Good afternoon. Today saw the latest skirmish between de facto opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane and the government. Mondlane was hauled in before prosecutors to answer charges that he had incited “collective disobedience”. Not a man for understatement, he has responded by filing a criminal complaint against President Daniel Chapo. According to the rather long and rambling complaint, Chapo is himself guilty of inciting crimes on account of his speech delivered in the city of Pemba last month, where he threatened to “spill blood” of protesters. In particular, Mondlane says that Chapo was responsible for an attempted assassination attempt against himself in Maputo last week (although it looks more likely that the police only intended to disperse Mondlane’s supporters, albeit by shooting recklessly).
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The actions of both Mondlane and the government are quite symmetrical. Both are using the legal system as a political tool. There is certainly no chance that the politicised Attorney-General’s Office will take any notice of Mondlane’s complaint, and the complaint is not intended to attract action from prosecutors. It reads more like a political speech than a criminal complaint, full of rhetorical flourishes, exclamation marks and capital letters. For its part, it looks unlikely at this stage that the government will really use the legal system to punish Mondlane. He has been called in for hearings before since the nationwide protests began, and nothing happened as a result.
