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Proceedings against opposition politician Mondlane exacerbate tensions in Mozambique
On Tuesday, former Mozambican presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane was questioned by the public prosecutor’s office in Maputo. He is accused of several offences in connection with the riots following the presidential election on 9 October 2024, including incitement to violence. After the ten-hour interrogation, Mondlane was released without charge. However, the Attorney General’s Office imposed travel restrictions on Mondlane, who must notify them in future if he leaves his place of residence for more than five days. Meanwhile, Mondlane used the proceedings to file a complaint against Mozambique’s President Daniel Chapo. He accused Chapo of threatening in a speech on 24 February to spill blood if necessary to end the protests and thus calling for violent action against demonstrators. Mondlane also accused the public prosecutor’s office of bias and pointed out that the charges and complaints he had made in recent months had not yet been pursued. Meanwhile, demonstrations by his supporters took place in front of the building, against which the police used tear gas.
These developments further intensify the political unrest that has been ongoing since the parliamentary and presidential elections in October last year (press review CW 43/2024 and press review CW 46/2024) and cast a shadow over the chances of success of the planned two-year National Dialogue. Last Wednesday, President Chapo and his party Frente da Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO) held talks with the opposition parties represented in parliament, Partido Democrático de Moçambique (PODEMOS), Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO) and Movimento Democrático de Moçambique (MDM), as well as other micro-parties represented in the state and local parliaments. They signed an agreement aimed at ending the post-election violence and initiating state reforms, particularly in the form of electoral reforms. In addition to a two-year dialogue process in which the political parties and three representatives from civil society are to be involved, the agreement also provides for the possibility of pardoning people who committed crimes during the post-election violence. Mondlane, who broke with the PODEMOS party that supported him after it recognised the official election results in February, was not invited to the negotiations. This was criticised both nationally and internationally, as Mondlane is, according to critics, still regarded as the country’s largest opposition force.
In response, Mondlane led a demonstration in the capital Maputo on the same day to protest against the agreement. Here too, the police, whose presence had been increased around the Joaquim Chissano Conference Centre, where the signing of the agreement took place, used tear gas and live ammunition. Mondlane’s convoy was also hit and one member was injured. While Mondlane accused the government of deliberately shooting at his convoy and attempting to assassinate him, the police said they had only wanted to disperse the crowd. The election monitoring platform DECIDE counted 16 shooting victims. According to DECIDE, more than 350 people have died since the elections and up to 3,500 have been injured – while the government speaks of 80 deaths and the destruction of 1,677 businesses, 177 schools and 23 health centres during the demonstrations.
Tense security situation in South Sudan
In light of the increasing tensions in South Sudan, the 43rd extraordinary meeting of the Heads of State and Government of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) took place on Wednesday. The summit, which was held virtually under the chairmanship of Djibouti’s President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, the current chairman of the regional organisation, called on all parties in South Sudan to de-escalate, respect the ceasefire and uphold the 2018 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). In addition, it was decided to set up an IGAD subcommittee at ministerial level for South Sudan to monitor the implementation of the R-ARCSS and, in particular, to support the timetable for the unification of the armed forces, the drafting of the constitution and the preparation of the elections. The subcommittee is also to travel to the South Sudanese capital Juba at short notice to assess the situation on the ground.
The tensions between South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, SPLM) and his first Vice President, Riek Machar (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, SPLM-IO), have recently intensified further. On Monday evening, Kiir surprisingly dismissed a minister and two ministers from the Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity (RTGoNU) in a new cabinet reshuffle. Ruben Madol Arol, Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Awut Deng Acuil, Minister of General Education and Joseph Mum Majak, Minister of Trade and Industry, were affected. Machar criticised this as a repeated unilateral decision that violated the peace agreement, after Kiir had just recently initiated changes in the cabinet in mid-February.
The current cabinet reshuffle took place against a backdrop of increasing political tensions and armed conflicts, particularly in the Nasir region in the east of the country. Since the beginning of March, there has been increased fighting between the White Army militia, which is close to Machar, and the South Sudanese armed forces, which support Kiir. Dozens of soldiers and a general lost their lives in an attack last Friday, during which a UN aircraft was also shot at. As a result, Machar’s house was surrounded by government troops and other high-ranking representatives of the SPLM-IO close to him were taken into custody, including the deputy army chief General Gabriel Duop Lam as well as the Minister for Peacebuilding, Stephen Pal Kuol, and Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Cho.
On Tuesday, the army chief of neighbouring Uganda, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, announced on Platform X that Uganda had sent special units to Juba at the request of the South Sudanese government to secure the capital. Uganda supports President Salva Kiir, Kainerugaba emphasised in his post. However, South Sudan’s Information Minister Michael Makuei denied the presence of Ugandan troops in the country. Ugandan troops were also stationed in the neighbouring state after the outbreak of the civil war in 2013 and again in 2016.
The political differences between Kiir and Machar and the increasing clashes are raising concerns about compliance with the R-ARCSS peace agreement and the power-sharing agreement based on it (press review CW 19/2021) as well as about a renewed outbreak of war in South Sudan. This concern is also emphasised by the US decision to withdraw all non-emergency government staff from Juba on Monday. It remains to be seen whether the current calls for de-escalation from IGAD and other international organisations such as the African Union and the United Nations will have any effect.
Event information:
From 9 to 11 April 2025, the International Urban Health Summit will take place at Herrenhausen Palace in Hanover. In view of increasing global urbanisation and the associated social and ecological challenges, the summit will bring together experts from various fields such as medicine, urban development and politics as well as representatives of civil society including schoolchildren. Topics to be discussed include urban health, urban planning, social inequalities and sustainable development goals as well as aspects such as climate change, artificial intelligence for healthy cities, education and social determinants of health. The International Urban Health Summit is a project of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in close cooperation with The InterAcademy Partnership (IAP), the Akademienunion and the Virchow Foundation and is significantly supported by the Volkswagen Foundation. Free registration is now possible here. Further information and the preliminary programme can be found on the event website.
In Other News
The citizens of Lesotho are reacting with humour and aplomb rather than anger this week to the comments made by US President Donald Trump after he referred to the country as a ‘country no one has ever heard of’ during a speech in Congress. The US government maintains an embassy in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, and also regularly sends volunteers to the country through the Peace Corps. Trump used the statement to justify the cut in financial aid that the Kingdom of Lesotho had received for an LGBTQI+ project to the tune of eight million US dollars – payments that could not be confirmed by Lesotho’s largest LGBTIQ+ organisation or on the US government’s foreign aid website. In response to Trump’s statement, the US-inspired slogan Making Lesotho Great Again circulated on social media only a short time later with the addition ‘Ah, wait a minute, it already is’. Tour guides offered their services to the president – after all, Lesotho is home to Africa’s highest ski resort at 3,200 metres. A product sold by Trump was also increasingly publicised: The T-shirts sold at Trump’s golf estates labelled ‘Trump Golf’ do not bear a ‘Made in America’ label; instead, the words ‘Made in Lesotho’ can be found.