Emilia Columbo* – World Politics Review
At least three people were killed and more than 60 injured yesterday in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against what they consider to be the country’s fraudulent elections on Oct. 9. In the weeks of protests since then, at least 20 people have died and hundreds have been injured and arrested.
The sustained popular mobilization would have been difficult to predict a month ago, when millions of voters cast their ballots for Mozambique’s presidential, national assembly and provincial government elections. Turnout was low, with one Mozambican civil society group estimating that only around 35 percent of registered voters participated in the election.
Nonetheless, public expectations for change were high. Independent candidate Venancio Mondlane and the Podemos party with which he allied himself had captured the imagination of Mozambican voters—particularly the country’s large youth population—with a platform focused on making government more responsive and distributing economic rents more equitably.
Preliminary, unofficial results suggesting Mondlane was doing well in the polls buoyed this expectation for change. But that hope came undone on Oct. 24 with the announcement that Daniel Chapo—representing the ruling Frelimo party, which has governed Mozambique since its independence in 1975—had won the presidency with over 70 percent of the vote. According to the official tallies, Mondlane finished in second place with 20 percent, while what had been the primary opposition party, Renamo, came in third. Frelimo also tightened its grip on the national assembly, adding 11 seats to finish with 195 out of 250.
The official results were announced amid assessments from international and domestic observers that irregularities in the campaign, voting and tallying process had undermined the legitimacy of the electoral process. But while accusations of fraud in Mozambique’s elections are common, the public reaction since the Oct. 24 announcement has not been.
Wide swaths of the population have defied government repression in order to protest what they see as a failed electoral process. The election and its aftermath suggest that, after years in which Frelimo had dominated Renamo in what was effectively a two-party system, Mozambique’s political landscape is changing.
Mondlane and Podemos
Mondlane and Podemos are both representative of this call for political change. Mondlane was until recently a member of Renamo, but he abandoned the party in June after it excluded him from its national congress and refused to consider him as a potential Renamo presidential candidate. The origin story of Podemos—a shortening of the Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique—is similar. After a failed attempt to name an alternative candidate to represent Frelimo in the Maputo mayoral election in 2019, a breakaway faction of Frelimo formed Podemos in protest of what they saw as the ruling party’s anti-democratic approach to selecting its candidates, but also to promote more equitable economic opportunities.
Though Mondlane ran in the October election as an independent, he was supported by Podemos, united as they were in their message of social justice and good governance, as well as their commitment to reinvesting the profits of local industries—such as mining and forestry—in the surrounding local communities. Their call for a new approach resonated most strongly among the youth, who account for over half of the Mozambican population.
Furthermore, Podemos and Mondlane’s effective use of social media to circumvent government-controlled or government-influenced media in order to broadcast their message more widely among urban youth helped generate support and excitement. Following the election, these lines of communication also allowed them to quickly disseminate unofficial vote tallies that suggested victories for Podemos and Mondlane, setting the stage for the political protests that have now erupted across Mozambique.
Frelimo’s Old Tricks
While Mozambican voters were generally looking for change, Frelimo relied on old tricks to ensure an overwhelming victory, perhaps not appreciating the public’s reduced tolerance for such methods. The image of a ruling party entrenched in its ways and loath to relinquish power after 50 years in office was further reinforced in the government’s management of the ensuing protests.
Mozambican social media has been saturated with videos and images of police firing live ammunition and tear gas at protesters as well as toward schools and homes. Reports alleging that the government cut internet access at multiple points during the protests further reinforced the image of a nondemocratic, repressive state, resonating with Mondlane’s message and likely bolstering the commitment of his followers.
Indeed, the weeks of protests since the results were announced suggest a public at odds with Frelimo over more than just fraudulent elections and police brutality. The presence of youth at the protests is perhaps to be expected. But they have been joined by groups as diverse as the Muslim business community, doctors and the middle class, all of which have their own grievances with the state, despite being more established constituencies.
For example, the South Asian business community is frequently targeted in kidnapping-for-ransom schemes that allegedly benefit from police complicity. And doctors have threatened to strike multiple times during the past 12 months over grievances about pay and working conditions—indeed, the high volume of injured protesters arriving at hospitals in Maputo over the past few weeks prompted criticism from medical professionals struggling to meet the demand for assistance.
Renamo’s Inflexion Point
The overwhelming success of Podemos and Mondlane compared to Renamo—which fought against Frelimo for 15 years in the country’s civil war, but became Mozambique’s primary opposition party after the end of the conflict in 1992—further underscores the popular yearning for political change. Public perceptions of Renamo’s reliability as a true counterbalancing force to Frelimo have declined in recent years, in part due to accusations that its leader, Ossufo Momade, has been willing to accommodate Frelimo in order to preserve his perks and status as primary opposition, earning the party the nickname “Frenamo.”
Momade’s poor showing in last month’s election has relegated Renamo to third place, putting in jeopardy the benefits and resources previously available to it as the primary opposition party and potentially undercutting its ability to quickly and effectively regain lost political ground.
Post-Election Violence and Long-Term Stability
The trajectory of the protests since late October and their impact on Mozambique’s long-term stability will depend primarily on how well Mondlane can keep harnessing public discontent to pressure Frelimo into providing some form of concessions to him or Podemos. Images and videos of protests since Oct. 24 suggest a high degree of mobilization and commitment among the public, even when faced with police repression. Indeed, the government’s heavy-handed approach has likely helped bolster public outrage. For example, multiple videos circulating on social media have shown Mozambicans banging pots and pans from their windows while police fire tear gas toward the buildings.
However, the economic realities of the protests may eventually come into play, limiting the longevity of this current round of popular mobilization. On Oct. 31, the president of the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique said the protests had at that point cost $45 million and left 1,200 people unemployed. But even if this current crisis is resolved and Chapo takes office as planned, the narratives and images of post-election protests across Mozambique suggest that he will be governing a public that has disavowed him. That means he will need to quickly demonstrate a willingness and ability to address the economic and security issues that have been frustrating voters.
While the current wave of protests has pushed the insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado even further from national headlines, electoral violence has the potential to nonetheless affect the trajectory of that conflict as well. Injuries suffered by members of the Muslim business community at the post-election protests dovetail with the insurgency’s religious rhetoric and narratives portraying Frelimo as indifferent to the suffering of Muslims.
Mozambican and Rwandan officials have denied allegations circulating online that Rwandan troops, which have been in Mozambique since 2021 to help fight the northern insurgency, had been deployed to Maputo to quell protests. But the current environment of heightened distrust of the government risks undermining the credibility of these statements, creating potential reputational harm to Rwandan forces that have thus far benefited from positive relations with civilians. Furthermore, controversy over these rumors threatens to make the Rwandan deployment another talking point in anti-Frelimo rhetoric, given the opaque nature of the agreement that resulted in their presence in Cabo Delgado.
The protests in Mozambique will leave a mark on society regardless of when and how they ultimately end. While a compromise that gives greater power to Podemos and Mondlane may ease tensions in the short term, the deterioration of the relationship between Frelimo and the Mozambican public over the past month will likely haunt the Chapo government. Indeed, to the extent these protests represent more than just discontent over the electoral process, they signal a shift in Mozambique’s political landscape that will likely gather momentum over time.
*Emilia Columbo is a nonresident senior associate in the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice president of analysis at VoxCroft Analytics. She previously served as a senior analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, covering African and Latin American political-security issues. Follow her on Twitter @EColumbo2019.