Afonso Dhlakama

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Afonso Dhlakama (2014)

Afonso Macacho Marceta Dhlakama , Afonso Dhlakama for short , (born January 1, 1953 in Mangunde, Chibabava District , Sofala Province , Portuguese East Africa ; † May 3, 2018 in the Gorongosa District , Sofala Province, Mozambique ) was chairman of the from 1979 to May 2018 largest Mozambican resistance movement and later opposition party RENAMO ( Resistência Nacional Moçambicana ). Between 1979 and 1992 Dhlakama led the RENAMO in the Mozambican civil war .

Life

Afonso Macacho Marceta Dhlakama was born on January 1st, 1953 in the village of Mangunde (Chibabava district) in the Sofala province, at that time still part of the Portuguese colony of Portuguese East Africa . He was the son of the local Mangunde chief.

Entry into the civil war

At the age of 21 - in 1974 and shortly before Mozambique's independence - Dhlakama joined the national liberation movement Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO). However, he left it after a short time and founded the opposition movement Resistência Nacional de Moçambique (RNM, later RENAMO), in German "National Resistance of Mozambique" , with other colleagues . The establishment was promoted and supported by the South African and South Rhodesian secret services in order to avoid spreading the influence of the Marxist FRELIMO to South Africa and South Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe). Shortly after Mozambique gained independence, RENAMO initiated a civil war against FRELIMO from the country's central provinces (Sofala, Zambézia).

On November 17, 1979, the FRELIMO forces succeeded in killing the then leader of the RENAMO, André Matsangaíssa , in a battle in the Gorongosa area. A few months later, at the age of 27, Dhlakama was able to prevail and take over the leadership of the resistance movement. Under him in particular the civil war intensified and from then on practically covered the entire country, thousands of people perished in the civil war. Even after the 1984 Nkomati Agreement , in which the South African ( Botha ) and Mozambican ( Machel ) governments formally agreed not to support any resistance movements in the other country ( ANC or RENAMO), Dhlakama continued the war.

Peace negotiations, democratization, elections

Afonso Dhlakama in 1993, shortly after the successful peace negotiations with FRELIMO

It was not until Joaquim Chissano took office - after long-time President Samora Machel had previously died in a plane crash - the first peace negotiations between the two sides began. On October 4, 1992, Dhlakama and Chissano signed the peace treaty ( Acordo de Roma ) in Rome , which put an end to the civil war that had been going on for 16 years. The war destroyed the country's economy and infrastructure, killed 900,000 people and made 1.3 million refugees. After the peace agreement, RENAMO developed into a democratic political party and has participated in most national and local elections since the early 1990s. In Mozambique's first democratic presidential election in 1994 , Afonso Dhlakama ran against incumbent President Chissano, but lost a significant 33 percent of the votes against Chissano with 53 percent.

In the following years the RENAMO changed under Dhlakama to a democratic opposition party, which, however, could hardly achieve political gains against the absolute majorities of FRELIMO. In the 1999 presidential election , Dhlakama ran again against Chissano, but lost much less with 47 percent to 52 percent of the votes cast. To this day, RENAMO supporters as well as political observers are convinced that the election was falsified.

He was also defeated in the subsequent presidential elections in 2004 and 2009, in which he ran against the FRELIMO candidate Armando Guebuza (2004: 16 percent for Dhlakama, 75 percent for Guebuza; 2009: 31 percent for Dhlakama, 63 percent for Guebuza). Dhlakama and the RENAMO described the elections as falsified and protested against them, but could not get through with an election complaint. The unrest in 2010 , sparked by increased bread prices, fueled the RENAMO and supported its spread across the country.

Many observers interpreted the overall lower election results as a weakness of Dhlakama within the party, one of the reasons for the lack of internal party democracy in RENAMO. For many young Mozambicans the always running RENAMO candidate was less convincing, which led to the RENAMO spin-off " Movimento Democrático de Moçambique " (MDM, Democratic Movement of Mozambique).

Military conflict from 2013

Afonso Dhlakama ran a total of five times (1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014) as a RENAMO candidate for the Mozambican presidential elections, but lost them all to the competing FRELIMO candidates

During the second term of office of Mozambican President Armando Guebuza (2010-2015), the relationship between the two largest parties deteriorated increasingly. In 2010, Dhlakama decided to move from the Mozambican capital Maputo to the largest city in the north, Nampula . After a failed attempt to talk to President Guebuza, the latter sent security forces to Dhlakama's residence in Nampula to intimidate Dhlakama. As a result, he withdrew to the RENAMO headquarters in the village of Sathundjira in the Gorogonsa district, which existed during the civil war .

In 2013, on the orders of Dhlakama, RENAMO began armed skirmishes with the state security forces and, among other things, attacked a police station in the small town of Múxunguè . After a failed attack by the state security forces on the RENAMO headquarters, from which Dhlakama escaped unscathed, President Guebuza and the RENAMO chairman conducted months of negotiations for a new peace treaty. After its conclusion in September 2014, RENAMO also took part in the parliamentary elections and Dhlakama in the presidential elections that year. Dhlakama also lost these elections to the new FRELIMO candidate, Filipe Nyusi, with 36 percent to 57 percent of the votes cast.

Afonso Dhlakama (right) with President Armando Guebuza

Dhlakama also continued negotiations with Nyusi, meanwhile the main focus was on better political participation by the opposition in events in Mozambique. Among other things, Dhlakama called for a decentralization of the Mozambican central state and, associated with this, a democratic election of the provincial governors who are appointed by the president to this day. However, the negotiations initially failed to produce any results, so Dhlakama resumed armed violence: traffic on Mozambique's most important national road, Estrada Nacional 1 between Rio Save and Muxúnguè, was regularly shot at.

At the same time, Dhlakama was confronted with three murder attempts - according to RENAMO, state-ordered - from which the RENAMO chairman was able to regularly escape. He then holed up in the Gorongosa bush, as he feared his assassination - analogous to the Angolan opposition leader Jonas Savimbi . In the course of this, the French-Mozambican lawyer Gilles Cistac died, who had prepared a legal opinion for RENAMO, which made it clear that decentralization would also be possible without a constitutional amendment. The perpetrators, who have not yet been arrested or convicted, are suspected to be among the radical FRELIMO supporters.

From 2017, the peace negotiations, mediated by Mirko Manzoni from Switzerland , gained momentum again.After several telephone calls and two visits to the Gorongosa bush, President Filipe Nyusi succeeded in persuading Dhlakama to initiate a ceasefire and later political negotiations. At the beginning of 2018, the negotiations were considered practically concluded, and a legislative package for the decentralization of the country was already in the process of being passed by the Mozambican parliament. The integration of all RENAMO militias into the state security forces, or even their disarmament, which was long called for by FRELIMO, was considered a done deal.

death

Dhlakama (front) died on May 3, 2018 in Gorongosa. Ossufo Momade took over the RENAMO chairmanship.

On the morning of May 3, 2018, Dhlakama passed away from heart failure before he could be flown to a South African hospital. According to opposition politician Ivone Soares , the negotiations between FRELIMO and RENAMO were about to be concluded. It is uncertain what death will mean for the inner-Mozambican peace process, let alone RENAMO in general.

Numerous personalities from Mozambique as well as from abroad expressed their grief over the death of Dhlakama. On the same evening, President Filipe Nyusi spoke on a special broadcast on state television broadcaster TVM about the loss of the opposition leader, whom he referred to as "his brother", and complained that he had been informed too late to fly out of Dhlakama in time. A public memorial service for Dhlakama took place on May 8th in the stadium of Ferroviário da Beira in the port city of Beira . The next day, Dhlakama was buried in Mangunde, his birthplace.

The chairmanship of RENAMO was initially taken on by Ossufo Momade , who was General Secretary of RENAMO from 2005 to 2012 and has been the party's security officer since 2017. He is a member of the Mozambican Parliament . Momade was considered a close confidante of Dhlakama.

Private

Afonso Dhlakama was married to Rosaria Xavier Mbiriakwira Dhlakama and had eight children. He was of the Christian faith.

Web links

Commons : Afonso Dhlakama  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Mozambique: mort d'Afonso Dhlakama, chef du principal parti d'opposition. In: Le Monde. May 3, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018 (French).
  2. ↑ a b Johannes Beck: As etapas mais marcantes da vida de Afonso Dhlakama, líder da RENAMO | DW | 05/03/2018. In: DW Português para África. Deutsche Welle, May 3, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018 (Portuguese).
  3. ^ Markus Häfliger: Swiss diplomat ends decades of war in Africa . In: Tages-Anzeiger . ISSN  1422-9994 ( tagesanzeiger.ch [accessed on August 30, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Morreu Afonso Dhlakama. In: O País. May 3, 2018, Retrieved May 3, 2018 (Portuguese).
  5. ↑ Morreu Afonso Dlakahma, líder da Renamo. In: Jornal Expresso. May 3, 2018, Retrieved May 3, 2018 (Portuguese).
  6. ↑ Nádia Issufo: "Morte de Dhlakama pode desencadear a suspensão do processo negocial de paz" | DW | 05/03/2018. In: DW Português para África. Deutsche Welle, May 3, 2018, accessed May 3, 2018 (Portuguese).
  7. ↑ Bárbara Reis: Moçambique. As incertezas e os méritos deixados por Afonso Dhlakama . In: PÚBLICO . ( publico.pt [accessed May 4, 2018]).
  8. ^ Frelimo diz que morreu o homem que estava a contribuir na busca da paz efectiva. Retrieved May 4, 2018 (Portuguese).
  9. ↑ "I feel depressed Because I was not able to help my brother" - Filipe Nyusi . In: Mozambique . ( clubofmozambique.com [accessed May 4, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Ossufo Momade eleito líder interino because Renamo. In: Público. May 5, 2018. Retrieved July 11, 2018 (Portuguese).
  11. ↑ Biografia de Afonso Dhlakama. RENAMO - Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, accessed May 3, 2018 (European Portuguese).
personal data
SURNAME Dhlakama, Afonso
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dhlakama, Afonso Macacho Marceta
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mozambican politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Mangunde , Portuguese East Africa
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 2018
Place of death Gorongosa District , Mozambique