The situation is still tense in Mozambique, with at least 33 people killed since the start of the post-election crisis. The day of November 7, at the call of the opposition presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, was to mark the peak of the protest, but the movement did not gain momentum. Support for the opponent, now in exile, is running out of steam, according to Michel Cahen, emeritus research director of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) at Sciences Po-Bordeaux and specialist in Mozambique.
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RFI: Thursday November 7 was to be the high point of the contestation of the victory of Frelimo, the party in power for almost 50 years. In the end, that’s not what happened. How do you see the future in the standoff between power and the opposition? ?
Michel Cahen : You would have asked me the question three days ago, I would have told you that Venâncio Mondlane would emerge from the crisis with a very increased political status. There, I’m less sure. Indeed, Thursday, November 7 should have been the high point, with a demonstration of 4 million people coming from the capital and the different provinces. But the measures taken by the government – Internet cuts, transport cuts, etc. – have greatly limited movements.
The photos that we see of the demonstrations in Maputo are the photos in what we call the “cement city” – where there are the cement buildings –, that is to say the center city. But all the huge slums on the outskirts have been completely sealed off because there is a strike. No one is working and people have not been able to get to the city center.
THE number of demonstrators is of course an indication that the movement is running out of steam, but it is not necessarily the main indication. The main weakness of the movement is that Venâncio Mondlane is not there. Either the government prevented him from attending, or he, knowing that he was risking his life, remained abroad. There have already been two assassinations in his very close circle. Certainly his absence of his own manifestations gives a bad indication. He calls on his supporters to demonstrate there, but he does not go.
Is the protest movement on the decline? ?
We can already see that the pro-Venâncio Mondlane movement is dividing. Mondlane wanted this to continue, but the political party he relied on for the legislative elections, Podemos, was not calling for the demonstration. Renamo and the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) did nothing either. There is a certain division in the opposition and it seems that, even if the movements can still continue for some time, we are on the decline of mobilization.
We do not know the exact number of deaths. We are talking about 27 dead and hundreds of injured [le bilan a été revu à la hausse depuis l’interview, atteignant désormais au moins 33 décès, NDLR]but I think that this figure is very underestimated, because there are many small towns in the interior of the country where there have been demonstrations, but where there have been no journalists or any activists. NGO to document the deaths.
That said, even if the figure of 27 deaths is underestimated, I am relieved because I expected a bloodbath. The Frelimo regime is ready to do anything to keep power. They have been in power for 50 years, the same families have been in power for 50 years and, in 2026, royalties from the enormous gas reserves that have been discovered in the north of the country should begin to arrive. It is not two years before the arrival of the money that Frelimo will give up power.
I think that Frelimo will succeed in keeping power and that, one by one, the countries of the international community will accept the results, to the extent that they are used to working with Frelimo and that opposition always represents a leap in the unknown.
Could Venâncio Mondlane return to assume his new role as opponent ? And can the authorities let him back in? ?
Will Venâncio Mondlane himself want to return to his country? From a political point of view, he absolutely must return to his country, even if there are no more demonstrations, to be able to say and make it known that he is there, that he is ready to go to prison, that he is going to face the courts, that he has lawyers, etc.
Does the government have an interest in letting him return? It’s possible too. If Venâncio Mondlane returns to his country, he will have the status of leader of the main opposition party. In Mozambique, it is a real status. The leader of the main opposition party has very important benefits in kind: a beautiful house, car with driver, a budget, etc. I’m not saying that Venâncio Mondlane is corrupt or that he likes money, but he is all alone. Having these material means would be very important for him to continue his political fight.
It is therefore possible that, on the one hand, Frelimo has an interest in letting him return to calm him down, to coax him, to integrate him into the system thanks to his status as leader of the main opposition party. And that, on the other hand, he, politically, has an interest in returning. Now, if there are really strong consistent indications that, if he returns, he will be assassinated like his two traveling companions recently, we understand that he is not returning.
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