Watch: Armed Forces must not “abandon the dream” – Nyusi

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Watch: Armed Forces must not “abandon the dream” – Nyusi

7:49 CAT | 27 Sep 2016

TVM / President Nyusi was speaking in Maputo when he received senior figures of the armed forces (FADM) on the 52nd anniversary of the launch of the armed struggle for independence on 25 September 1964.

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Sunday urged the country’s defence and security forces not to abandon the dream of those who liberated Mozambique from colonial rule.

He was speaking in Maputo when he received senior figures of the armed forces (FADM) on the 52nd anniversary of the launch of the armed struggle for independence on 25 September 1964.

He told the defence forces “your mission will be incomplete if you do not defend the development of the country, which is the agenda of our citizens”. He stressed that part of the dream of those who took up arms against colonialism was to create “an independent, united, indivisible, prosperous and developed Mozambique”.

He blamed the rebel movement Renamo for the fact that Mozambique is still not at peace. It was the attacks by the illegal Renamo militia which has obliged the state to mobilize resources to defend itself and guarantee the welfare of the public.

“At this moment of joint reflection”, said Nyusi, “I would like to urge the FADM to keep the frontiers of our country inviolable, and to maintain the rights of citizenship, patriotism and the sense of belonging to this Mozambique”.

He said the FADM should take advantage of the fact that it arose out of a process of national reconciliation, and is formed by soldiers, some of whom, in the not so distant past, fought on opposite sides in the war that wracked Mozambique throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Despite the war that Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama is currently waging against the government, Renamo fighters who joined the FADM when in it was set up in 1994 are still there, and some of them are in very senior positions, including the Deputy Chief of Staff.

Nyusi stressed that today the armed forces do not owe allegiance to any political party, and the ranks of the FADM are being continually replenished with young conscripts and volunteers who are not recruited on any political party basis.

For his part, the FADM Chief of Staff, Graca Chongo, renewed the commitment of the armed forces to wage implacable defence of the country against all forces opposed to peace and development.

Chongo later told reporters that the FADM remains a non-partisan force, and for that reason is ready and willing to incorporate members of the Renamo militia (euphemistically referred to as Renamo’s “residual forces”).

This should have happened after the signing, on 5 September 2014, of the agreement on cessation of hostilities by Nyusi’s predecessor, Armando Guebuza and Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama. But Renamo never submitted the list f names of its militiamen it wished to see incorporated into the FADM and the police, and in February this year it re-launched its insurrection.