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MAPUTO. – Mozambique yesterday celebrated 43 years since the country gained independence from Portugal on june 25, 1975.
Mozambique like other former colonies in the southern Africa attained independence after waging a bitter armed struggle waged by FRELIMO.
The founding president of the new republic was Samora Moises Machel, who died in a plane crash along the South African-Mozambican border in 1986.
Threats to the new republic came soon after independence when the rebel movement, led by Afonso Dhlakama, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), fought the Frelimo government in a 16-year civil war.
Yesterday’s independence commemorations come against the backdrop of another security threat from an Islamic jihadist group – al-Sunna that has been causing a reign of terror in the Cabo Delagado province in northern Mozambique, along the border with Tanzania.
Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi yesterday made his first remarks about the attacks in Cabo Delgado, as he condemned a spate of attacks on villages in the gas-rich north of the country and called for the perpetrators to be “neutralised.”
The attacks have raised risks for investors developing more than $30 billion of gas projects off the coastal Cabo Delgado province.
Researchers said the raids have been carried out by a group known as Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama, composed of local people as well as citizens of neighbouring Tanzania, which wants Islamic law introduced in the region.
The insurgents are a “group of malefactors, allegedly with religious or social motivation,” President Nyusi said in his first public comments about the violence.
Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy group, says the attacks have left at least 39 people dead and forced more than 1,000 others to flee their homes since May.
“We vigorously condemn these acts and will not rest until their perpetrators and collaborators are neutralised and held accountable for their crimes,” President Nyusi said in a speech yesterday at Independence Day celebrations in Maputo, the capital. “Any claims of sectors of the population, whether legitimate or not, should be presented to the appropriate venues via dialogue, which is the best way to achieve the desired objectives.”
The Ahlu Sunnah Wa-Jama insurgency comes just as President Nyusi is finalising a permanent peace deal with the country’s biggest opposition party, which has been delayed by the May death of Afonso Dhlakama, the leader of Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, or Renamo.
The opposition’s armed wing resumed attacks in 2013, and sporadic fighting continued until Nyusi and Dhlakama agreed to a truce in 2016.
Ossufo Momade, Renamo’s interim head, has said he’s committed to the peace process.
“Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration are the sine qua non for a democratic, stable and peaceful country,” Nyusi said. “There is no alternative to disarmament, demobilisation. And it should start already.” – Herald Reporter/Bloomberg
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