Mozambique: President calls on Renamo dissidents to join demobilisation process

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Mozambique: President calls on Renamo dissidents to join demobilisation process

3:08 CAT | 08 Sep 2020

Photo: O País

Mozambique’s president, Filipe Nyusi, on Monday called on armed dissidents from Renamo, the main opposition party, to join the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process agreed between the party and the Frelimo government, stressing that the group’s actions represent a threat to peace.

Nyusi made the appeal, in an address to the nation to mark the 46th anniversary of the signing of the Lusaka Accords on 7 September 1974 by Frelimo and Portugal’s government, which laid the ground for the declaration of Mozambique’s independence on 25 June 1975.

The former Renamo guerrillas who are now members of the self-styled Junta Militar should, he said, join the ongoing DDR process and stop the attacks that have been taking place in the centre of the country.

“It is better for them to come out and surrender,” Nyusi said. “We don’t like to be at war and to hunt each other as if we were animals.”

He called on the group’s members to reconsider their actions and stop the attacks on civilian targets and government forces, as a threat to the Peace and National Reconciliation Agreement signed by the Frelimo government and Renamo in August last year. He also called on Renamo’s leadership and members to work to persuade the dissidents’ leader, General Mariano Nhongo, to renounce violence and respect that agreement.

“Not everyone is satisfied with the procedures being followed under the agreement, but they don’t take up arms,” the president said.

Last Saturday, 140 Renamo guerrillas were demobilised at a former military base in Vunduzi, as part of the process foreseen by last year’s agreement.

“We Mozambicans are once again proving to the world that the role of women in development, social, political, and economic processes is fundamental,” said Nyusi during the ceremony in Vunduzi, on the slopes of the Gorongosa mountains in Sofala province.

With these 140 guerrillas, a total of 1,075 fighters have now been demobilised under the agreement.

After a symbolic start last year, the DDR process was paralysed for several months and only resumed on 4 June this year. It is to involve 5,000 members in all of Renamo’s armed wing.

Despite some progress, the self-proclaimed Renamo junta is challenging the legitimacy of the party’s leadership and the peace agreement. It has been blamed for attacks targeting security forces and civilians in villages and on some stretches of roads in the centre of the country.

Source: Lusa