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The general in his mountain stronghold – Mozambique
1:29 CAT | 28 Aug 2018
Ossufo Momade spoke to Jornal Expresso in his Gorongosa mountain. Photo: Silvia Fernandes / Expresso
Ossufo Momade, opposition leader for three months, granted an interview to Expresso at the military base in the remote Gorongosa mountains. He speaks of peace, but places limits on the concessions he is willing to make.
May 3, 2018 changed Ossufo Momade’s life forever. According to the leader of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo, Mozambique’s main opposition party), the unexpected death of Afonso Dhlakama left millions of Mozambicans orphans. The pain he felt persists to this day, judging by the choked voice and watery eyes with which he relates events in an exclusive interview with Expresso.
“It was very difficult, we were all taken by surprise. I was at my house in Maputo, and I got a phone call. There was an indication from the Contact Group to evacuate our president because he was in critical condition. I hoped he would be taken to a neighbouring country, but at 10:30 a.m., the same person called again to say that my president was no longer alive. For me, it was not just like losing a father, it was losing the father who helped me grow. Since I was 17 years old, it was he who raised me, taught me and did everything for me. When I think of him, the sincere feeling I have is that he has left us orphans.”
Born 59 years ago on the Island of Mozambique and former Secretary General of Renamo, he experienced the following days both deep sadness and the enormous responsibility of leading the party, after the unanimous choice of its Political Commission.
With the confidence and knowledge born of four decades of military and political experience with Renamo, he accepted the challenge, even though he knew no easy times were ahead. “I had to accept it. It was a vote of confidence from the party. ”
Father of nine children
A new page was opened in the life of the general, who calls himself a family man and likes to fill his free time with walks beside the sea and reading, the works of Mia Couto and Os Lusíadas high in his list of preferences. With six children from his current marriage and three from the previous one, Ossufo Momade was serving his third term as a deputy in the Assembly of the Republic when, as leader of Renamo, he decided to return to the military base in the Gorongosa mountains, where he has been living since May.
Asked about the reason for this decision, the “general-politician” stresses the importance of being close to his men while the process of integration and demobilisation of Renamo’s residual forces is underway in Maputo, under foreign mediation. “Here, I am with my men and I am coordinating the negotiations and talking to President Nyusi. If all goes well, we will all soon be in our homes, with our families.”
Life on military bases began very early for this general, who joined Renamo in 1978 at the age of seventeen. At the time, as a Commander in the FPLM (Popular Liberation Forces of Mozambique), the armed wing of Frelimo, who were at that time in power, he was seconded to head a unit in Manica in the centre of the country near the border with then-Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
“During a Renamo attack on my unit, I did not offer resistance but surrendered myself, because I had already made that decision. Seeing what was happening in the country and knowing what was happening from the radio, I had a sense of my preference, and so I decided to surrender.”
The desire to get involved in the country’s destiny came when he was as young as thirteen years of age, when, after the Lusaka Accords, he already dreamed of contributing to the country.
“With a group of friends I went to the 1st Base of the FPLM in Nampula. There we trained, sang revolutionary songs and followed what was happening in the country,” he recalls.
Up until 1978, Ossufo Momade was deployed to various positions in Nampula, during which time that he began to listen to Rádio Voz África Livre. “We would close ourselves in the room where my colleagues and I listened to what was already the Voice of Renamo, and I thought that it made sense. That is why, in December of 1978, I handed myself in. I was well received. I was taken to Rhodesia, since at that time there were no Renamo bases in Mozambique.”
As soon as he arrived in Rhodesia, he was introduced to Afonso Dhlakama in a meeting that marked the beginning of a long and strong relationship that would last for four decades. “On our very first meeting, he received me as a brother. He was older and saw me as a kid. He too had come from the FPLM, from Frelimo, and shortly afterwards told me: from now on you will be the Head of Section. I was coming as a Commander, and since then we’ve worked together.”
After Dlhakama’s funeral, Momade and the party leaders were soon called upon to face the challenges that awaited them.
“One of them was decentralisation. Dlhakama had already made that part very clear. It was my first mission, very thorny, but I had to safeguard our president’s project. The Frelimo bench did not want this agreement. In fact, it did not want this agreement to have legs to walk.
“So I spoke to the Swiss Ambassador in the Contact Group that was mediating the negotiations, requesting a meeting with President Nyusi – because decentralisation had already been dealt with in the meetings between him and Dlhakama. The Ambassador made my request and I went to meet President Nyusi in his office in Maputo, explaining that we wanted to continue with what he was already committed to. It was a secret meeting, and we did not disclose it. In fact, so far, few people are aware of this meeting. The conversation went well and, having given instructions to the Frelimo bench, the new law on decentralisation passed. This meeting was in May, and since then we have kept in touch.”
The process continues, surpassing conditions that Renamo considered a premise, despite what Ossufo Momade calls the “initial reserves of the Frelimo bench”.
“At the time they used the argument that Renamo was armed. We considered this a delaying tactic, inasmuch as they always knew that we were armed. In all the elections that took place in Mozambique, we always had our military. But through the contacts and after the meeting with President Nyusi on July 11 in Beira, we took on the responsibility of moving forward with a memorandum of understanding that could be signed by the parties.
“This memorandum was signed on 6 August and we have already completed one of the defined steps: the delivery of the first list. At this stage, the list has the names of those who were already integrated in 1992 and whose careers were stagnant. We want dignity for those who had already been integrated but had not seen any progression since 1992. This part will be a reflection of the good will, whether it exists or not, of the other party. We will not deliver another list without first guaranteeing the conditions of those already there,” Momads sasy, clarifying one of the most controversial situations in Mozambique – the delivery of the list of Renamo soldiers still in military bases and waiting to be demobilised or integrated into the state security forces.
“We want peace, and this step was already decided by President Dlhakama, and I am just carrying out his project with the confidence vote of the Political Commission. We want these men to be integrated into the defence and security forces of Mozambique. Those who no longer have physical capacity should be demobilised and reintegrated into social life in a dignified and humanised way. Not like 1992, when they handed out a machete, a bucket, a hoe, a sack of cement, a blanket, a shirt, a pair of trousers, an allowance equivalent to his patent, and said, ‘Now go home’. After 16 years, a person picks up these materials and returns to his village. How will the family receive him?” he asks.
Local elections year
Another priority is the local elections scheduled for 10 October, less than six months after Dlhakama’s death. For the new party leader, this is a race against time. After the party’s boycott of the 2013 municipal elections for lack of agreement on electoral law, Renamo returned with promises to stir up the political agenda.
“We are returning with great force and morale,” Momade says. “We have heads of lists of weight, not only cadres of the party, but also those who come from the opposition to join our lists and run for Renamo.”
Concerning members of the MDM, Mozambique’s third-largest party, who have returned to Renamo and top their lists in some of the country’s major cities, Momade says that “we are recovering our children, because they have already been ours and are now returning. And it’s not just the MDM. Those who had left for Frelimo are also coming back. We have many cases, not so well known, and this was a dream of our ill-fated president”.
He recalls that “all political parties compete with a single intention: to win!” And he believes in an “overwhelming victory”. “We are monitoring our opponents’ restlessness, namely that of Frelimo, which is trying to create problems with some of our heads of lists, and we see that we are bothering them. I do not think either Frelimo or MDM were expecting the strength with which we are running in these elections.”
Given that these elections may represent a “barometer” for the legislative and presidential elections of 2019, Momade says that he is following the attention of the international community with special interest.
“In the October 10 elections, we would like the international community to accompany us with the spirit of democracy. There cannot be one democracy for Africa and another for the more developed countries. We would like to invite international observers to use the criteria they use in Europe, for example. To ask them to be serious, transparent and accurate in reporting what they actually see on the ground, without fear of possible reprisals. To do their work seriously and not to sign any report that does not correspond to what happened on the ground,” the Renamo leader asks.
Despite less-positive episodes in previous elections, Momade is confident.
“At the time, Frelimo took advantage of state workers paid by the government to go to the polling stations. Today, these people have a different vision, willing to say what is happening and not create obstacles for the opposition. That is why we recently won the city of Nampula (in the March by-election).
“The Mozambican people want a change, and this change is Renamo. We have gone through many episodes, the last of which was the issue of hidden debts, which all Mozambicans are feeling in their pockets today. We are all paying this debt. So far there has not yet appeared one single person accountable for this debt. Why?
“The regime itself has been covering up so that those responsible are not revealed. But Mozambique cannot be an island. We have already seen what happened in Brazil, where Lula today is serving his sentence. Why is it that those responsible here cannot serve? Mozambicans are waiting for this, for those responsible to be held accountable. And the Attorney General’s Office says nothing.
“The system is flawed. On the one hand, we hear chants that they are fighting corruption, but it’s just that, just music to the ears. Because in practice they are corrupt, and it is not the corrupt ones who will fight corruption. They may catch the fish, but the sharks will continue to steal as if nothing happened. Hence, people look forward to change.”
Terrorism to north
Among the challenges facing the country, the attacks in northern Mozambique attributed to radical Islamist groups are also a matter of concern for the current Renamo leader.
“We are facing a worrying situation, but in which the Mozambican state is not telling the truth. When I speak of the Mozambican state, that state has its services, and they have to tell the truth. You see, one day we hear the PRM (Police of the Republic of Mozambique) saying that the situation is contained, and the next day we see that some 40 to 50 more houses had been devastated. So what they are telling us is not real. And this creates panic within the population.
“Because we can say that they are the Al-Shabab or external movements, but deep down we do not know for sure. It may even be the Mozambicans who are claiming something. Look, in our time, Frelimo also blamed Rhodesia and South Africa. And it was us, us Mozambicans. And whoever was far away was fed this misinformation. It is easy to say that it is external influence, when everything can actually be no more than internal discontent.
“And what happens is that the authorities are no longer able to talk to the local population. [I say this] because, on the ground, when there are abnormal movements, the population knows. If the police could talk to the people, they’d know what’s going on. That’s why I say it is the responsibility of the Mozambican state, through its services, to investigate what is really happening and to find a solution.”
About his current interim status, Momade says that a meeting of the Renamo National Council is expected soon.
“The next step will be the organisation of a congress where the effective president will be elected, but that date does not yet exist because our concern at the moment is compliance with the Memorandum and the holding of local elections. Right now we are focussing on these two situations. Until then, it will be up to the current Coordinator to direct the destinies of the party and help it overcome the challenges that lie ahead, with the vote of confidence of the Political Commission and the support of all the members and sympathisers of Renamo.
“For the time being we wish to see Mozambique at peace, free of war, and the compromise that President Nyusi and I have worked out implemented, so that there are no more conflicts and that the elections are fair, transparent and a consolidation of democracy in the country,” Momade concludes.
By Silvia Fernandes
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Source: Expresso
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