Afonso Dhlakama, leader of Mozambique's former rebel movement Renamo, met on Thursday with leaders of four tiny organisations, which the Mozambican press coyly refers to as "extra-parliamentary parties".

They are "extra-parliamentary" because they have almost no votes. They have no members, no offices, no publications - nothing that identifies organisations as political parties in most of the world.

Yet they trooped up to the northern city of Nampula to pay homage to Dhlakama, and to promise that they would support the demonstrations that Renamo has promised to call against the results of the 28 October general elections.

The groups that made this pilgrimage were the Union of Mozambican Democrats (UDM), the Democratic Union (UD), the Liberal and Democratic Party (PALMO), and the Social Democratic Reconciliation Party (PRDS). UDM leader Ricardo Viana, who headed this delegation, said there were five parties, but journalists in Nampula could only discover the names of four.

Viana refused to allow Renamo to divulge the list of parties attending the discussions with Dhlakama, and Renamo apparently accepted this paranoid demand.

How many people could these groups put onto the streets to support Renamo's demonstrations? Not many, judging by the election results. The UDM won 2,190 votes - which was 0.06 per cent of the 3.9 million votes cast on 28 October. The PRDS picked up the derisory total of 399 votes (0.01 per cent). The UD is a coalition of six tiny groups, including PALMO - it did not run in the elections, because it did not have enough valid candidates.

Viana is generously described in Friday's issue of the daily paper "O Pais" as "a candidate excluded from the presidential elections". It fails to add that the reason he was excluded was that his papers were forged.

All presidential candidates need to present at least 10,000 supporting signatures of registered voters. When the Constitutional Council, the body that vets presidential candidates, checked Viana's signatures, it found that only 11 of them were valid.

When Viana delivered his signatures AIM saw the top couple of sheets - the names and signatures were all obviously written by the same person using the same pen.

Viana used to be a member of the ruling Frelimo Party, but how he claims that Frelimo has "made a pact with the Devil". The religious language is no accident - Viana says that Mozambique's secular constitution, enshrining the separation of church and state, must be abolished. Instead Mozambique should be governed "by the divine law".

This did not stop Dhlakama from praising Viana, and the leaders of the other tiny organisations, as "the true democrats, who intend to stay on the side of the people".

If Dhlakama is leaning on a crutch so fragile as Jose Viana, then Renamo's situation must be more desperate than we imagined.