Maputo — Mozambique's main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, is reducing the number of staff at its Maputo headquarters.
According to a report in Thursday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", Renamo is sending several of these officials back to their home provinces, and this move is generating discontent.
They are given three months salary, but once in the provinces they find they have nowhere to live, and are given no specific party tasks to undertake. In Quelimane, capital of the central province of Zambezia, Renamo officials transferred from Maputo are currently sleeping in the Renamo provincial offices.
Contacted by "Mediafax", Renamo spokesman Fernando Mazanga described the move as "a rationalisation of manpower". It was a matter of "putting cadres at the grass roots, where there is often a shortage of qualified people".
"There are lots of qualified people in Maputo, and, because there are so many of them, they end up doing practically nothing, while the provinces are short of staff", said Mazanga. "This is a question of putting people in the right places".
Mazanga revealed that Raimundo Samuge is no longer chairman of the Renamo National Council, but has been shifted to head the mobilisation department. Yet Samuge has only been chairman of the council for five months: he was elected to the post at a meeting in February, when Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama resigned as chairperson, while maintaining his post as president of the party.
As for the case of Chico Francisco, the former advisor on international relations to Dhlakama, Mazanga insisted that he has not been expelled from the party. He has merely been "relieved of his duties".
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Francisco has been accused (notably in the pages of the Renamo publication "Imparcial") of sabotaging a planned visit by Dhlakama to the United States last month. Dhlakama was unable to travel because his visa application was made too late.
Francisco then disobeyed instructions from Dhlakama and went ahead with his own visit to the US, attending a meeting of the International Democratic Union, a grouping of right wing parties with which Renamo is associated.
Francisco has become increasingly angered at the stream of attacks against him from other Renamo figures. On Monday he pointed out that, contrary to what his opponents claim, he has never travelled at Renamo's expense, and did not draw a salary for the work he used to do for Renamo.
Mazanga, however, said that Francisco was "insulting the party", because he is paid as a member of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, and only earns that money because he is a member of Renamo.
"He ought to know that the money he receives at the Assembly is because he is a Renamo deputy", said Mazanga. "He didn't go to the Assembly as an individual, but on the Renamo ticket".
Furthermore, while Renamo itself did not pay for Francisco's ticket to the US, the institution which did, "bought the ticket because he is a member of Renamo".
