Peace not just up to me and Dhlakama, Nyusi tells FAMOD – Watch

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Peace not just up to me and Dhlakama, Nyusi tells FAMOD – Watch

7:44 CAT | 02 Dec 2016

File Photo / Filipe Nyusi

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said on Friday that the mission to re-establish peace in Mozambique should not be left solely up to himself and to Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the rebel movement Renamo.

In his view, in order for efforts to achieve peace to bear fruit, the involvement of everyone is necessary.

Nyusi was responding to a request from the forum of Mozambican Associations of the Disabled (FAMOD) for him to continue efforts to secure peace. The FAMOD delegation went to speak to the President in his office on the occasion of the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities, which is celebrated on 3 December.

“From the efforts we have been making, I feel that, with the support and awareness of all Mozambicans, we will be able, very rapidly, to achieve some consensus”, he said. “Don’t leave this mission up to Renamo leader Dhlakama and your President on their own. Were it to depend on just these two, we would already be speaking a different language”.

The FAMOD delegation wanted the military tension that still prevails in parts of the country to cease immediately, because it makes each and every citizen “a candidate for disability”.

“Your message is very profound, when you say that with war there are many candidates for becoming persons with disabilities”, said Nyusi. “That’s no lie, because some of you here today are disabled as a result of this man-made disaster”.

He added that the collaboration, honesty, frankness and will of Mozambicans “count more than two people whom we always say are important – because nobody is more important than the people as a whole”.

In its message, the FAMOD delegation also expressed concern at the country’s economic and financial crisis, which is driving up the cost of living. In reply, Nyusi called for increased food production “within the capacities of each person”.

He insisted that the solution lay in increased production, and solutions to the crisis “depend on Mozambicans as a whole”.

FAMOD urged the government to undertake concrete actions aimed at the inclusion of people with disabilities at all levels. “To achieve this, simple insertion in the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, which we have been seeing in an incipient form, is not enough. The question of disability should be understood as something that cuts across all issues, and so should be reflected in all ministries”, said the FAMOD message, presented by Cantol Pondja.

Among the problems Pondja raised were ensuring that disable people have access to health, education and transport services, the lack of sports grounds that disabled people can use, and the need to train interpreters in sign language.

These aspects, he said, would allow greater inclusion and active participation in the life of the country, contributing to a “less discriminatory” society.

FAMOD is a coalition of 24 associations of and for people with disabilities, and its main goal is to promote and protect the rights of the disabled.