Six countries willing to help disarming Renamo

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Six countries willing to help disarming Renamo

6:55 CAT | 16 Sep 2018

Photo: O País

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi announced in Rome on Friday that six countries have expressed their willingness to support the demilitarisation of Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo.

The term refers to the demobilisation and disarming of the Renamo militia and recruiting its members into the Mozambican armed forces (FADM) or police, or reintegrating them into society.

Speaking at a press conference in Rome at the end of an official visit to the Vatican, Nyusi said “I issued invitations to six countries, who have answered favourably, to support us with experts”. He did not name the countries concerned.

Nyusi wanted people with expertise in the subject involved in the demilitarisation. Governance, he remarked, “should not be undertaken on the basis of being clever, because there are rules, and it involves a lot of science”.

“The countries invited have accepted. Now they will join us”, he said. The current challenge was to design the demilitarisation project, to collect and destroy the weapons, and to define the places where the Renamo residual force should be concentrated.

Mechanisms, Nyusi said, must be developed so that the people who hand over their weapons can resume a normal life. That would not be easy, since he feared there are still some people who, in order to solve their own problems, “prefer to sacrifice the people who are in the bush”.

“We are not going to allow anyone to sacrifice those people”, declared Nyusi. “Those people have to have a life like anyone else”.

Mozambicans, he stressed, want to conclude the entire package of the disarming, demobilisation and reintegration of Renamo as quickly as possible.

He revealed that in one of his meetings with the late Renamo leader, Afonso Dhlakama, he had asked him what was causing the deaths of so many people in Mozambique. Dhlakama blamed the bloodshed on what he called “election injustice” and said he wanted to govern in the provinces where he had been declared the winner.

Nyusi told him this was not how the Mozambican electoral system worked. It was therefore necessary to change the rules. The two men had therefore agreed a package which led to the constitutional amendments passed earlier this year, which will result in the election, albeit indirect, of provincial governors and district administrators.

All that remained now in order to conclude the peace process, Nyusi said, was the demilitarisation, demobilisation and reintegration of the Renamo armed force.

Dhlakama had also told Nyusi that he was refusing to leave his bush headquarters, in the central district of Gorongosa, out of respect for his fighters. “He wanted us to speed things up so that he could leave the bush together with his guerrillas, who should be integrated into the defence and security forces and into society”, said the President. “He didn’t want just a handful of people to enjoy well-being”.

Nyusi said there was now no reason for Renamo fighters to continue living on the margins of society.

(AIM)

Source: AIM