Africa-Press – Mozambique. Ossufo Momade, the leader of Mozambique’s former rebel movement Renamo, made it clear on Thursday that he has no intention of resigning.
Speaking at the opening of a meeting of the Renamo National Council, in the northern city of Nampula, Momade said he would not obey pressure from his opponents to stand down. Cited by the independent television station, STV, he stressed that he has always respected the Renamo statutes.
For months, people claiming to be former Renamo guerrillas have demonstrated at Renamo offices and have sometimes occupied them, thus disrupting the normal operations of the party. They are calling for a Renamo Congress to elect a new leadership.
The dissidents blame Momade for Renamo’s poor showing in the October 2024 general elections. In all previous elections, Renamo had come second, beaten only by the ruling Frelimo Party – but in October, it slipped to third position. Its parliamentary group was more than halved, falling from 60 to 32 members.
Nonetheless, Momade still enjoys a fair degree of democratic legitimacy within Renamo. He was elected President of the party, at a Renamo Congress held in 2019, and then re-elected in 2024.
At the opening of the National Council meeting, Momade suggested that some of his opponents were not Renamo members at all and had promoted “intrigues and character assassination” in the Mozambican media. They had become opponents of Renamo, “determined to destroy our collective project”.
Momade said that, under his leadership, not only party congresses but also meetings of the Political Commission and of the National Council, and conferences of the Renamo Women’s and Youth Leagues had been held on time.
“So we don’t accept pressure that calls into question the normal functioning and internal cohesion of the party”, he said. However, he claimed that “we are always open to internal dialogue”.
He admitted that the current meeting of the National Council was months late, but blamed this on the dissidents who had temporarily closed many of the party’s offices.
The meeting should have been held on 7-8 March, but was postponed. Momade revealed that Renamo could only hold the meeting now thanks to support from an NGO, the Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (IMD).
The meeting of the National Council, he said, “is a sovereign moment for debating the party’s internal life with honesty and openness. We will never agree with those who, when they leave here, will go straight to the television stations to denigrate the party’s bodies”.
Momade also defended the Renamo leadership’s decision not to join the post-election demonstrations called by former presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane. He claimed that the decision was taken to avoid further loss of life.
“It was not out of weakness, that we did not join those demonstrations”, Momade said. “It was in defence of the lives that were being put at risk”.
He added that Renamo based its decision on its own experience in 2000, when it organised demonstrations against the fraudulent results from the 1999 general elections. The police repressed those protests, Momade recalled, “and hundreds of Renamo members were murdered, while hundreds were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, because they rejected electoral fraud”.
Momade declared that Renamo’s “genuine commitment” is to “peace, social stability and development and so Renamo always presents dialogue as the mechanism to solve any political disagreement”.
Currently, Renamo is participating in the “Inclusive National Dialogue”, called by President Daniel Chapo, with the purpose, Momade said, “of finding solution which will allow the creation of premises for free, fair and transparent elections”.
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