Maputo — "I am the Barack Obama of Mozambique", declared Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement, Renamo, in an interview on Wednesday with the independent television station, STV.

Dhlakama, who in the past has compared himself with Martin Luther King, also claimed that he is "the true democrat of Mozambique", that he abolished the "communism set up by Frelimo", and that he "always won elections" (despite the harsh fact that he always lost them - but nowadays Dhlakama rarely allows reality to intrude upon his statements).

"Who got rid of Frelimo's one-party state?", he asked rhetorically. The interviewer is supposed to reply "Renamo did!" - but in fact the constitution establishing a pluralist system was passed by a Frelimo parliament two years before Renamo laid down its weapons and signed a peace agreement with the government.

"Today the members of Frelimo are millionaires, but they didn't use to believe in the market economy", said Dhlakama. "Today there are several human rights leagues, and all this was thanks to the Obama of Mozambique, who is me, who finished off the communism established by Frelimo".

Dhlakama then challenged President Armando Guebuza to a televised debate - this is a volte-face, in that ever since Guebuza took office in February 2005, Dhlakama has been avoiding meetings with the President. He even boycotted an informal lunch which Guebuza offered to all the candidates in the 2004 presidential election.

Dhlakama claimed that, in a TV debate, he would reveal "political secrets" that many Mozambicans currently do not know about. In such a debate he would "show who has won elections in Mozambique, and how Frelimo steals the votes".

"But this Obama of Mozambique is unlucky", he added. "Whenever he says something, people complain, they say that Dhlakama shouldn't have said that. But it's better to speak than to keep quiet and later create war to destroy democracy".

He said that during his proposed debate, he would ask Guebuza "what is the programme you have for Mozambique, how do you think you will end suffering, particularly of unemployed young people, and of the pregnant women who die in the queues in the public hospitals, while the nurses are obliged to become members of Frelimo".

Dhlakama did not cite any specific cases of pregnant women dying in queues. Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with the country's health problems knows that maternal mortality in Mozambique happens overwhelmingly outside hospitals, among those women who give birth at home.

Asked to comment on Dhlakama's statements, Edson Macuacua, the Frelimo Central Committee Secretary for Mobilization and Propaganda, dismissed them as "infantile". The question about Guebuza's programme was particularly absurd, because Guebuza is governing on the basis of the 2004 Frelimo election manifesto, which was then worked into the 2005-2009 five year programme approved by the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.

Dhlakama's statements, Macuacua said, came from "a desperate leader who is watching his party lose ground to Frelimo".