Mozambique: A new revolution, this time without revolutionaries — How rigged elections sparked a historic uprising
First published in French at Lundi. Translation by Adam Novak for Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières.
“PREC” (Processo revolucionário em curso) was the acronym used in 1974-1975 to describe the radicalisation of the Carnation Revolution, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2024. The context is entirely different, except for one point: in both cases, no one imagined what would happen, namely that a significant event (in 1974 in Portugal, a military coup; today in Mozambique, yet another fraudulent election) would trigger a revolutionary process. Unfortunately, Trump’s election and the fall of the abominable Assad regime in Syria have completely overshadowed the crisis in this East African country since 20th October.
This is no longer merely a protest against rigged elections, as frequently occurs in Africa. Everything started there, certainly. The 9th October 2024 elections were, even according to international observers, shamelessly rigged. The government awarded itself a result (over 70% of votes) that nobody believes and which presents numerical disparities that even the National Electoral Commission (CNE) declared itself unable to explain, though this didn’t prevent it from recognising their validity.
Fraud is customary in Mozambique, particularly since the 1999 elections which the opposition very likely already won – but the international community was then relieved by the maintenance in power of the ex-Marxist-Leninist party, a good manager of the neoliberal turn. In 2004, 2009, 2014 and 2019, fraud was repeated (with changing methods) to such an extent that the regions most traditionally favourable to the opposition saw their abstention rates soar: what’s the point of voting? In 2024, more than half of Mozambicans didn’t vote (even accounting for those who voted without knowing it and non-existent voters who voted). These regions were also the least registered (machines always broke down), to reduce the number of voters there whilst conversely the number reached 130% of inhabitants in the loyal province of Gaza. So why are the 2024 elections different? There are at least two sets of reasons that can be put forward.
A change of era
Firstly, Mozambique’s population is extremely young, with more than half of inhabitants under fifteen years old and the majority of voters therefore having no experience of the civil war (1976-1992). The effects of this demographic evolution began to show in 2013, when the opposition would have won the municipal elections in Maputo and Matola, the two major southern cities and historical heart of the social base of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo, the party that led the anti-colonial guerrilla warfare from 1964 to 1974), were it not for an opportune power cut during vote counting:. ne
New voters in these two cities could now vote for the party born from the pro-South African rebellion, the Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo), which would have been unthinkable in their parents’ time. The shift deepened thereafter: parties emerging from the post-colonial period (namely the “Marxist-Leninist” period from 1975 to 1989, the civil war from 1976 to 1992, the post-civil war neoliberal period during which the two parties that emerged from it maintained Mozambican bipartisanship, 1994-2019) were increasingly challenged.
This illustrated a change in historical period, the end of the post-colonial period, with civil war memory no longer structuring the country’s political life. Nevertheless, Renamo nearly succeeded in becoming the tool of “post-post-colonial” opposition to power: after resuming low-intensity guerrilla warfare in 2012-2016, it doubled its votes and deputies in 2014. But its undisputed leader, Afonso Dhlakama, died in the Gorongosa massif from where he directed operations in May 2018, replaced by a lacklustre general who had been city-based for more than twenty years.
Fraud in the 2019 general elections was massive (biased registration, maximum pressure on voters, expulsion of observers, assassinations, rejection of all appeals, etc.). Nevertheless, Renamo remained the main opposition party, and its municipal candidate in the capital, Venâncio Mondlane, was once again actually victorious in 2023. These municipal elections in the country’s regions saw obvious fraud but were accepted by the Electoral Commission except in four communes. The message was that the following year (in 2024), local Frelimo committees could ’go all out’. It wasn’t even about hiding the fraud, but clearly signifying to all that elections served to maintain Frelimo – the country’s founder in 1975 – in power. For the 150 families who had owned the state for fifty years and ttransformed themselves from “Marxist” bureaucrats to businessmen, losing elections was completely unthinkable.
For the mass of new voters, Frelimo was no longer the party that had brought independence, built schools and hospitals, electrified part of the country and resisted a guerrilla movement supported by apartheid.
Consequently – second set of reasons – Frelimo had become an insolently rich elite, especially since the discovery of immense gas deposits in the north, the opening of open-pit coal mines (ultra-polluting for kilometres around), precious stone mines (from which artisanal gold panners were brutally evicted to give them to joint ventures dominated by foreign companies) or oil sands. All this sustained the elite through commissions and service provisions benefiting only companies of those in power, with enormous corruption scandals. In short, those in power were increasingly perceived as an enclave within the country.
The ongoing revolution is therefore not only democratic – protest against institutionalised fraud – it has a profound social motivation. Aren’t the most frequently shouted slogans or written on placards “Power to the people”, “Revolution”, “We want independence from the black coloniser” (meaning “out with the new black colonisers”). But how did we get here?
Renamo’s failed transition
Renamo failed to follow the socio-demographic evolution of its base. While its electorate was increasingly massive in southern cities – historically established mainly in northern cities and the countryside – it refused to promote new educated and urban leaders, reappointing old guerrilla military leaders to positions of responsibility. Venâncio Mondlane, an engineer well known for having been a former radio and television journalist with a mocking tone, from the South like the majority of the Frelimo elite, evangelical, crowned with his municipal successes of 2013 and 2023 – he had been prevented from running in 2018 – wanted to be Renamo’s presidential candidate (without necessarily being party president). But he was prevented from participating in the April 2024 congress which reappointed the party president, General Ossufo Momade, as presidential candidate. V. Mondlane then ran as an independent candidate and obtained support from a small party born from a modest split from Frelimo, Podemos (“We can”, Optimist Party for Mozambique’s Development). It quickly appeared that Renamo’s new electorate that emerged from 2013 – in fact more “anti-Frelimo” than “pro-Renamo” – and which flocked to its meetings across the country, was rapidly shifting towards this new generation political entrepreneur. In the 2023 municipal elections, without his party’s agreement, he organised parades in the capital to celebrate his victory before the Electoral Commission proclaimed the Frelimo candidate winner, thus signifying that he did not accept to defer to appeal bodies totally controlled by those in power. He did the same in the general elections (provincial, legislative and presidential) of October 2024, setting up a parallel count equipped with computers and competent people – which Renamo had never managed to do. Even before the official proclamation of results, he announced, with polling station minutes in hand, his victory with more than 60% of votes across the country (except perhaps in Zambezia where the traditional opposition would have won). And he called on the Mozambican population to impose this result. Renamo collapsed, relegated far behind to the country’s third political force with about 10% of votes and only 15 deputies nationally.
But to clearly show its determination not to yield, the power elite had Venâncio Mondlane’s personal lawyer, Elvino Dias, and Podemos party’s national representative, Paulo Guambe, assassinated, each riddled with 25 bullets in the night of 18-19 October, in downtown Maputo. Venâncio Mondlane took refuge abroad (first in South Africa where he also narrowly escaped assassination). But since then, every day on his Facebook channel, he exhorts his supporters to new street actions, which are religiously awaited by immense crowds – which often go beyond the leader’s words in their enthusiasm and frustration.
Plebeian revolution
The demonstrators, in the capital and other major cities, but also in very small towns across the country, are most often very poor young boys who go beyond V. Mondlane’s peaceful directives, burning Frelimo party headquarters, attacking police stations and attempting to steal weapons there, district electoral commissions, destroying leaders’ statues, threatening them by revealing their addresses, sometimes even killing them (as in Inhassunge): fear is beginning to change sides. The middle class, which hardly demonstrates (except doctors, lawyers, professors who were already active before) shows its support through endless nocturnal pot-banging. Repression is brutal even if fortunately, it has not yet meant the bloodbath that can be feared: there are probably already more than a hundred deaths ( ostly from live ammunition fire, particularly in the northern city of Nampula), thousands of wounded and 3,000 arrests.
What is remarkable in these protests is that there is no ethnic dimension in this very heterogeneous country. From north (even in areas affected by Islamic guerrilla warfare) to south of the country, there are demonstrations, attacks on symbolic places of power, toppled statues – including that of the Maconde leader, Alberto Chipande who had proclaimed: “Daqui ninguém nos tira” (“Nobody will remove us from here [from power]”), whose statue was torn down in Pemba, the major city closest to jihad zones. There are also public prayers in the streets, cars abandoned in place to block traffic, national route No.1 (North-South) is blocked, as well as the border with South Africa. The power elite has a powerful militarised police force, the Rapid Intervention Unit, formidable secret services (State Information and Security Services, which primarily monitors the population), with police totalling close to 100,000 people while the army has only a few thousand men. But this army has so far committed no violence against demonstrators.
Revolution or chaos
How will the situation evolve? Some are suggesting to Venâncio Mondlane the possibility of forming a “national unity government”. This has already been tried in neighbouring Zimbabwe when ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front) which had used great violence to maintain power then convinced the exhausted opposition to join them in power. With ZANU keeping the presidency and key ministries, this had mainly served to discredit the opposition. A national unity government can therefore only be considered after organising new internationally monitored elections.
The most reasonable solution would be for the Constitutional Council to accept, before Christmas, to cancel the entire electoral process and postpone it to a later date even if this means keeping the outgoing president, Filipe Nyusi, for a few months. Nothing in its history suggests this Council will do so but it’s not impossible, given the fear now felt by the elite whose official denial (the demonstrations are acts of bandits and terrorists manipulated from abroad) does not hide their horrified stupefaction: Frelimo is no longer the people and Frelimo no longer recognises its people, including these young boys who hate it from north to south of the country, even in Gaza. It’s not impossible that the army will intervene to restore order – a political move which is not at all in its tradition since independence – which would not necessarily mean support for the current power. But it would be wrong to believe that the plebeian subject who has been demonstrating now for six weeks will quietly return to his urban periphery slum even if a transitional political solution is found. The day Venâncio Mondlane returns to Maputo, there will be a gigantic multitude to welcome him and it will demand that he immediately become the new President. This multitude believes in him, but social demands are there, wealth will need to be shared and new elections organised, there will need to be a profound institutional overhaul, with truly independent electoral structures. Venâncio Mondlane hardly has a programme, doesn’t have a real party, but the ongoing revolutionary process wants justice, dignity and more equality.
French diplomacy for its part would do well to distance itself from the Mozambican power elite. Already, in the Afungi peninsula (extreme north) where Total has its gas installations, women have demonstrated with placards indicating that “Mozambique does not belong to France”. There is no solution without complete cancellation of the elections and this could be said quite clearly.