Mozambique: Dhlakama claims RENAMO will not return to war

A week ago the police moved to disperse a large group of Renamo members and supporters who had gathered at the Renamo Muxungue office, apparently to organize the promised disruption of the forthcoming voter registration. The police detained 15 people.

On Thursday, a Renamo unit attacked the Muxungue police post in an attempt to free the detainees. In the clash, four members of the riot police, and one Renamo fighter died. On Saturday, a group of six armed men, believed to be from Renamo ambushed four vehicles on the main north-south highway, about 20 kilometres from Muxungue. Three people died in these attacks.

In a press conference held on Wednesday in Gorongosa district, where he has been living since November, Dhlakama regretted the deaths, and sent condolences to the families of those his men had killed.

“There is never going to be any more war”, he pledged. “But I am not satisfied with the situation, and the pending problems need to be resolved rapidly”.

He claimed that the current problems arise from the failure to comply with clauses in the 1992 peace agreement between the government and Renamo – notably the failure to form a new, unified army of 30,000 men, half from the old government army, the FAM/FPLM, and half from Renamo.

He claimed that the government had limited the size of the new armed forces, the FADM, for budgetary reasons.

Either Dhlakama’s memory is very faulty, or he is deliberately deceiving those Mozambicans too young to remember what happened in the wake of the peace accord. The agreement stipulated that all the initial members of the FADM were to be volunteers, and there simply were not enough volunteers to form an army of 30,000 men.

Attempts to pressgang men into the FADM led to riots. In mid-1994, mutinies spread throughout the assembly points for government troops and for Renamo forces. Both armies dissolved chaotically, as the soldiers demanded their immediate demobilization.

This was why the FADM was formed of less than 12,000 men, the majority of whom were officers. In the end about two thirds of the volunteers came from the FAM/FPLM and one third from Renamo. Renamo accepted this arrangement, since it was impossible to recruit anybody else. Budgetary restrictions had nothing to do with it.

Dhlakama took full responsibility for the attack on the Muxungue police post. “I was aware of it and I authorized it”, he said.

He added that he was responding to demands from former Renamo guerrillas who wanted to retaliate for the police raid against the Renamo Muxungue office. “I can’t hide it. I told them ‘you waged the war, you know where to get the guns, defend yourselves’, and on the following day, they responded”, he said. The Saturday attacks on vehicles, however, he described as “accidents”, without stating clearly who was responsible for them.

Dhlakama claimed that he was under pressure from his men, who had accused him of treachery, and demanded that he resign, on the grounds that he was protecting the interests of the ruling Frelimo Party. He claimed that his men had even threatened to kill him, unless he authorized the Muxungue attack.

This is a habitual tactic of Dhlakama, painting himself as a moderate under pressure from extremists within his own ranks.

He also claimed that three days prior to the press conference, President Armando Guebuza had contacted him and sent him a list of five points to be negotiated in order to maintain peace. One of these points was a demand for an immediate end to attacks against security forces and civilians, such as had happened in Muxungue.

Dhlakama said he had responded positively to Guebuza’s initiative – but so far there has been no word from Guebuza’s office as to whether such an exchange of correspondence really took place. He claimed that the go-between in this exchange was the respected academic Lourenco do Rosario, Vice-Chancellor of the Polytechnic University,

In his response to Guebuza, Dhlakama had laid down pre-conditions for the resumption of dialogue between Renamo and the government. These included the immediate and unconditional release of the Renamo members detained in Muxungue, and the withdrawal of security forces from the vicinity of his base at Satunjira, in Gorongosa, and from the Renamo offices in Muxungue and the northern city of Nampula (where the Renamo office was stormed after a clash in March 2012). If these forces did not withdraw, he promised that Renamo would attack them.

He claimed that Guebuza had promised that he would meet with the defence and interior ministers to order the removal of these police units.

Dhlakama also wanted to set up working groups to revoke the electoral laws. Such a proposal, if it exists, would be entirely illegal, since the laws were passed in December by the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and cannot be revoked by a back-door arrangement between political leaders.

Dhlakama said Guebuza had proposed a face-to-face meeting, which he had rejected. He claimed there was nothing to talk about since nothing the two men had discussed at their last meeting had been put into practice. He would not go to a meeting just for the sake of going. “You will later say that I went there to ask for money, as some of you have written in the past”, he told the reporters.

Dhlakama took the opportunity of the press conference to describe himself as “the best politico-military figure in the world” because he had allegedly tolerated 20 years of harassment and violent attacks without retaliating.

One concrete result from the exchange of correspondence between Guebuza and Dhlakama is that senior officials of the Defence Ministry will meet on Thursday with a Renamo delegation, led by Saimone Macuiana, a senior Renamo parliamentarian, and head of the party’s Legal Council. A similar meeting with the Interior Ministry is scheduled for Friday.