Mozambique Elections: Venâncio Mondlane promises “march on Maputo” – AIM report

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Mozambique Elections: Venâncio Mondlane promises “march on Maputo” – AIM report

6:07 CAT | 30 Oct 2024

Screen grab: Venâncio Mondlane/Facebook

Mozambique’s independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane, has promised a “march on Maputo”, explicitly intended to overthrow the government.

But Mondlane will not be leading the march, since he is still in hiding. He contacted his followers through a live broadcast on Facebook on Tuesday evening. He is believed to be outside the country, possibly somewhere in South Africa.

Hostile propagandists, also using Facebook, claimed that Mondlane has flown to Holland, and intends to settle in Switzerland. AIM has no way of checking these claims.

Whenever Mondlane returns to Mozambique, he faces arrest. The police have warned that they are starting criminal proceedings against him, charging him with incitement to violence. They blame Mondlane and his political party, Podemos, for the clashes between the police and demonstrators protesting over electoral fraud and over the murders, on 19 October, of Mondlane’s lawyer, Elvino Dias, and the Podemos election agent, Paulo Guambe.

In his latest broadcast, Mondlane promised a week of strikes and demonstrations, and even a march of “millions” of people on Maputo in order to overthrow what he described as “tyranny”.

This is “stage three” of the opposition protests. Phase one was what Mondlane called “a national general strike” on 21 October. Phase two was two days of demonstration last Thursday and Friday, which often degenerated into clashes between the police and demonstrators.

This time, Mondlane has called for a shutdown of economic activities across the country starting on Thursday. In addition, demonstrations will be held outside the offices of the district elections commissions, and local offices of the ruling Frelimo Party.

It is unlikely that Podemos can organise such a wave of demonstrations at short notice. But given last week’s chaos on the streets, the mere threat of more demonstrations may be enough to close offices down.

The most ambitious part of Mondlane’s plans is the “march on Maputo”, starting on 31 October, and culminating in the complete occupation of the city on 7 November.

“We shall occupy the entire city of Maputo. We shall have four million Mozambicans. We shall all march on Maputo. There will be no armoured cars and tear gas to stop the people”, he declared.

At this point, some skepticism is in order. Where does Mondlane expect to find four million people? According to the projections from the 2017 population census, there are now 735,000 people aged 18 and above living in Maputo city. The adjacent city of Matola would provide another million people.

What about the other two million? Will they be among those marching on the city from other provinces?

Such a march is impossible, given the huge distances involved. 2,336 kilometres separate the northern city of Lichinga from Maputo, while the distance from Pemba, capital of Cabo Delgado province, to Maputo, as the crow flies is 1,666 kilometres. Quelimane to Maputo is a distance of 1,565 kilometres, and the road from Beira to Maputo is 1,213 kilometres.

These are not distances that can be walked in seven days! Presumably Mondlane expects the marchers to walk – he certainly did not mention any other way of travelling to Maputo. Podemos does not own a fleet of buses, and even if it did, the buses could only carry a few thousand people.

The marchers will also need to eat and drink. Mondlane’s solution to this problem was to ask friendly business people to provide food. But businesses disapprove of Mondlane’s strikes and demonstration. The body that claims to speak for Mozambican business, the CTA (Confederation of Business Associations) has publicly condemned the demonstrations and urged workers not to join strikes. So few businesses will be willing to provide free food for the marchers.

Nonetheless, Mondlane was confident that occupying the streets of Maputo “will dictate the end of the regime that has humiliated, murdered, trampled upon and stolen from the Mozambican people”.

He recalled that, in its days as a national liberation movement, Frelimo took ten years (1964-1974) to defeat the Portuguese colonial regime. But Mondlane was confident that he can overthrow the current government in just a week.

Almost as an afterthought, Mondlane called for a tax strike. Nobody should pay taxes to the national or local governments, he ordered.

But most Mozambicans do not pay taxes anyway, because they are self-employed or work in the informal sector, which is notoriously hard to tax.

Certain taxes, such as personal income tax, cannot be avoided because they are deducted at source.

No doubt, anyone joining the “march on Maputo” would like to know how Mondlane plans to protect them from police attack. During last week’s protests, the police had no hesitation in firing upon demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

Why should the same thing not happen during the “march on Maputo”? All Mondlane could say was that he is appealing to members of the defence and security forces to join the march, and not to turn their guns on the marchers.

In other words, he was calling on Mozambican soldiers and policemen to mutiny against their officers – something which rarely happens in modern societies.

Mondlane also expected members of the Frelimo rank-and-file to defect from their party and join. While there is always a trickle of people from one party to another during election periods, there is no sign of any mass defection from Frelimo.

Source: AIM