Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican analysts told Lusa on Thursday that the new government had managed to “minimally stabilise the country” in its first 100 days in office, following post-election demonstrations, but without progressing in other sectors.
“The country has structural problems, but I think that in the short term the essential thing was to get the temperature down and I think that, in this respect, Mozambique’s government has managed to take office, minimally stabilise the country and ensure the minimum normality,” analyst and researcher João Feijó told Lusa.
Former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane, who rejects the results of the 9 October elections, has over the last five months led the worst contestation of the election results the country has seen since the first multiparty elections (1994), with protests in which almost 400 people lost their lives in clashes with the police, according to data from civil society organisations, also degenerating into looting and destruction of businesses and public infrastructure.
However, on 23 March, Mondlane and Chapo met for the first time, and a commitment was made to end the country’s post-election violence, although today mutual criticism and accusations continue in the public stances of the two politicians.
The analyst has “doubts” about whether the country’s president will fulfil his commitment to Mondlane in the “short and medium term”, but he stressed that “there is this success on the part of the government, it has managed to take office, it has managed to get people moving around at least a little”.
Feijó also pointed to the “blatant violence” that “is no longer visible in daylight” as a hallmark of Chapo’s first 100 days in power.
“But opposition leaders continue to be hunted down and eliminated, while in the light of day they talk about peace and this new president uses a lot of staging, he does a lot of staging of a religious man who is looking for peace, but then, in the quiet, behind the scenes, the sinister methods of assassinations and elimination of opposition leaders continue to be used,” said the Mozambican analyst.
According to João Feijó, the new government has not managed to resolve the problems in the education and health sectors in 100 days, as it had promised, pointing to the constant strikes, as well as “a very big attempt” to control the media, allowing them only an “unofficial role of reproducing the discourse” to legitimise themselves in power.
“In economic terms, there is no capacity whatsoever to resolve the problems that exist in the country, there is a certain staging of a line of credit and measures to support companies, but in practice they will have no effect in 100 days, the impact is practically nil or merely palliative, the country has structural problems,” he said.
Mozambican journalist Fernando Lima emphasised that the most important thing about the Chapo administration was the end of the demonstrations, praising the meeting between Mondlane and Daniel Chapo.
“But that’s very little, although the gains are there to be seen, because tension has dropped a lot in the country (…). It was a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. Many forces are conspiring against this handshake, see what happened in Quelimane, in the attack on Joel Amaral and also all the blockades they are trying to establish concerning Mondlane,” said Lima, who sees the country “plunged” into a new crisis if the dialogue between Mondlane and Chapo doesn’t continue.
In the economic and social sphere, for Lima, it’s “a bit of seeing is believing”, given the announced housing projects for young people, the fight against unemployment and funding for entrepreneurship initiatives, areas that, in his opinion, cannot be resolved in 100 days.
“The changes in the police and customs are encouraging, but this has to be translated into changes, namely in corruption and a new police attitude towards citizens and towards kidnappings,” added the Mozambican analyst.
In February, Mozambique’s government approved a plan with 77 measures to be carried out in the first 100 days of government for the five-year period 2025-2029, “with a direct impact on the population’s well-being”.
This agenda comes at a time of successive demonstrations and stoppages in the country, in which the government has previously confirmed at least 80 deaths, as well as the destruction of 1,677 commercial establishments, 177 schools and 23 health centres during the demonstrations.
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