Maputo — An attempt by Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the death of the first Renamo commander, Andre Matasangaissa, went embarrassingly wrong on Friday, when the widow of a murdered Renamo general secretary accused the party's leader, Afonso Dhlakama, of "demagogy".

Matsangaissa died on 17 October 1979, leading an abortive raid against the central town of Gorongosa. The town was well-defended, and the Mozambican army routed the attackers. Matsangaissa's body was never recovered.

At the time, Renamo was operating as an irregular unit in the armed forces of the Ian Smith regime in what was then still called Rhodesia. After Matsangaissa's death the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) appointed Dhlakama as Renamo commander.

At the Friday ceremony, Dhlakama referred to Matsangaissa as "the first President of Renamo". Unfortunately, for him, sitting in the audience was Ivette Fernandes, widow of Evo Fernandes, the Renamo general secretary murdered in Lisbon in 1987.

Ivette Fernandes knew that there was no such post as President of Renamo in the 1970s. Indeed, the term Renamo was unknown in the 1970s. The name of the organisation was always Mozambique National Resistance, but the chosen acronym in the late 1970s was RNM in Portuguese, or MNR in English.

The switch from RNM to Renamo came in 1983, after the death in South Africa of the first Renamo general secetary Orlando Cristina, and his replacement by Evo Fernandes, a much more politically astute figure

Ivette Fernandes objected to Dhlakama's rewriting of Renamo's history, and told him so to his face. At the meeting, held in Dhlakama's Maputo office, she took the microphone and said "Excuse me, but you're being a demagogue. This is demagogy".

For she regarded her late husband, and not Matsangaissa, as the real founder of a political, rather than a military Renamo. "It was my husband who gave a political touch to Renamo in 1983", she said, "and you were appointed president at its first Congress".

She complained that nobody from Renamo had ever paid tribute to her husband. Yet he occupied a senior party position when he was murdered, unlike Matsangaissa who died in combat when he was nothing more than the commander of a small band of guerrillas.

Dhlakama was visibly embarrassed by this reminder of the past. He admitted that her complaint was legitimate and the Renamo leadership had taken note of it. He urged Ivette Fernandes to "collaborate, by drawing up a policy proposal for Renamo women".

This was not enough to silence her. Ivete Fernandes still had the microphone in her hand, and she accused Dhlakama of being "more interested in making people laugh, than in dealing with serious matters for the party".

And although the meeting was supposed to pay homage to Matsangaissa, Dhlakama seemed more concerned with talking about himself. "Journalists open their newspapers with Dhlakama", he said. "This only happens because I am important. Any editor who wants to make a profit uses my name. They attack me because I'm strong".

Dhlakama was clearly referring to Friday's issue of the independent weekly "Savana". This does indeed have a portrait of Dhlakama on the cover - but the accompanying headline reads "Dhlakama isolated", and the article deals with the resignation of three of Dhlakama's advisers because they can no longer stomach the authoritarian way he runs the party.

"I'm an inconvenience for people who aren't democratic", claimed Dhlakama. "But it doesn't bother me. I'm attractive. I don't look like a former guerrilla, I look like a European".

One day, he promised, he would write "the true history of Renamo", correcting the various people who are now appearing claiming to have played a role in founding the organisation

"I wanted to write the history of Renamo after I'd been President of the Republic, but now I'll write it before", he said, to the laughter of those present. Uneasy laughter, perhaps, because that sounds like an acknowledgement by Dhlakama that he has no chance of winning the 2009 presidential election.