Mozambique: Renamo’s request to the FDS after threat to Ossufo Momade’s life – Savana

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Mozambique: Renamo’s request to the FDS after threat to Ossufo Momade’s life – Savana

2:01 CAT | 17 Jun 2019

File: André Magibire. [File photo: O País]

To hunt down the “deserters” and hold them accountable.

Speaking in the city of Beira on Saturday afternoon, Renamo Secretary General André Magibire said that his party would do everything in its power to ensure disarmament by August, and would scotch rumours of Colonel Jossefa de Sousa’s execution by presenting him “very much alive and well” in the near future.

Renamo, Mozambique’s largest opposition party, is concerned about the threatening tone with which some elements of its military wing have been addressing party president Ossufo Momade recently.

Perhaps this is why the opposition party’s secretary general on Saturday afternoon asked the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) to help neutralise “those who wish to prejudice peace” and call into question all the work that “the country’s leadership” has recently achieved.

The “deserters”, as Renamo calls General Mariano Nhungue Chissingue and his group, should find no way to impede the course of the country’s peace process.

“There is no impediment to the disarmament and reintegration of the armed men of the party,” Magibire said, demanding that the Defence and Security Forces seek to “neutralise the deserters, who are armed”.

Moreover, for Magibire, the state must show that it does not accept that, during a truce, “fugitive individuals” with firearms should be walking around unimpeded. Such individuals, he added, “constitute a danger”.

“We are at the moment in a truce situation and they are moving around with guns, so there must be strong security measures in order to neutralize those gentlemen. They are a danger to communities,” the Renamo secretary general said.

The armed group that appeared publicly in the Gorongosa woods set a deadline of 10 to 15 July for the current Renamo president, Ossufo Momade, to vacate the party’s presidency. General Nhungue and his group justified the ultimatum with alleged executions directed by Ossufo Momade and allegations that the Renamo leader was joining forces with the government to manipulate the agreement that Afonso Dhlakama had struck with the government to his own advantage.

ALSO READ: Frelimo spokesman says Momade remains the government’s partner ,despite upheavals within Renamo – AIM report

Colonel Josefa to be presented in public

Reiterating the allegation that the accusations of executions of military leaders loyal to Afonso Dhlakama are false and aim only to divert Renamo and its supporters from the electoral focus, André Magibire promised to publicly present Brigadier Jossefa de Sousa.

The general, who is alleged to have been killed with a total of “five shots” on the orders of Ossufo Momade, “is on one of our bases, safe and very much alive and well”. “You will soon have the opportunity to witness this for yourselves,” he added.

Regarding the disarmament and reintegration process, the Renamo secretary general said it was on track and that the commissions were continuing to work to the August deadline for the good of the country and the electoral process.

Meanwhile, Frelimo spokesman Caifadine Manasse and the government Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, José Pacheco, publicly reiterated their confidence in the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration process, saying that it was valid and that its Renamo interlocutor was Ossufo Momade, and none other.

They did however appeal to Renamo to overcome as soon as possible what they described as “internal divergences”, which could only be resolved by Renamo itself.

ALSO READ: Nyusi visits seven provinces in one week. But where’s Momade? – Mozambique Elections 2019

Source: Savana