Maputo — Lourenço do Rosário, a prominent Mozambican academic, warned against turning the "inclusive national dialogue" into a politicized process, claiming that previous peace agreements failed because they were overly politicized rather than focusing on fostering trust among Mozambicans.
The dialogue is based on a document signed in March 2025 by President Daniel Chapo and nine political parties, which the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, then transformed into a law.
According to Do Rosário, the erosion of trust did not begin with the 2024 elections, when hundreds of people across the country took to the street in protest against the allegedly fraudulent results of the general elections. The protests started peacefully but then turned into rioting.
According to the academic, politicized process undermines peace promotion between Mozambicans and opens space so that political interests naturally seek to gain a foothold in the governance agenda.
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"When we start from the premise that we must pause and restart the discussion to move toward pacification, the label 'inclusive', implying reconciliation, is highly optimistic. But how can we reach an agreement that encompasses pacification and reconciliation when we haven't even mapped out our own interests? We have yet to see any discourse in this dialogue involving self-analysis or an evaluation of the errors each group has committed along the way", the academic said, cited by the daily independent paper "O País."
Do Rosário belives that the country has stopped from create mechanisms for dialogue "but the clock keeps ticking. We are in 2026, nearing 2027, and the 2028 electoral calendar is approaching. What is happening? How can we make changes in time for the municipal and subsequent general election schedules to benefit from this dialogue?", he questioned.
"The entire peace process failed to foster trust among the actors, and the management of this period, from 1994 to 2024, has been defined by constant conflict", he added.
According to the academic, the country is not discussing the principals of what it wants to do or correct so that it can eventually materialize into very concrete issues, regarding electoral and state reforms and other legal revisions.
Do Rosário also said that other political parties should be involved to ensure that the essence of the dialogue is safeguarded.
He was surely referring to the main opposition figure, Venancio Mondlane, who was runner up in the 2024 presidential election. Mondlane was not involved in the discussions that created the dialogue, and his political party, Anamola, had not yet been formed.
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But once Anamola had been set up, Mondlane expressed its interest in taking part. Nonetheless, Anamola has not yet been given a seat on the committee organizing the dialogue (COTE).
Judging by the massive attendance at his rallies all over the country, Mondlane is easily the most popular opposition figure in the country. If the exclusion of Anamola and Mondlane continues, the dialogue is likely to become an expensive irrelevance.
"The essence of the dialogue is absolutely right, we needed it. But the current participants shouldn't be the ones making the final decision. It should be up to other bodies to implement the outcomes", he said.
