The leadership vacuum

Good afternoon. The current positions of the two sides in Mozambican politics in the aftermath of this month’s disputed elections are nearly summed up today by the front pages of the state-controlled newspaper Notícias and the independent Canal de Moçambique. In Notícias, the lead story is an appeal from the interior minister Pascoal Ronda to refrain from violence. Canal meanwhile claims that “it is VM7 [Venâncio Mondlane] who is in charge”.

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Venâncio Mondlane, the presidential candidate who came second in the election results announced by Mozambique’s election authorities last week, has called for a week-long nationwide “general strike” starting on Thursday, 31 October [corrected from our initial post which said Friday 1 November]. Speaking in a live address broadcast through Facebook, he urged people from all over Mozambique to gather in the capital, Maputo, for a “March for the Nation’s Liberation” on 7 November. He said he hoped four million people would attend. For the week leading up to that march on 7 November, Mondlane has urged people not to pay taxes or any bus fares.

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Whether Mondlane can be described in such flattering terms is not yet clear, but the man who claims he won the presidential election has certainly exerted a lot of power in successfully calling for strikes and demonstrations recently. Yesterday he went further than before, asking people to stop working for a full week starting from tomorrow, and not to pay their taxes. If this strike is as popular as the last two, then it will be widespread, at least in major towns and cities.