All Eyes on Mozambique Amid Rising Tensions Over Election Results
CMI’s Aslak Orre and Carmeliza Rosário offer insights into what the ongoing political instability in the country could mean for its future and for the international community.
Mozambique’s ruling regime has declared itself the victors in elections that took place on October 9th, claiming 77% of the popular vote. Even before these results were announced, both domestic and international actors claimed that the results had been fixed, the process manipulated and that the results were illegitimate. Now that the ruling party has doubled down on the results, there is a risk that the country could descend into chaos.
Mozambique has already been struggling with a four-layered crisis: political, economic, social, and security. The political instability across the country is a result of the elections on October 9th that has seen strikes, protests, and violent reprisals. However, it should not be forgotten that Mozambique is facing a dire economic situation, with its credit rating decreased from CCC+ to CCC-, making it extremely difficult for the government to secure future loans and funding. The militant Islamist and jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado in the north of the country has displaced hundreds of thousands and threatens future international investment in the region. All of this compounds in a social crisis with mass-unemployment and a population that is ready for change.
Mozambique is a party state where power is held by a single political party, FRELIMO. Despite opposition parties being allowed, and a judicial system supposed to ensure fair elections, the legacy of the one party state in the composition of key institutions has allowed FRELIMO to coopt the state apparatus and make certain that they always maintain power. Questions have been raised over the legitimacy of elections in Mozambique since they were introduced in 1994, however now the international community is being much more forceful in calling out FRELIMO’s management of the election as “unjustified alterations” of results and condemning the politically motivated killings of Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe.
Venâncio Mondlane and the Democratic Alliance Coalition
Venâncio Mondlane, running as an independent with the backing of the party PODEMOS, has been at the forefront of questioning the legitimacy of recent election results. Mondlane, who ran for mayor of Maputo, claimed last year that he had won that election, with the victory unjustly taken from him by the ruling FRELIMO party. With allegations of fraud being far more widespread this year, Mondlane has sought to mobilise the country – in particular the youth – in calling out the country’s leadership and pressuring them to accept that he has in fact won the presidential elections.
Mondlane is clearly seen as a threat by the regime. Already two of his assistants – Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe – his lawyer and a spokesperson for the PODEMOS party – have been assassinated. While Mozambique has seen similar outbreaks of popular anger, street battles, violence in 2008 and 2010, and many acts of violent repression from the regime, this situation feels different, with far more momentum behind a political leader, Mondlane. Mondlane has successfully called for general strikes this week, with strikes on Monday 21st October, Thursday 24th and Friday 25th. Mondlane’s message has been clear – he wants to bring the country to a halt, without explicitly calling for a violent uprising, instead using a massive mobilisation of the population to march and to block the government from functioning effectively.
Youth-Led Protests and Social Media Mobilization
Mondlane has shown he can successfully mobilise a disgruntled youth, frustrated with the lack of opportunity and without a voice due to the ongoing manipulation of elections by the regime. In the past, this disgruntlement did not manifest itself as it is now, with a youth that is willing to fight and die for change.
While social media is also disseminating a lot of misinformation, it is having a profound effect on the spread of news around the country, the rapidity at which evidence of election fraud is spreading is fuelling anger across the country, rather than in just isolated pockets.
Social crisis
Beside a mobilised youth, Mozambique has many vulnerable populations struggling against economic strife and government oppression. With much funding from the international community funnelled towards defence operations in the north of the country, widespread social issues are neglected. With the de-legitimisation of the government due to the lack of confidence in the election, state resources will be even harder to access for these communities, meaning what has made them angry will get worse before it gets better.
International community
The international community is very much an active player in the political situation in Mozambique, with millions of dollars in aid entering the country ever year, as well as huge multi-national business interests, not least in the gas and mineral wealth in the north of the country.
As a research centre, CMI has four ongoing projects in Mozambique, and Norway gives more than NOK 500 million annually to Mozambique, according to NORAD. Yet with the instability caused by these election results, there will be massive impacts on both our work and these organisations. They will find it ever more difficult to deliver aid and facilitate peacebuilding activities in the north of the country as it becomes more complicated to cooperate with a government that is no longer being seen as legitimate to rule.
The EU came out on 23rd October to state that is has seen evidence of “unjustified alteration” of the election results. This international identification of illegitimate election has the potential to bring the country and the government to its knees, given the reliance on aid in Mozambique.
The international community has cut off aid in the past, after key members of the FRELIMO government and civil servants were found to have taken part in the theft of $2 billion between 2013 and 2014 – the hidden debt scandal – leading to the international community withdrawing funding for two years. However, the funding returned, and despite pressure to improve electoral practice, the election rigging has become more blatant, as has been shown once again in 2024.
Geopolitically, Mozambique is very important for the EU and for other countries in the region.
Huge reserves of natural gas have been found off the coast of the north of Mozambique, with up to $50 billion of private investment proposed by both Exxon and Total to build infrastructure to extract and export gas out of Mozambique. The insurgency in the north has destabilised these plans already, and further instability across the whole country could undermine the plans altogether.
Neighouring Malawi and South Africa are deeply concerned about potential jihadist insurgencies within their own borders, while Zimbabwe and Angola do not want to see a similar regime to their own fail.
Any descent into violence is likely to favour FRELIMO’s narrative that the alternative to their government is worse than what they are offering at the moment. Yet further instability has the risk to exacerbate the massive problems facing ordering people in Mozambique.
The next weeks will be critical. There are still two months before the inauguration of the next president of Mozambique, and until that time protests and strikes are likely to intensify.
While the international community wants a stable government in Mozambique, both for the stability in the region and for their own interests with the potential access to resources in the country, it appears that key actors have finally taken a stand and broken their silence on persistent election fraud by FRELIMO. They have come to the realisation that if the people of Mozambique must demand better government, then so should they.
