New president of Mozambique Daniel Chapo during his swearing in ceremony. Credit: X/PrimatureRwanda
New Mozambican president, Daniel Chapo – member of the Frelimo ruling party – was sworn in this past week following several months of mass uprisings against the October 9 election results. The uprisings have been met with state crackdowns with an estimated death toll of 300. The election results served as a catalyst for the growing dissatisfaction and exhaustion felt by the masses across Mozambican society. For decades, Mozambicans have experienced a steep decline in the standard of living brought on by decades of neoliberal intervention which only further subjected them to being secondary to the country’s development. While uprisings persisted, a Mozambican opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, has garnered favorable reporting from Western media outlets. Mondlane also shares a small base of support with the youth of Mozambique.
Frelimo’s growing unpopularity stands in contrast to their earlier revolutionary days of fighting for national liberation from Portuguese colonialism and South African apartheid extension into the region.
Apartheid South Africa’s war against Mozambique and neighboring states
The colonial legacy of the apartheid government in South Africa was deeply intertwined with the colonial rule of Mozambique and Angola by Portugal and South Africa’s illegal occupation of Namibia. South Africa attempted to maintain hegemony over the southern African region through military interventions directly aimed at stopping anti-colonial and socialist movements for liberation against Portuguese and British colonialism.
Apartheid South Africa, along with full support from the Western imperialist powers, attempted to stymy the independence movements led by the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) by actively supporting anti-communist opposition factions Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Their support for Renamo and UNITA led to protracted, devastating wars in both countries from 1975 to 1992.
Mozambique’s economic crisis and rise of neoliberalism
The civil war of 1975-1992, perpetuated by apartheid South Africa’s proxies cannot be overlooked. The South African apartheid government utilized their collaborationist Renamo forces in Mozambique to steal crops, spike water wells, and wreak terror on civilian populations to further instigate a famine, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Mozambicans in the 1980s. In addition to the disruption of agriculture and distribution, drought further exacerbated the crisis making it difficult to grow crops.
Around this time, the People’s Republic of Mozambique had close relations with the People’s Republic of Angola, Cuba, and the German Democratic Republic. It was also an observer of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON), which was under the leadership of the Soviet Union from 1949 until its collapse in 1991. Mozambique made a bid to formally join COMECON as a member state in the early 1980s but was denied, despite GDR sponsorship and endorsements. Membership into this economic bloc was seen as an outlet to provide loans which the newly liberated state of Mozambique needed to raise its level of development.
It is in this context that Frelimo looked towards other avenues for international funding. As poverty continued to increase in the country, so did growing popular discontent. In 1987, Mozambique turned towards the IMF and World Bank for structural adjustment programs (SAPs) to address the effects brought on by the devastating civil war. This was a year after Samora Machel, revolutionary leader of Mozambique’s liberation movement, died in a fatal plane crash in 1986. These SAPs eroded the state’s ability to provide food subsidies while hospitals, clinics, and schools were shut down or privatized. State markets and food rationing were replaced by private enterprises. These austerity measures by the IMF and World Bank further entrenched Mozambique within its international debt trap well into the 2000s through their re-branded “Poverty Reduction Strategy.” Ultimately, IMF “conditionalities” and SAPs crippled the ability for the state to strengthen their agriculture, health, and education sectors dramatically.
Western intervention as a guise for counterterrorism
When countries like Mozambique are thrust into a heightened state of precarity and instability, a vacuum is created, which leaves room for elites and multinationals to exploit the economic crisis while insurgent groups prey on the distress of millions.
On Jan. 17, Mozambique’s former finance minister Manuel Chang was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison by a U.S. district court for the infamous “tuna bond scandal.” The scandal centered around neocolonial state institutions, foreign investment companies, and Credit Suisse intertwined in the embezzlement of several millions of dollars. Ultimately, this resulted in a default on Mozambique’s debt in 2016 which plunged nearly two million Mozambicans into further debt. Credit Suisse and UAE-based shipbuilding company Privinvest were met with slaps on the wrist while neocolonial puppet, Chang, was set up as their sacrificial lamb.
Furthermore, entrenchment of poverty across Mozambique was only further exploited with the discovery of liquified natural gas reserves in the Cabo Delgado province in northern Mozambique. Multinational companies flocked to the region during the early 2010s. Total Energies, for example, poured $24 billion into exploiting the country’s offshore LNG reserves. While foreign companies profit from the extraction of Mozambique’s natural resources at all stages of production, Mozambicans across all sectors will not see these gains put back into their society for 20+ years. Additionally, international investment laws protect their LNG projects at the expense of Mozambique. Military and security services protect LNG infrastructure rather than the people, and TotalEnergies controls part of Mozambique’s state functions.
In 2017, following the revelation of the tuna bond scandal, a terrorist insurgency driven by Islamic State-Mozambique served as a pretext for Western intervention. There are about 24 countries that have sent troops into Mozambique, including many from regional countries on the continent. The SADC Mission in Mozambique (Samim) — which includes South Africa, Angola, Botswana, and Zimbabwe — deployed troops in 2021. Portugal and the United States, through AFRICOM, have also deployed troops into the region. Rwanda has deployed 3500 personnel to Cabo Delgado over the past few years financed by the EU. Just this past November, the EU allocated 20 million euros to maintain Rwanda Defense Forces in the province while additionally funding the Mozambican Armed Forces with 89 million euros and a Training Mission (EUTM).
Western imperialism seeks to gain greater control over the resources of Mozambique without outright stating its agenda. Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame, French CEO Patrick Pouyanné of TotalEnergies, and former president of Mozambique Filipe Nyuis all exercise an “axis” which prioritizes projected LNG projects that have since been stalled. The conflict surrounding the northern region emphasizes the fight over natural gas and other resources. Both the state of Mozambique and international institutions have been quick to respond to the insurgency as LNG projects have been on hold, yet Mozambicans who are at the heart of those affected by the regional conflict are not raised as primary to the issues surrounding Cabo Delgado.
Who is opposition figure Venâncio Mondlane?
The veracity of the electoral fraud accusations against Frelimo need to come under suspicion as well. In the October elections, a massive international media campaign went into effect promoting Venâncio Mondlane – a relatively unknown figure – while attacking Chapo and Renamo candidate Ossufo Momade. International media embellished an image of Mondlane, the former Renamo mayor of Maputo, as a political outsider seeking to overthrow the corrupt establishment. This media promotion was certainly not hurt by Mondlane’s own charismatic social media personality, honed by his decades of Pentecostal preaching.
On the day of the elections, many different Western governments and NGOs used their role as election observers to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the elections. Two of the main groups working as tools of Western regime change were the European Union Electoral Observation Mission and the Commonwealth Observer Group. COG is a “who’s who” of Western groomed politicians and media personalities, including members of Chatham House, a think tank funded by the British government. These think tanks function as a revolving door and point of connection between Western governments and private business. For example, the COG electoral observer for Britain, Alex Vines, is a former employee of Human Rights Watch, a notorious agent of regime change. The crux of the allegations is that the Western electoral observers were not allowed to watch vote-counting at polling stations. It’s not out of the ordinary for electoral observers anywhere to watch a vote count but it’s impossible to ascertain whether the specific allegations made by the EUEOM and COG are true. The resulting media firestorm further isolated Frelimo on the world stage and provided the pretext for protests against the government in which hundreds were killed.
Fighting for sovereignty and against underdevelopment
It’s important to look back at the history of national liberation struggles and revolutionary parties as the vanguard against colonialism and imperialism. It is even more critical we understand the decline in Frelimo’s revolutionary socialist outlook which turned into a ruling party of neoliberalism. The party’s decline can be contributed greatly to the incessant interventions of Western imperialist powers through financial strangulation and funding of anti-communist proxies. This pattern of imperialism across the African continent actively works to nip revolutionary movements such as anti-imperialist, and socialist projects in the bud. However, we are witnessing the rise of anti-colonial governments throughout the Sahel that are resolute in returning towards a revolutionary process that are defending gains and sovereignty of their states.
Neither Frelimo’s newly elected president Chapo, nor Mondlane of Podemos’s vocal opposition, places the interests of the Mozambican people as primary for development. Rather, they are secondary to the needs of multinationals, the EU, and AFRICOM. It’s clear that the presence of these multinationals, along with EUTM, the Rwanda Defense Forces, and AFRICOM serve their own interests and in fact exacerbate the crises for Mozambicans. The fate of Mozambicans must be determined by the several millions demanding a qualitative change in the worsening social and economic conditions.
