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Mozambique: Renamo Delegate Threatens Violence in Inhambane
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
20 February 2008
Posted to the web 20 February 2008
Maputo
Ester Mabecuane, the delegate in the southern province of Inhambane for Mozambique's former rebel movement Rename has warned of violence, if her party loses the forthcoming elections in the province, according to a report in Wednesday's issue of the weekly paper "Magazine Independente" (MI).
The paper headlines the article with the claim that Mabecuane has said there will be a "bloodbath" - but the term "bloodbath" does not appear in any of the direct quotes attributed to her in the body of the article.
Mabecuane claimed there will be a "spontaneous reaction" to what she described as the ruling Frelimo Party's "theft of votes".
"I can't say what kind of demonstration will happen if we are defeated, but I can assure you there will be havoc if we lose the elections, because both the party and the people are already saying 'that's enough!'", she declared. "Now is the hour of truth .and we cannot go on being robbed and keeping quiet as if we were in agreement with these scenes".
"You'll see what will happen", she told the reporter darkly. "Great scandals will happen if we lose here. Maxixe (the main commercial centre in Inhambane) is the first southern municipality we should win".
Renamo must win the municipal elections this time, she insisted. "I swear to you, no force will stop the demonstrations that will follow the announcement of the election results", she menaced. "If they don't want disorder, they'd better let us govern too, because we've won the elections".
In reality, Renamo's chances of winning elections in Inhambane are minimal, since this province has always been a Frelimo stronghold. Frelimo has won overwhelmingly in Inhambane in all three general elections held since the end of the one party state (in 1994, 1999 and 2004).
In the 2004 elections, Frelimo won 77 per cent of the vote, and Renamo just 10 per cent (with minor parties accounting for the rest). This gave Frelimo 15 of Inhambane's 16 parliamentary seats, and Renamo just one.
In the 2003 municipal elections, Renamo did even worse. For what little support Renamo has in Inhambane is concentrated in the north of the province, and none of the three municipalities are in the north.
Imagining that Renamo stands any chance of winning Maxixe is an extraordinary delusion. In 2003, the Frelimo candidate for mayor of Maxixe, Narciso Pedro, won 88 per cent of the vote. In the 31 seat Maxixe municipal assembly, Frelimo won 27 seats and Renamo just four.
Frelimo did even better in the town of Vilankulo, where its candidate took over 89 per cent of the vote. In the third municipality, Inhambane city, the Frelimo vote was 83.4 per cent. At the time, there was no allegation of fraud by Frelimo in this province - the main opposition complaint was the extremely low turnout, ranging from 17 to 25 per cent in the three municipalities.
Mabecuane also told MI that Renamo has not yet finalized its list of candidates for the elections for the Inhambane provincial assembly. This is an admission of a serious state of disorganization - for the elections were initially scheduled to be held in December 2007, and were then postponed to January 2008. When Frelimo proposed further postponement, Renamo initially insisted that they should go ahead in January.
Not until November did Renamo reluctantly agree to support a constitutional amendment allowing the elections to be postponed (probably to 2009). Yet now a Renamo provincial delegate is claiming that the party does not even have a definitive list of candidates. How could the party possibly have fought an election in January, if by the first week of November it did not know who its candidates would be ?
Mabecuane would not give the names of any Renamo candidates "as a precautionary measure, because more than 60 per cent of our potential candidates are state functionaries, and Frelimo could make life difficult for our militants".
These Renamo members, she claimed, include teachers "who are obliged to carry a Frelimo membership card", and cannot announce their true political sympathies for fear of losing their job. This is certainly a useful excuse for Renamo's near invisibility in Inhambane.
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Mabecuane also told MI that she had been on the phone to the Renamo national spokesperson, Fernando Mazanga, who ordered not to speak about the list of candidates because "they're still preliminary".
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