MDM supports truce in central Mozambique

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MDM supports truce in central Mozambique

3:13 CAT | 26 Oct 2020

Photo: MM - Gabinete de Informação

The leader of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM), Daviz Simango, has used the party’s official Facebook page to express his support for the decision to grant a military truce to the Renamo Military Junta. “A fair and correct position which I welcome and encourage,” said Simango, calling for further action to be taken to end the conflict.

“It is important to cherish this initiative, but for its success I think it wise to follow duly articulated terms of reference to allow the beginning of any dialogue and avoid imposing the same conditions that the Renamo Military Junta has been rejecting,” the leader of the country’s third-largest political party says, adding that “an honest and shared dialogue will result in peace and the contrary [will result] from any imposition”.

While making calls for the decision to be binding on the state, Daviz Simango also called on the military junta to share its claims with Mozambicans.

“We also call on the Renamo Military Junta to disseminate the content of the letter that it says it has addressed to the Government, in order to allow the people to understand its claims,” said Simango, calling for an end to secrecy in peace negotiations.

“Let this dialogue be inclusive, in order to avoid what has already happened in the past, as we remember that secrecy and exclusion have been a perpetual source of problems,” Simango warns. The MDM is for peace, he says, and he therefore wishes the parties to sit at the same table and overcome their differences. “We think it is unfair that deaths among the population continue to happen,” he stressed.

Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi on Saturday announced a truce between the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) and the self-proclaimed Military Junta of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, opposition), insisting on a dialogue that the ex-guerrillas have so far refused.

“I will instruct the FSDS to, starting tomorrow [Sunday] and for one week, stop chasing the Junta, in order to give the Junta an opportunity to return to the dialogue,” he said.

Nyusi’s announcement was made during a Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo) retreat in Pemba, the provincial capital of Cabo Delgado, in the north of the country.

Nyusipemba.m — *Nyusi at the Pemba Frelimo meeting. [Photo: Miramar]*

“We are not going to chase the Junta for a week, precisely in order to show that we are open, the country is open, I am open” to dialogue, he reiterated. The FDS would be instructed to avoid “direct pursuit”, while remaining alert, Nyusi said.

“The necessary avenues” for this dialogue “are open,” Nyusi said, and the Junta would know that work was being done to find “a solution” to the problem of “Mozambicans killing other Mozambicans”.

“We will [all] win,” if former Renamo dissident guerrillas “join the dialogue”, he said.
The Renamo Military Junta is a splinter group of the main opposition party of Mozambique that disputes the leadership of Ossufo Momade, and the conditions of demilitarisation, disarmament and reintegration that he negotiated with the Government.

The group emerged in June 2019 and threatened to take up arms if its demands for the removal of the Renamo leadership and a renegotiation of the peace agreement that Momade signed in August last year with Nyusi were not acceded to.

So far, Mariano Nhongo has not commented on the announcement of the truce and Nyusi’s offer of dialogue.

Source: Sala da paz / Lusa / Voa Portugues