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Francisco Mucanheia, a parliamentary deputy of the ruling Frelimo Party, on Thursday accused the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), and particularly the family of its leader, Daviz Simango, of responsibility for the murder on 4 October of the mayor of Nampula, Mahamudo Amurrane.
In the second day of a question and answer session between the government and deputies in the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Mucanheia, who lives in Nampula, said Amurrane “was a man of integrity who would not strike corrupt deals with the MDM members surrounding him”.
Amurane was elected mayor in 2013 on the MDM ticket, but fell out with the MDM leadership, and publicly accused the MDM of wanting to raid the Nampula municipal coffers for political party purposes.
Mucanheia, who is also a member of the Frelimo Central Committee Secretariat, gave a much more detailed indictment of the MDM than other Frelimo deputies who had blamed the MDM for the murder on Wednesday.
“Daviz Simango was very afraid of Amurane because he respected values which Simango does not have”, he said. “He was fought against by the Simango family who inherited the virus of treason from their father, Uria Simango”.
By the family, Mucanheia was referring essentially to Daviz and his brother Lutero, who is head of the MDM parliamentary group. Their father, Uria, was once Deputy President of Frelimo, but deserted from the liberation movement in 1970, and was accused of betraying Frelimo.
On Wednesday MDM deputy Jose Manuel de Sousa unwisely claimed that the first President of Frelimo, Eduardo Mondlane, was murdered by supporters of his successor, Samora Machel. In fact, it is generally believed that the parcel bomb which killed Mondlane was sent by the Portuguese secret police, the PIDE. Within Frelimo it has always been suspected that Simango was complicit in the murder.
“What they did to Mondlane, they have now done to Amurane”, accused Mucanheia.
He added that the MDM chairperson of the Nampula Municipal Assembly, Manuel Tocova, who is now interim mayor of the city “is trying to grab the municipal funds”. He claimed that a collapse in municipal tax collection in the weeks following Amurane’s murder was evidence that the MDM was stealing the money.
He also insisted that , shortly before the murder, MDM members had tried to throw Amurane out of his mayoral offices, and seize the keys. The MDM says this story is untrue.
Despite the MDM’s political dispute with Amurane, it is was the MDM parliamentary group that had included the murder of Amurane in a list of crimes for which it demanded explanations from the government. “The MDM has no moral standing to come here and speak of corruption or the murder of Amurane”, declared Mucanheia. “The MDM has no future in Nampula”.
He also tried to tie the murder in with the islamist attacks in Mocimboa da Praia, in Cabo Delgado province, on 5-6 October, as part of a vast conspiracy against Frelimo.
Forces (which Mucanheia did not identify) did not like President Filipe Nyusi’s strategy for achieving a lasting peace, or his August meeting with the leader of the Renamo rebels, Afonso Dhlakama.
These forces also “did not like the success of the Frelimo 11th congress (in September). They thought that Frelimo would be weakened. But they failed and they are sharpening their weapons of war”, he said. “They killed Amurane, they attacked Mocimboa da Praia”.
“They want to blame moslems, they want to blame our brothers who studied in Saudi Arabia”, added Mucanheia. “Involving moslems is false and deceitful. These attacks have nothing to do with the traditions of Mozambican moslems”.
But, although the attacks were condemned by the country’s main Islamic organisations, there is no doubt that the perpetrators consider themselves moslems. Their demands, according to Mocimboa da Praia residents who spoke to reporters, include the imposition of sharia law, a ban on the sale of alcoholic drinks, and the removal of Christian crosses.
The MDM had little chance to respond to Mucanheia’s accusations since it had used up most of its allotted parliamentary time on Wednesday.
One MDM deputy, Venancio Mondlane, suggested wiping the slate clean with a general amnesty law to cover all political assassinations and theft of state funds. He thought that, if the state guaranteed no prison time, in exchange for telling the truth and returning stolen money, this would allow “those who are now in darkness to pass into the light”.
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