to enter into dialogue, in the spirit of trust and mutual willingness”.

“If there is no willingness on the part of all those involved in the peace process, we are aware that this peace may not happen”, he warned.

“I am ready to speak with anybody, including the Renamo leadership, in order effectively to re-establish peace”, Nyusi declared. “This is so that we can find solutions that will calm Mozambicans”.

He once again appealed to the Renamo militiamen to hand over their guns, “so that the ownership of weaponry is reserved only for the defence and security forces, based on a spirit of concord”.

This emphasis is quite different from that given by Interior Minister Jaime Monteiro, when he addressed the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on 4 November. Monteiro then had promised “to strengthen the collection of weapons that are in illegitimate hands”, and promised that this collection would continue “until the last firearm in unauthorized hands is collected coercively or handed over voluntarily”.

Nyusi was clearly suggesting the re-opening of talks with Renamo. But it was Renamo, on the instructions of its leader, Afonso Dhlakama, which in August unilaterally broke off the dialogue with the government that had been under way since April 2013.

Dhlakama himself publicly rejected the invitation from Nyusi, issued in late August, for a face-to-face meeting in Maputo. Currently Dhlakama has dropped off the radar – he has not been seen in public since 9 October, when the defence forces disarmed his bodyguards in the central city of Beira.

Addressing the newly trained prison guards, Nyusi called for selfless dedication to the tasks entrusted to them. He reminded them that “the people are with you in the mission you will be carrying out as from today”.

About 600 guards from all over the country graduated from the course, which lasted for six weeks.