Mozambique: Renamo dismisses ‘unfortunate’ idea of sending former guerrilla fighters to Cabo Delgado

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Renamo dismisses ‘unfortunate’ idea of sending former guerrilla fighters to Cabo Delgado

5:03 CAT | 08 Oct 2020

File photo: DW

Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, on Wednesday described as “unfortunate” a suggestion by Armando Guebuza, former president of the country and former leader of the governing Frelimo party, that former combatants, including those from Renamo, could help to curb armed violence in Cabo Delgado province, in the north.

“It is very unfortunate on his part,” Renamo’s secretary-general, André Magibire, said at a news conference in Maputo, stressing that one of the country’s biggest problems at present, the “hidden debts” issue, emerged during Guebuza’s term in office.

“Many have benefited from these debts, including some people who are in prison,” he said. “At that time no one called on Renamo people to benefit from anything [but now] because it is [a matter of] going to Cabo Delgado and dying, now they want Renamo men to go there.

“We are committed to peace and the well-being of the people,” Magibire added.

Guebuza on Friday suggested that the military experience of those who fought in the struggle to liberate Mozambique from its Portuguese colonial overlords and the 16-year civil war that followed, including former Renamo fighters, should be called on to combat armed violence in Cabo Delgado.

“It is essential to exploit the capacities established over all those years, even those of Renamo,” the former president said in a video posted on his Facebook page. “Are we working with them to find solutions to this problem? I don’t think so.”

For the past three years Cabo Delgado province has been the scene of armed attacks, responsibility for some of which have been claimed by the jihadist Islamic State group, but whose true origins remain unclear.

The violence has caused a humanitarian crisis, with more than 1,000 lives lost and around 250,000 people now internally displaced.

The region is in the coming years expected to receive investment of the order of $50 billion (€42.6 billion) in natural gas projects, led by oil majors Exxon Mobil of the US and Total of France, which has already begun work on the ground.

Source: Lusa