Mozambique: Attorney-General called to act on Facebook threats – AIM report

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Mozambique: Attorney-General called to act on Facebook threats – AIM report

6:07 CAT | 11 Sep 2018

File photo: Folha de Maputo

Two prominent Mozambican jurists are attempting to sue a social media commentator for making alleged threats in posts on Facebook.

What makes the incident surprising is that all those involved are members of the ruling Frelimo Party. The jurists are Teodoro Waty, who is a member of the Frelimo Central Committee, and Teodato Hunguana, a former member of the Central Committee, who has held various government positions, and was once a judge on the Constitutional Council, the highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law.

Both criticised the decisions, in late August, of the National Elections Commission (CNE) to disqualify candidates in the municipal elections scheduled for 10 October. The CNE disqualified Venancio Mondlane, the Maputo mayoral candidate of the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, and the entire slate of candidates proposed by the Youth Association for Development (AJUDEM). The mayoral candidate of AJUDEM was Samora Machel Junior (“Samito”), son of the country’s first president.

Samito is also a member of the Frelimo Central Committee and he accepted the invitation to head the AJUDEM slate in defiance of the Frelimo leadership, since the official Frelimo candidate for mayor of Maputo is Political Bureau member, and former finance minister, Eneas Comiche.

Waty and Hunguana disagreed with the CNE’s interpretation of the electoral law, and argued that neither Mondlane nor the AJUDEM slate should have been disqualified.

The interventions of the two jurists aroused the anger of Juliao Joao Cumbane, who is a lecturer in physics at Maputo’s Eduardo Mondlane University, and a prolific contributor to Facebook, where he portrays himself as a staunch defender of Frelimo.

Cumbane holds no official position in Frelimo, but frequently writes as though he were some kind of spokesperson for the party – even though he sometimes takes positions that directly contradict the Frelimo line.

Juristas processam JuliÃ£o Cumbane por alegadas ameaÃ§as — *Juliao Joao Cumbane. File photo; O País*

In responding to Waty and Hunguana, he overstepped the mark, claiming that the two jurists are part of a “conspiratorial campaign to take control of the state”.

He wrote “they will not rest until they have succeeded in making Samora Machel Junior (Samito) Mayor of Maputo, and from there possibly making him President of the Republic, so that they and Graca Machel (the widow of President Samora and adoptive mother of Samito) dictate who will take control of the businesses of the Mozambican state”.

If they continued on this path, Cumbane warned, “Samito will be sacrificed painfully and prematurely, just as happened with his father”.

The reference to the tragic death of President Samora (in a plane crash in 1986, believed to have been provoked by the South African apartheid regime) could easily be interpreted as a veiled threat to his son.

Samito.file_ — *File photo: Samora Machel Junior photographed during a memorial ceremony held in Mbuzini, the South African locality where President Samora’s plane crashed.*

Cumbane made matters worse by extending the threat to cover the entire Machel family. “Frelimo has never allowed dissidents or pseudo-militants from its ranks to call into question the gains of the revolution and of the people… It is not now that it will accept such acts without traumatic consequences for some families, including the Machel family”, he menaced.

Waty and Hunguana have written to the Attorney-General, Beatriz Buchili, asking her to take action against Cumbane.

Hunguana wrote “both my text and the legal opinion of Dr Teodoto Waty have been grossly, insidiously and malevolently described by Juliao Cumbane as part of an alleged conspiracy”.

He said that Cumbane had used this as the pretext for threats, including death threats, against himself and Waty “as well as against the main target, Samora Machel Junior and his family”.

The supposed conspiracy, and the alleged participation in it of himself and Waty, Hunguana added, “are attempts at character assassination which in our country have constituted acts in preparation of heinous murders (Mbuzini and Gilles Cistac)”.

ALSO READ: Top Mozambican jurist comments CNE’s decisions on AJUDEM and Venancio Mondlane

Mbuzini is the South African locality where President Samora’s plane crashed. Gilles Cistac was a Franco-Mozambican lawyer, murdered in broad daylight in central Maputo, in March 2015). The Cistac murder was preceded by a hail of abuse in social media, in which Cumbane played a significant role, writing posts that suggested Cistac was some kind of imperialist agent.

Hunguana asked Buchili, “under your constitutional and legal role in the prevention and repression of crime, to take the measures you deem most convenient in this case”.

Interviewed at the weekend by journalist Marcelo Mosse, Hunguana was even more outspoken. He did not regard Cumbane’s Facebook posts as something random, but as part of an increasing trend to install a climate of fear in Mozambique.

“There is a growing, silent drift towards fascism in society”, he accused. He believed that Buchili had a duty to act, and if she did not do so, she would become an accomplice by her inaction.

Waty told Mosse he knew he was speaking for others “who have opted, understandably, to remain silent. Silence is a poison for the soul of society. I always speak, even against the tide”.

ALSO READ: Three years on, and assassination of Gilles Cistac is still without resolution

France “waiting impatiently” for results of the Cistac murder investigation

Source: AIM