Mozambique: Nyusi urges OJM to rejuvenate

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Mozambique: Nyusi urges OJM to rejuvenate

8:48 CAT | 23 May 2022

Photo: OJM - Secretariado do Comité Central on Facebook

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, speaking in his capacity as President of the ruling Frelimo Party, on Friday urged the Party’s youth wing, the Mozambican Youth Organisation (OJM), to invest in the academic training of its members to ensure better management of the OJM.

That, he said, would confer greater sustainability and autonomy in the financial management of the organisation, avoiding dependence on Frelimo.

Nyusi was speaking at the opening session of the OJM’s Second Congress, in the southern city of Matola. He made it clear that Frelimo is no longer willing to underwrite all the OJM’s expenses.

“The organization should improve its internal management mechanisms to maximise the resources it possesses”, Nyusi said. “It should also be capable of creating alternative sources of income generation to reduce its dependence on allowances from the Party”.

He wanted the OJM “to make better use of its young cadres, who are trained and experienced in economic or financial management”.

But they really should be young, and not on the threshold of middle age. The OJM defined a youth as anyone aged between 15 and 35, but the United Nations, Nyusi noted, only consider as youth people no older than 24.

“Sometimes this means that our youth leaders are not accepted in international youth conferences”, he added.

The OJM Central Committee last Thursday voted that nobody over 30 years old could run for leading positions in the organization, and once they had reached the age of 35, they should leave the OJM altogether and work inside Frelimo.

Nyusi strongly backed the proposal – which means that all OJM bodies in the provinces and districts must be reorganized in line with the new age limits.

Addressing the OJM Central Committee meeting, Frelimo General Secretary Roque Silva urged the OJM to be strong and united so as to resist manipulation by terrorist groups.

Those who promote terrorism in the northern province of Cabo Delgado, he said, “attack our leaders, they attack the defenceless population, and they turn young people into their instruments. On social media, they minimize our gains and fight against our rich cultural traditions”.

The promoters of terrorism, Silva added, “are enemies of our freedom as an independent and sovereign people, when they intoxicate our youth with fantasies alien to our Mozambican nature”.

“Young people should not allow themselves to be transformed into a test laboratory for undertaking agendas alien to the country”, he said.

The leadership elected at the Congress, Silva stressed, should be in charge of rejuvenating the OJM in the next five years.

Source: AIM