Mozambique: President, Mondlane meeting will lower temperatures – analysts

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: President, Mondlane meeting will lower temperatures – analysts

11:44 CAT | 25 Mar 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only [File photo: Luisa Nhantumbo/Lusa]

Mozambican analysts told Lusa on Tuesday that the meeting between Mozambican president Daniel Chapo and former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane is positive and will “lower the temperature” of the country, which has been experiencing post-election protests since October.

“It won’t put an end [to the demonstrations, but] it will lower the temperature and it’s fundamental to lower the temperature in this country. This rapprochement is important because Mozambique’s social fabric is very fractured,” said João Feijó, a Mozambican analyst and researcher.

For the analyst, an attempt at conciliation through dialogue is “always a good thing”, not least because the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, the ruling party) would not be able to govern in a scenario of so many social tensions, which have an impact on international investment and which “make institutions inoperative”.

For Feijó, it is also important that Venâncio Mondlane sits at the negotiating table because he is an interlocutor for the “popular masses as a whole” who are “dissatisfied and demonstrating”.

“At least he is being listened to by these members of the public, he can switch the country on and off via a Facebook live,” said the researcher.

Journalist and analyst Fernando Lima also agrees that “it’s still early” to think of an end to social tension in Mozambique as a result of the meeting between Daniel Chapo and Venâncio Mondlane, but he considers that it is already “a defrosting”.

“The meeting can only be seen in a positive light by all those who believe in dialogue and reconciliation between all Mozambicans. The point is that we can’t have unlimited expectations, let’s just say that it’s a step in the right way,” Fernando Lima told Lusa.

For the Mozambican journalist, the possible inclusion of the former presidential candidate in the dialogue that the Mozambican head of state has been having with the opposition parties, as a result of a political agreement signed on March 5 to restore peace in Mozambique, is “positive progress”.

The President of Mozambique, Daniel Chapo, who is also the leader of Frelimo, met this Sunday with former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane to “discuss solutions to the challenges facing the country”, the presidency office announced in the early hours of Monday morning.

In a statement, the Presidency explained that the meeting, the first between the two to be made public after the start of the street protests that followed the general elections on 9 October, took place in Maputo and was part of “the ongoing effort to promote national stability and strengthen the commitment to reconciliation and unity among Mozambicans”.

The meeting between Daniel Chapo, who was elected President, and Venâncio Mondlane, who came second, although he does not recognise the official results of the general elections on 9 October, took place a few weeks after the signing, in Maputo on 5 March, of the Political Commitment for an Inclusive National Dialogue between the country’s President and nine political groupings that ‘participated in the political dialogue sessions held so far’, the Presidency recalled.

Since October, Mozambique has been experiencing a climate of intense social unrest, with demonstrations and stoppages called by Venâncio Mondlane.

The protests, now on a smaller scale, have been taking place in different parts of the country and, as well as contesting the results, people are complaining about the rising cost of living and other social problems.

Since October, at least 361 people have died, including around two dozen minors, according to Plataforma Decide, a Mozambican non-governmental organisation that monitors electoral processes.

The Mozambican government has confirmed at least 80 deaths, as well as the destruction of 1,677 commercial establishments, 177 schools and 23 health centres during the demonstrations.

Source: Lusa