Mozambiq Inside Watch

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Insight: 'Donors' darling' Mozambiquelooks less loveable after attacks

Residents pass the remains of barricades in the streets of Mozambique's capital, Maputo, September 3, 2010.Credit: Reuters/Grant Lee Neuenburg

By Pascal Fletcher BOBOLE, Mozambique | Tue Jul 23, 2013 6:22am EDT

(Reuters) - At Bobole, a bustling refreshment stop onMozambique's north-south highway, brightly-painted kioskslined with bottles offer drinks to thirsty travelers while hawkerssell bananas, paw-paws and carrots in a typical Africanroadside scene.

But memories remain fresh off when Bobole lay in the "death corridor" of a civil war thatcost nearly one million Mozambicans their lives until it ended two decades ago.

This year, a series of hit-and-run raids by opposition Renamo gunmen about 600 km (375miles) further north has rekindled fears of a return to all-out conflict in what has becomeone of Africa's economic growth stars, where international investors are developing multi-billion-dollar coal and gas discoveries.

"What we saw here, we don't want our children to see," said Rogeria Mabjaia, who owns akiosk in Bobole, an hour's drive north of the capital Maputo. She remembers hiding in thebush from the "bandidos", the name Mozambique's Frelimo government gave the Renamoguerrillas during the war of 1975-1992.

Back then, motorists and residents at Bobole faced ambushes day and night by armedraiders who stole livestock and food, burned homes and vehicles, and killed without mercy.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/23/us-mozambique-politics-insight-idUSBRE96M0BF20130723

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/23/us-mozambique-politics-insight-idUSBRE96M0BF20130723



By comparison, the raids this April and June in central Sofala province look minor, althoughat least 11 soldiers and police and six civilians were killed.

Nevertheless they caught the Frelimo party government and its international backers bysurprise, forcing a temporary suspension of some coal exports to the coast by rail, reducingnorth-south road traffic and causing tourist cancellations.

Unrest before local elections in November and a presidential vote next year could dislodgethe former Portuguese colony from its pedestal as a "donors' darling", showered withforeign aid. It could also derail the expected resources investment bonanza in a countrythat remains desperately poor.

RHODESIAN CREATION

Renamo was formed as an anti-communist rebel group in the 1970s by the secret serviceof neighboring Rhodesia, in retaliation for Mozambique sheltering guerrillas fighting thewhite-minority government of what is now Zimbabwe.

It was later adopted by the apartheid-era South African military but abandoned the war in a1992 peace pact to become Mozambique's leading opposition party.

Renamo has lost every election to Frelimo since then, but accuses President ArmandoGuebuza and his ruling party of hogging political and economic power through a one-sidedelectoral system and by harassing its opponents.

Mozambique needs some kind of accommodation, said Leopoldo Amaral, human rightsprogram manager for the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) inJohannesburg, a pro-democracy network founded by financier George Soros.

"They are at a crossroads. If they don't reach a deal, things are likely to degenerate," hesaid. "You don't want a militarized country that will scare businessmen, investors."

Brazil's Vale, London-listed Rio Tinto, Italy's Eni and U.S. oil firm Anadarko are among themajor investors in Mozambique looking to develop some of the world's largest untapped

reserves of coal and gas.

"A SCENARIO OF WAR"?

After first ignoring Renamo's demands for a more balanced electoral body and integrationof its fighters into the army and police, the Frelimo government opened talks after theattacks.

"For Frelimo, a military solution is not desirable," party spokesman Damiao Jose toldReuters. Nevertheless, the army destroyed a Renamo bush camp in Sofala province onJuly 6.

Longtime Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, now 60, returned in October with a band of guerrilla veterans to his civil war base in the forested Gorongosa region of central

Mozambique.

This seemed a largely symbolic gesture. Few diplomats and analysts believe Dhlakama,whose militia is thought to number at least several hundred, has the capacity, support, or even the will, to resume all-out war.

But in a country where infrastructure is poor, a few insurgents can disrupt road and railcorridors through the thick bush of Sofala province that link the central and northern interior with the coast and the south.

If this chokehold is tightened, it could effectively cut Mozambique in half in terms of landtransport.

Around Bobole, where abandoned shells of homes remain in the bush as a reminder of thewar, there is heartfelt opposition to any slide back to conflict.



"Both sides should talk, they should be thinking about us," Mabjaia said at her kiosk."Mozambique just wants peace".

Renamo accuses Guebuza's government of "designing a scenario of war" by sendingtroops to Gorongosa to surround the area where Dhlakama is camped.

Renamo spokesman Fernando Mazanga said Dhlakama's return to his Sathunjira base on

October 17 last year followed threats and harassment by Frelimo security forces andmilitants.

He cited the storming by police in March last year of Renamo's headquarters in thenorthern city of Nampula where 300 armed supporters were based, according to police. Atthat time, Dhlakama was also living in Nampula.

"Renamo has been patient for 20 years," Mazanga said.

Frelimo, the former liberation movement which has ruled Mozambique since independencein 1975, jettisoned Marxism-Leninism in 1990 to embrace multi-party politics. It crushedRenamo in the last 2009 election by winning more than a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Dhlakama, who has challenged all his election losses, rejected the 2009 result asfraudulent but his party held on to 51 seats in parliament.

Frelimo accuses Renamo of resorting to violence to make up for its political weakness."Renamo must change its attitude and conform to the rules of play of democracy,"spokesman Jose said.

Authorities arrested Renamo's information chief Jeronimo Malagueta last month after hesaid the group would target "logistics". He faces charges of inciting violence.

Guebuza and Frelimo are expected to try to pacify Dhlakama and his Renamo partisanswith a settlement that includes more state jobs and patronage, but the two sides are stillbickering over where their leaders should meet.

DIMINISHED DEMOCRACYWhile Dhlakama is widely viewed as a spent force, other opposition politicians share hiscomplaints that Guebuza and Frelimo are imposing a virtual one-party rule under a mantleof democracy.

"The regime is being very arrogant ... There is political exclusion," said Lutero Simango, aleader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), which holds 8 seats in parliamentcompared with Renamo's 51 and Frelimo's 191.

MDM, which was formed by Renamo dissidents and holds the mayorships of the port citiesof Beira and Quelimane, has also long denounced harassment and arrests of its membersby Frelimo.

U.S. diplomatic cables from Maputo, revealed by WikiLeaks, have long expressed concernsabout Guebuza's leadership style and Frelimo's domination of all branches of governmentthrough its centralized party structure.

"A tough, heavy-handed man who likes to have his way," was how one 2005 U.S. Embassyreport described Guebuza, a former hardline interior minister for Frelimo who is now aged70.

A 2010 cable said he had an "authoritarian streak" and was "centralizing power", a view stillexpressed in private by some diplomats from the G-19 group of Mozambique's principaldonors.

Frelimo's Jose rejected all these allegations as untrue.



Popular resentment is also growing about inequalities in Mozambique, where more thanhalf the population still lives below the poverty line, and over perceived rampant corruptionin the government and Frelimo.

"People are openly speaking against Guebuza," a donor country diplomat told Reuters,asking not to be named.

In Maputo, gleaming new office blocks, hotels and shopping malls have sprouted amongfaded colonial era buildings along the Indian Ocean, contrasting with poor neighborhoodsof tin-roofed homes mushrooming up in the dusty suburbs.

The president, an independence veteran turned businessman who was re-elected to asecond five-year term in 2009, is one of Mozambique's richest men. The constitution barshim from a third term but Frelimo has not designated a likely successor.

Guebuza is criticized by opponents for using his position to expand his family's businessempire, which ranges from ports and logistics to construction, tourism and publishing. Onepopular nickname for him is "Guebusiness".

A 2009 U.S. embassy cable quoted former foreign minister Leonardo Simao as saying

Guebuza "runs the party like the mafia".

The Guebuza family's commercial clout stretches to the president's youngest daughter Valentina, a civil engineer in her early 30s. She was elected to Frelimo's Central Committeelast year and featured in a 2012 Forbes Africa magazine article as Mozambique's"Millionaire Princess".

Some compare this with another former Portuguese colony in Africa, oil producer Angola,where long-serving President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his family are also accused byrights groups of running a monopolistic system that controls the national wealth. "We aregoing towards the Angolan model: one party, one person, one family," said OSISA's Amaral.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS

Social tensions caused by rising living costs and economic injustice have already led toprotests. These have ranged from local people in the coal producing Tete provincecomplaining about conditions of resettlement to make way for mining facilities, to urbanriots in 2008 and 2010 over rising food prices and other living costs.

Mozambique's resources potential has created expectations among the population of 23million that their lives will soon change for the better. But these may not be quickly met,even though four of the world's five largest oil and gas discoveries last year were made off the Mozambique coast.

"There is a gap between expectations and cash flows ... From coal, the cash flow isminimal at the moment and there is a bottleneck with the logistics," the donor nation

diplomat said. "There are big expectations and the oligarchy is not yet ready to manage it."

This gap is even greater for the expected bonanza from development of liquefied nationalgas (LNG), forecast by experts to be a "revenue game-changer" for Mozambique, whichlanguishes near the bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index.

UNICEF's Senior Social Policy Specialist in Maputo, Lisa Kurbiel, said this should be a"transformational opportunity" to tackle badly lagging education and health indicators -about 44 percent of Mozambique's children suffer from stunted growth, one of the highestrates in the world.

But a survey of Mozambique's Rovuma Basin gas prospects prepared for the U.N.children's agency cautions that the high investment levels and long time needed for LNG

development mean "it is nearly impossible for gas exports to begin before 2019".



Unfulfilled expectations, coupled with the spreading malaise of corruption and a flawedelectoral democracy, could pose more of a short-term threat to Mozambique's peace thanthe actions of a former rebels with reduced political support.

Bobole resident Salvador Zandamela, 75, who lost two sons aged 12 and 15 in the civilwar, said he still had nightmares about marauding gunmen "hunting people like animals".

"So when I hear that things could be starting again, I'm afraid," he told Reuters, carrying ahoe for tilling his fields.

(Additional reporting by Manuel Mucari in Maputo; Editing by David Stamp)

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Mozambiq Inside Watch