28 November 2008
Maputo — Despite the crushing victory of the mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango, in last week's municipal elections, there is little sign that the official wing of the main opposition party, Renamo, is seeking a reconciliation with Simango's supporters.
Simango, despite being the best known and most competent of Renamo's municipal politicians, was expelled from the party in September. But, running as an independent, he went on to win the mayoral election in Beira, defeating Lourenco Bulha, the candidate of the ruling Frelimo Party, and utterly humiliating the official Renamo candidate, Manuel :Pereira.
This defeat has not softened the hearts of Simango's opponents who are now trying to remove a Simango supporter, Jose Cazonda, from his post as chairperson of the Beira Municipal Assembly. According to a report in Friday's issue of the independent daily "O Pais", the anti-Simango faction deposited a letter with the assembly's Board on Thursday, saying that Cazonda has been sacked.
The new head of the Renamo group in the Assembly, the letter added, is Sebastiao Mucindo, a former Renamo guerrilla, and regarded as a man trusted by Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama.
Jose Machava, a former brigadier in the Renamo army, and spokesperson for Renamo in the Assembly, told "O Pais" that Cazonda was sacked because Renamo had "lost confidence in him".
This dispute went back to the previous session of the Assembly, prior to the elections, when some of the Renamo group allied with Frelimo municipal deputies to vote down an amended budget for the city council proposed by Simango. Cazonda declared publicly that the Renamo Sofala provincial delegate, Fernando Mbararano, had ordered the rejection of the budget on instructions from Dhlakama.
Machava, sticking to the official line that the amended budget was voted down because it contained "irregularities", said that, by dragging Dhlakama's name into the matter "Cazonda lost the confidence of the Renamo group. And so we decided to remove him".
Others, however, argue that Renamo has no legal power to sack Cazonda. This is because there is no such thing as a Renamo group in the Beira Assembly. The organisation which won a majority in the Beira Assembly in the 2003 elections was not Renamo, but the Renamo-Electoral Union, a coalition between Renamo and ten small parties.
Nowadays, Renamo treats its coalition partners with disdain and last week it ran on its own. But the Electoral Union still exists in the current Beira assembly, which will remain in office until the new one is sworn in.
Pro-Simango assembly member Jaime Machava pointed out that what is normally referred to simply as "the Renamo group" in the assembly in fact contains three members of the minor parties who were not consulted about the sacking of Cazonda.
No meeting of the Assembly group was ever held to discuss the matter, said Jaime Machava. "Only three or four leading members of Renamo took this decision and sent the letter to the Assembly board", he added. "So it's an illegal act".
Jose Machava offered one small olive branch to Simango. He admitted that when the new Assembly takes office, the Renamo group may support Simango (the alternative would be an alliance with Frelimo against the mayor, which many Beira Renamo members would find unacceptable).
One possible sign of a truce is that earlier this week the Renamo group in the Assembly passed en bloc Simango's plan of activities and budget for the city council for 2009.. "In politics, today's enemy can be tomorrow's friend, and today's friend can be tomorrow's enenmy", said Machava.
Meanwhile, the Renamo national spokesman, Fernando Mazanga, has made it clear that Renamo can do without intellectuals. Following calls from prominent Renamo academics Manuel de Araujo, Ismael Mussa and Joao Colaco (who are all also members of the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic) for an extraordinary congress of Renamo, Mazanga launched a venomous tirade against them, and suggested they were at the root of the party's problems.
Mazanga told "O Pais" that in the first general election, in 1994, "we had 112 seats, in the second (1999) we had 116, but when they joined, in 2004, we had 90 seats. They add no value to the party, otherwise we would not have had such a fall".
"The time has come to call things by their names", said Mazanga. "We can no longer tolerate this sort of people. There are those who suffer in this party and don't even dream of entering the Assembly of the Republic. But those people are there (in the Assembly) using the sweat of those who mortgaged their sweat and their youths".
Interviewed in Friday's issue of the independent weekly "Savana", Ismael Mussa said he had no doubt that Renamo's problem is its leadership. He suggested that the way forward would be for Dhlakama to resign, and a Congress would then be held to elect a new leadership.
Mussa said that, if he left the presidency of Renamo voluntarily, Dhlakama would rescue his honour, and allow the congress to take decisions without any accusations of manipulation. He stressed that this suggestion was not intended to cast doubt on Dhlakama's reputation: in Mussa's view Dhlakama "is a person who has been very useful for the country".
But the current political dynamic required a flexibility that the Renamo leadership does not display, he said.
Mussa did not accept Dhlakama's theory that Renamo lost the municipal election because Frelimo trucked in vast numbers of its supporters from the countryside to vote in municipalities where they were not registered as voters. He said that, while irregularities had occurred, they were not sufficient to influence the results.
"Renamo's humiliation was predictable", he said. "Our party's strategy failed, and I warned the Renamo leadership, but they didn't want to listen to me".
Mussa had told Dhlakama that the strategy followed was not viable, and ,"so that I would not become an accomplice", he decided to resign his position as one of Dhlakama's advisers. Although Mussa submitted his letter of resignation in September, he has not yet received a reply.
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I congratulate the Renamo's members decision to request the removal of dlakhama from the party's leadership. For any organization to survive and consistently succeed in the long run, it needs to cope with the demands of the time. Dlakhama ideals and projection of the future are ofdated.
New Blood is needed to run the party's ideals towards success. New blood is needed to face Frelimo with pride and certainty. It has beeb long that Renamo is not Renamo anymore but Dlakhamas source of Happines, income, pride and entertainment. It is clear that Renamo is more than that, and has the… [Read Full Text]