Africa-Press – Mozambique. Venancio Mondlane, the candidate for mayor of Maputo for Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, in last year’s municipal elections, believes that the profile of the Renamo presidential candidate, approved on Monday by the party’s National Council, is “illegal and unconstitutional”, and is intended to exclude him.
Mondlane was the first person to announce his intention of standing for the Presidency of Renamo at the congress scheduled for mid-May. He is challenging the current Renamo president, Ossufo Momade, who was elected at a Congress held in January 2019.
Momade’s five year term of office expired on 17 January. Despite this, the party’s national spokesperson, José Manteigas, declared that Momade would be the Renamo candidate in the election for President of the Republic scheduled for 9 October.
Momade subsequently announced that he will stand for a second term of office as Renamo leader. He is also challenged by Elias Dhlakama, brother of the late Afonso Dhlakama, who led Renamo from 1979 until his death from diabetes in 2018, and Juliano Picardo, a former Renamo Member of Parliament, and currently a political advisor to Momade. Dhlakama and Picardo both stood in the 2019 Congress, and were defeated by Momade.
In the early hours of Monday morning, the National Council approved a profile for candidates for the inner-party election. Only those who fit the profile will be allowed to stand as candidates to succeed Ossufo Momade as party leader.
Among the requirements in that profile is that any candidate for the Presidency of Renamo must have been a member of the party for at least 15 years.
This immediately excludes Mondlane, since he only joined Renamo in 2018. Previously he was a prominent member of the second opposition party, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM).
The profile also says that would-be candidates for Renamo President must be at least 35 years old, and must not only have held uninterrupted membership of Renamo for at least 15 years, but must have held senior positions – such as Secretary-General, member of the National Council, chairperson of a Renamo provincial council, and provincial or district Renamo delegate.
Missing from this list are the posts which Mondlane has held – such as candidate for mayor in a municipal election, or national election agent (he was Renamo’s national agent for the 2019 general elections, and again for the 2023 municipal elections).
Mondlane believed omitting these positions was part of a deliberate attempt to exclude him from the inner party presidential election, and had no justification in the Renamo statutes.
Under the statutes, he claimed, any Renamo member had the right to elect and be elected to the party’s leading bodies.
“Renamo’s bible is its statutes”, said Mondlane, “and the statutes say that members have the right to elect and to be elected from the moment they are admitted to membership.”
By adding other qualifications, such as the 15 year period of uninterrupted membership, the profile was violating the statutes, he argued.
So Mondlane is now threatening to go back to court to have the profile declared illegal.
Mondlane’s repeated resort to the courts to defeat his political opponents has infuriated the Renamo leadership, and the association of Renamo War Veterans, which has made veiled threats against him.
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