Mozambique: Ossufo Momade lives in a hotel, at the expense of the international community

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Mozambique: Ossufo Momade lives in a hotel, at the expense of the international community

12:43 CAT | 04 Mar 2020

Renamo leader Ossufo Momade. [Photo: DW]

The security of the Renamo leader is offered as a justification, but one Mozambican commentator questions that, and warns that, “in international relations, there is no such thing as a free lunch”. Whatever happened to the stature of the country’s second most-popular leader?

The leader of Mozambique’s largest opposition party, the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), has been living in a tourist resort since the signing of the peace agreements of August 2019. Ossufo Momade left the Gorongosa mountain range, where he went after the death of Afonso Dhlakama in May 2018, and moved into an hotel.

Renamo spokesman José Manteigas confirms the fact: “He lives in a tourist resort here in the city of Maputo.”

Ossufo Momade’s bills there are paid by the international community, but Manteigas insists that the arrangement is not of Momade’s choosing.

Caltoncadeado.dw_ — *Political commentator Calton Cadeado*

“This results from negotiations with the mediation of the international community. As a matter of security for the president [Momade] himself, the parties to the negotiations decided that he should stay at a hotel until housing conditions with the necessary security were created,” the Renamo spokesman explains.

“There are no free lunches”

Although the arrangement is linked to the peace process, a matter of national interest, it has never been publicly acknowledged, which raises suspicions. And it raises questions, mainly because the Renamo leader, by dint of being leader of the opposition, is entitled to an official residence.

Political commentator Calton Cadeado raises other questions. “What is strange is, who is paying for this, and why. What is the counterpart to this payment? This is the most important thing, because it is known that, in international relations, there are no free lunches.”

Security: Fear of Frelimo – or of Nhongo?

Staying the security issue – the arrangement’s principal justification – Renamo recalls an attack on the late Afonso Dhlakama, attributed to the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), the ruling party.

“You remember very well what happened to Afonso Dhlakama, who was besieged in his own home in the city of Beira on October 9, 2016. So the peace agreement has been signed, but that doesn’t mean that people are necessarily calm,” Manteigas notes.

Cadeado dismisses this, saying that “this lack of security argument is a red herring, an easy argument to distract from the essence” of the matter.

Cadeado understands that Momade “talks about security risk today, but the risk is not so much from the state, but from Renamo itself, because he [Momade] knows that he is under death threat from Gorongosa. So this is the real problem, and the only way to solve the security problem is for them to understand each other. But he doesn’t want to talk to Nhongo,” the leader of Renamo’s self-proclaimed ‘Military Junta’.

Dhlakamaf.dw_ — *Afonso Dhlakama, deceased Renamo leader*

Increased weaknesses at Renamo

One of the causes of the fracture in the Renamo party is precisely Ossufo Momade supposedly wanting to enjoy the material advantages of being leader of the opposition. The disaffected in the party recall that Dhlakama abdicated such comforts in the name of the national cause in Gorongosa.

Could Ossufo Momade’s current lifestyle be intensifying these internal cleavages? Cadeado thinks so.

“One of the consequences [of Momade’s current lifestyle] is to intensify the fragility of the enthusiasm to follow a Renamo project, especially given the fact that, nowadays, we do not see within Renamo any discourse on [political] matters. There is more of a speech complaint and then a democratic cause appears. So, it weakens the speech and legitimacy of Renamo in discussing projects. Number two, this can also weaken the already fragile legitimacy of Ossufo Momade himself, because, as a result, there is a lot of comparison between Ossufo Momade and Afonso Dhlakama going on,” he points out.

Source: Deutsche Welle