The pledge was given to reporters by Agriculture Minister Jose Pacheco, who is the head of the government delegation to a further round of talks with Renamo, scheduled for Thursday. Three earlier rounds of dialogue were held in December, at which no agreement was reached.
Speaking after a meeting of the Mozambican cabinet, the Council of Ministers, Pacheco said the government had accepted the request from Renamo for further talks, “and so we shall once again receive a Renamo delegation, in order to speak about the most relevant aspects of the life of Mozambicans”.
Pacheco hoped that the meeting would debate matters leading to the deepening of matters concerning the rule of law and the principles of democracy in Mozambique. The themes on the table would include questions of economic development “as long as these lead to victory in the struggle against poverty”.
In matters for which there already exists a legal framework, it might be possible to reach understandings, Pacheco said, but if there were matters “that go beyond the Mozambican constitutional framework, we shall register them in the perspective of indicating platforms for follow-up by the various actors in the governance of the Mozambican state”.
But it now seems that one of the real goals of Renamo in its dialogue with the government is to obtain more money. This implicit demand is contained in a letter from Renamo to the government, which AIM has seen, dated 26 April, and signed by Augusto Mateus, head of the office of Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama.
“Renamo, as a signatory and partner of the government in the General Peace Agreement (of October 1992), does not understand why it remains purely and simply excluded from the use of the riches that are the fruit of the peace which it helped to win and maintain during the past 20 years”.
The letter continues with the claim that “the process of transforming a military movement into a political party requires the creation of a range of material conditions of various types to ensure a peaceful transition without great problems”.
The maintenance of a machine such as Renamo requires “financial robustness which necessarily involves the creation of concrete conditions”.
In other words, Renamo will cooperate with the government and with Mozambican state institutions, if it is paid to do so.
The letter implies that, almost 20 years after the peace agreement, Renamo still has not completed its transition from a military force to a political party. Yet in 1993 a United Nations Trust Fund was set up precisely in order to fund this transition. By the end of 1994, according to the then UN Special Representative in Mozambique, Aldo Ajello, the fund had provided Renamo with 17 million US dollars. Not a penny of this money was ever accounted for.
Subsequently Renamo received a state subsidy because of its parliamentary representation. Every parliamentary party receives funding from the Mozambican state budget in proportion to the number of seats it holds. Renamo’s problem is that that this number has declined sharply.
Renamo had 112 seats in the first multi-party parliament in 1994. In 1999, Renamo ran in a coalition with several minor parties, known as the Renamo-Electoral Union. This won 177 seats – but the money now had to be shared with Renamo’s partners.
In 2004, the coalition won only 90 seats. In the latest election, in 2009, Renamo ditched its coalition partners and won only 51 seats. As a result, the state subsidy for Renamo has shrunk.
In mid-2012, a former Renamo general secretary, Viana Magalhaes, put the subsidy at three million meticais (somewhat less than 100,000 US dollars at today’s exchange rates). He put Renamo’s expenditure at between nine and ten million meticais a month.
All over the world political parties rely heavily on their members and sympathizers to provide money through membership fees, and to raise money in a variety of other voluntary activities. Indeed, since political parties are voluntary bodies there is a strong argument that they should rely exclusively on members and supporters instead of sponging off general taxation.
But there is no sign of Renamo doing any fund raising of its own, or urging its members to support the party financially. Indeed, Renamo has not even published any figure for its membership.
Mozambique’s second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), receives much less money from the state than Renamo does, since it only has eight deputies. It does not write begging letters, but managed to organize a well-attended congress last year, and is establishing its party structures throughout the country.
Furthermore, the state budget is not elastic. Any extra money for Renamo can only be found by taking it from some other part of the budget, and Renamo has not suggested what should be cut to accommodate its own interests.
Post published in: Africa News