Risk of conflagration in Mozambique against the backdrop of the day of validation of elections

Barricades obstruct its main roads, the avenues remain deserted and the metal curtains of shops remain lowered, an AFP team noted. Abnormal images in the middle of the end-of-year holiday season. While the accesses leading to the presidential palace, as well as the Constitutional Council, were blocked by the police on Monday.

“Dangerous protest”. Two months of demonstrations, strikes and blockades have cost the lives of at least 130 people, most of them demonstrators killed with live ammunition, according to the local NGO Plataforma Decide.

This is the “most dangerous post-electoral contest” in the country's history for the Frelimo party, at the head of Mozambique since its independence from Portugal in 1975, estimates Mozambican researcher Borges Nhamirre of the Institute of Studies. for the security of Pretoria.

Far from running out of steam, the movement could intensify on Monday. Venancio Mondlane, the opponent who claims electoral victory, called for a “new popular uprising on a scale never seen before”. In the event that the results crowning the Frelimo candidate, Daniel Chapo, as president, would be approved despite the irregularities raised by various international observation missions.

“Trouble.” Which leaves little doubt: “The Constitutional Council is not politically independent,” explains Borges Nhamirre. “There will be trouble,” he predicts. “The question – which I don’t think anyone can answer – is how long it will last,” he adds.

These weeks of demonstrations do not follow any usual pattern in this country, one of the poorest in the world. The predominance of the informal economy forces a large part of Mozambicans to live from day to day to feed their family.

“It was said that the protest movements in Mozambique could not last more than a month,” said Mr. Nhamirre, before adding: “It has nothing to do with what we used to observe “.

Venancio Mondlane. This has a lot to do with Venancio Mondlane. The one who mobilizes his supporters via ritual directs on social networks refuses any compromise with Frelimo.

Claiming to be the victim of two assassination attempts – which can be confirmed by the murders of two opposition figures in October – the former political commentator on Mozambican television has taken refuge abroad for weeks.

But “Venancio,” as he is simply called on the street, implied that he could make a comeback for the nomination. “On January 15, we will take power in Maputo,” he said. “If we have to lose our life in a just fight, we will lose it,” he added. “After such a long protest movement, this goes beyond 'Venancio',” said Johann Smith, an analyst in political and security risks, from Maputo.

Turn the page. Many of the 33 million inhabitants of this country, among the most unequal in the world, were counting on these elections to turn the page on Frelimo, of Marxist inspiration from the time of the war of independence, then the civil war which ended in 1990.

But the Electoral Commission declared Frelimo candidate Daniel Chapo the winner with 71% of the vote, compared to only 20% allocated to Venancio Mondlane. Fake figures, according to the latter, who claims 53% of the votes after a parallel count.

“I could be wrong, but even if he gets killed or something, the movement will continue. It's almost spring in southern Africa,” says Mr. Smith.

An allusion to the electoral decline in South Africa of the ANC, the party in power since 1994 forced into a coalition, then to the historic rout in Botswana of the BDP which had led the country since 1966. So many snubs inflicted this year on parties of release in the region.

Clément VARANGES

© Agence France-Presse