In 1975, Frelimo emerged with the legitimacy of arms and the fact that it had successfully confronted the Portuguese colonial power. Then a long civil war (1977-1992) shaped the country’s political life for a long time: even if the conflict had internal roots due to the policy of authoritarian modernisation pursued by the government, especially towards the peasants, the fact remains that the guerrilla was supported by the neighbouring apartheid regime. The violence was terrible on both sides, but, after the war, particularly in the cities (and especially in the south), even the discontented would never have voted for Renamo (Mozambican National Resistance, ex-guerrilla). However, particularly in city centres, the middle-class electorate began to vote for a third party, the MDM (Mozambique Democratic Movement), which emerged from a split in Renamo and which, most probably, had won the 2013 municipal elections in Maputo, the capital – if it wasn’t for an opportune power cut at the time of the ballot counting. The top of the list was Venâncio Mondlane, then a popular TV and radio commentator. In 2014, as the internal war resumed, Renamo doubled the number of its votes and deputies. But this rise was cut short in 2018 (municipal elections) and 2019 (general elections) by the state apparatus. Fraud then took place well before the election: the electoral census counted more voters than inhabitants in the pro-government province of Gaza, but far fewer in some others. The systematic intimidation of voters (by collecting voter card numbers) was very effective. Non-Frelimo observers were rarely accredited, while those from the latter flocked in their thousands to the polling stations, etc. Even so, it was clear that, this time, Renamo had in fact won the elections in Maputo and Matola, the other major city in the South, a historic Frelimo stronghold. But Renamo did not really organise any protests, despite spontaneous demonstrations by young people, playing the legal game and awaiting the results of their appeals to official bodies totally controlled by Frelimo.

With the passing of the years and the generations, it was clear that even in the cities of the South, disgruntled voters no longer hesitated to vote for Renamo: memories of the civil war were no longer politically defining. But Renamo was weakened by the death of its historic leader and the appointment of a former guerrilla general as its new president, Ossufo Momade, who proved to lack initiative and leadership. Momade prevented Venâncio Mondlane from being Renamo’s candidate in the presidential elections, but the latter stood as an independent, as a candidate of a new type, civil, educated, from the city, and moreover evangelical (a religious movement in great expansion in the country). The Renamo and MDM electorates turned en masse to this new candidate, all the more easily since their previous votes were not so much in favour of these two parties as mainly against Frelimo. They changed their approach.

Venâncio Mondlane’s campaign, although without a seasoned party to support it, was much better organised than Renamo’s campaigns. A parallel vote counting system using computer equipment, etc. was responsible for collecting the thousands of local reports as soon as the official count was finished. This enabled him to claim that he had won the elections with 70% of the vote, whereas the official results gave him around 20%. What is certain is that there was widespread fraud and that the popular conviction of a totally biased result was generalised. However, Venâncio Mondlane immediately called for ‘victory parades’, which were hardly tolerated by the authorities, who were claiming victory for their candidate, Daniel Chapo, an apparatchik who was almost unknown before the election campaign.

What tipped the situation was the assassination, in the middle of the street and in their car, of two of Venâncio Mondlane’s campaign leaders, Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, most probably by members of the Special Operations Group of the Rapid Intervention Unit (militarised police), known locally as the ‘death squads’, on 19 October. This was a warning to Venâncio Mondlane, who had just called for a general strike.

But from then on the situation changed: from demonstrations against electoral fraud, as often seen in various African countries, a revolutionary process began. There was a constant mobilisation of very poor people, with young boys leading the demonstrations and young girls organising prayers in the streets, and this took place throughout the country, including in small bush towns from which information occasionally emerged. The middle classes of the ‘city of cement’ were not to be outdone: without participating in the demonstrations, they held ‘pot-banging’ sessions from their windows for hours on end. A very important feature was the complete absence of an ethnic dimension: certainly, the civil war had never been inter-ethnic, but Frelimo was rather the party of the South and the cities and Renamo that of the North and the bush. The fact that Venâncio Mondlane was from the South in no way prevented demonstrations from taking place everywhere, including in the North, which was already affected by Jihadist guerrilla warfare. And the violence escalated: the authorities accused the demonstrators of looting shops, but the police were also seen looting... And the use of live ammunition increased. The official announcement of the results and the announced failure of the last appeals, the inauguration of the official president, Daniel Chapo, on 15 January 2025 did not weaken the mobilisation.

Now considering himself ‘president of the people’ and ‘elected president’ in the face of the ‘invested president’, Venâncio Mondlane began a tour of the country, gathering crowds even in the regions most loyal to Frelimo. But from that moment on, a new turning point was noted in the revolutionary process: people were no longer demonstrating so much against fraud as against the high cost of living – Mondlane had in fact issued a ‘decree’ ordering a reduction in the price of cement and other products, and people were mobilising to bring it into force. Communities revolted against the international companies installed in the country by the hand of power, because the compensations for the lost land and homes, mentioned in ‘contracts’ accepted under strong pressure, were not respected; the protest against the enormous pollution of the opencast coal mines of Moatize regained force; the destruction of sacred woods cut down to avoid hindering the exploitation of tar sands was no longer forgiven. More or less the whole Frelimo state was challenged, the revolution in progress, from simply democratic, became social.

And the price already paid is heavy: 353 confirmed deaths, including children or very young boys, or simple passers-by; undoubtedly at least 40 deaths among the local cadres of Venâncio Mondlane, such as those of the two young men murdered in their car, at that moment not involved in any demonstration, in Massinga (Inhambane province), on the night of 8 March, who fell victim to a genuine ambush. For the previous days, Massinga had been a hotbed of protest against the government in the south of the country. Thousands of people were injured (3,000 is the figure given, but this mainly refers to injuries in the big cities), thousands were arrested, and some people (including journalists) disappeared.

This revolutionary process is taking place outside of all the opposition parties, which have agreed to send their elected representatives to sit in parliament, despite Mondlane’s call for a boycott. Another development is the remobilisation of the Naparamas in the provinces of Nampula and Zambézia. The Naparamas are a historical phenomenon in Mozambique, magical peasant militias (immunised against bullets) armed with bows and arrows. At the end of the civil war, in exhausted societies, they mostly acted in favour of Frelimo, against Renamo. But without ever having completely disappeared, they have remobilised this time to put themselves at the service of the mobilised people, whom they seek to protect from the militarised police. Despite their ‘vaccinations’, they are harshly repressed by the heavily armed police.

Faced with this tidal wave, the government has concluded a reconciliation agreement with all the political movements... except Mondlane’s. On the very day of the signing of the agreement, 5 March, a demonstration in which Mondlane was participating in Maputo was attacked with live ammunition by the UIR, leaving four dead and several wounded. At the same time, the official president has toughened his stance. At his first public meeting after his inauguration, in Pemba (north), on 24 February, he proclaimed that "mesmo se for para jorrarmos sangue para defender esta pátria contra as manifestações, vamos jorrar sangue. Vamos combater o terrorismo, vamos combater os naparamas e vamos combater as manifestações” [‘even if we have to shed blood to defend the homeland against the demonstrations, we will shed blood. We will fight terrorism, fight the Naparamas and fight the demonstrations’], equating any form of challenge to the government with the jihadism that has been raging in the North since 2017.

It must be understood that, in the context of a state that has been totally merged with the party for fifty years, an authoritarian party ready to do anything to stay in power, when a president publicly says ‘we will shed blood’, he no longer needs to give orders to the intermediate and local levels of his forces of repression to kill. They have heard the order. The authorities are ready for a bloodbath to defeat the ongoing social revolution. Who is going to stop them? What is the international community saying, what are the foreign embassies in Maputo saying?

10 March 2025,

Michel Cahen

Emeritus Research CNRS Director at Sciences Po Bordeaux