On 9 October 2024, Mozambique held national elections that fell short of international standards for fairness and freedom, according to multiple international observer missions and domestic civil society groups.
Frelimo’s candidate, Daniel Chapo, won a claimed 70% of the vote, but opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane of the Podemos party, along with other opposition groups including Renamo, is disputing these results.
The electoral authority in Mozambique is regarded as under the influence of the ruling party and widespread irregularities which have been reported, raise questions about the legitimacy of the outcome.
Final results, released on 24 October, have given the ruling Frelimo party, uninterruptedly in power for 49 years, 79% of parliamentary seats, the highest number yet since multiparty elections began in 1994.
This non-credible result occurs at a time when the party is at or near a low point in its public popularity amid creeping authoritarianism, elite impunity, years of austerity and the prosecution of a counter-insurgency war in the northern province of Cabo Delgado marked by incompetence and rights abuses by the security forces.
This follows most international assistance from the IMF and western donors being cut in 2016 over a series of international sovereign bonds that disguised secret and illicit payments among regime insiders. Years of deep austerity followed after the ruling party chose obfuscation over these events rather than coming clean to international donors about elite behaviour.
Although western assistance has been gradually restored, austerity remains as the authorities struggle to pay state salaries and are financing public spending through high domestic borrowing. All of this is in pursuit of an expected resource bonanza over gas riches in Cabo Delgado, an event that is hoped will deliver freedom from international scrutiny and public accountability at home.
Turnout in the elections was 44%, indicating widespread political withdrawal, as most people conclude that voting can do nothing to change the political situation in Mozambique.
The election has been followed by public protests in cities throughout the country, in which dozens of protesters have been shot dead by police and hundreds detained. The government’s strategy is to ensure that its claim to victory holds while blocking the opposition from mobilising its supporters and preventing public protests from spreading.
Heavy-handed policing, however, is not succeeding in quelling public dissent with what is regarded to be a stolen election. Instead, public disorder has spread rapidly, from the capital Maputo to the cities of the north and centre where police stations and offices of the ruling party have been burnt by protesters.
Tensions have risen following the killing of two senior advisers in Mondlane’s opposition Podemos party by gunmen on 19 October in what appears to have been a political assassination.
It is suspected that the killings were carried out at the behest of hardliners in the Frelimo party, operating with the state security service, and intended to silence or intimidate the opposition. Mondlane has since gone into hiding in fear for his safety, but has continued to call for protests to challenge the election results.
Political violence well established in Mozambique
Mozambique’s recent political history has included ample examples of political violence in which opposition figures, journalists, lawyers and other civil society activists regarded to be troublesome to the authorities, have been killed. This has been going on since at least 2000, following the murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, but reached a high point in the period 2013-19 when parliamentarians and civilian members of the opposition Renamo party were targeted for assassination by shadowy state security units believed to be acting under the direction of senior figures in the ruling Frelmo party.
Renamo’s armed wing at the time had launched a largely symbolic insurrection by some of its veterans, in protest against years of democratic erosion and backsliding that had seen Frelimo reimpose, de facto, the characteristics of a one-party state.
The advent of death squads under political control, equivalent to Central America of the 1980s, was deeply divisive in Mozambique, even inside the ruling party where this dirty war against political opponents was deeply shameful to its more honest members. But important lines were crossed at this time; political life in Mozambique and the character of the ruling party changed drastically, giving shape to a more authoritarian, violent style of rule.
There is no pretence any longer that elections should at least be seen to be fair or that the ruling party needs to earn political legitimacy and consent from the public through good acts.
Mozambique has long edged towards failed state status
The quality of governance in Mozambique has been in steep decline for a long period. This has showed up in the data – a catastrophic deterioration in nearly every measure of good governance, democratic rights and freedoms, institutional strength, economic and financial transparency and, most importantly, poverty reduction.
Data from Johannesburg-based Risk and Resilience company Eunomix, in 2021, noted that Mozambique’s previously positive post-war gains after 1994 were being squandered and that most markers showed rapid deterioration since 2010, ultimately pointing towards failed state status.
From “non-fragile” status in the mid 2000s, Mozambique deteriorated more rapidly from 2016 onward, to “high fragility” status and ultimately pointing toward “non-democracy” by 2025. That prediction is showing every sign of coming to pass and with bad elections this month an important milestone.
What has gone wrong? Bad governance, entitlement, misrule. Mozambique is showing all the characteristics of an extractive, “resource curse” economy. The discovery of energy riches in the far north has played a role, and remarkably this was showing up before any gas wealth was even extracted.
Rather than the development state, relative openness and the democratic beginnings that underpinned progress from the mid-1990s, Mozambique went into reverse as its local elites in the Frelimo party transformed into anti-development rent-seekers, becoming ever more entrenched and unaccountable.
An impasse
Where does this leave Mozambique in the aftermath of the disputed elections? Contradictory forces are at work. The party hardliners now in control have been trying to brazen out the current stand-off using force. This is not working. Harsh policing has only bred more public disorder. Polarisation and escalation are taking hold in the country.
Might Frelimo still be edged toward compromise, returning to the party’s earlier traditions of pragmatism?
President-elect Chapo has condemned the killing of the two members of the opposition and stated that he is open to discussion. He has acknowledged that the public is disappointed with his party which needs to “do better”, and has promised to be president “for all Mozambicans”. But his party is divided and Chapo, representing a more moderate position, does not carry enough weight to change tack on his own.
He is a weak political figure who has not established his authority over the party. He was selected as its presidential candidate as a compromise among powerful factions. He is also yet to take power formally as president – this will not happen until his inauguration in January.
Mondlane has also backed dialogue while continuing to contest the election results. It is not yet clear what compromises could deliver a peaceful outcome, although legal challenges against the election results mounted by Podemos that are under way, may result in more seats being granted to the opposition.
Pressure mounts for a compromise
Pressure is growing for a compromise to find a way out of the stand-off. Catholic bishops have been leading mediation efforts, this week holding individual meetings with key stakeholders in the hope of forming a government of national unity.
Will Frelimo be able to embrace this compromise? It is unclear. Two weeks ago, discussion of a GNU would have been unthinkable. But opposition demands have escalated; lesser concessions, such as granting more parliamentary seats to the opposition, may no longer be enough.
Events are now moving more quickly. On Monday, military veterans of the opposition Renamo party stormed party headquarters, calling for the resignation of its lacklustre leader, Ossufo Momade, and demanding that the party declare war against the Frelimo government.
Although this is unlikely to happen, it has raised an important historical fact. Renamo and its legacy as a military movement means that it has been the only political force able to stand up to the excesses of the Frelimo party, playing a role as “the guarantor” of Mozambique’s democracy.
Traditionally reviled in South Africa for its alliance with the apartheid-era government, Renamo is accepted in Mozambique to have a more nuanced history.
In last year’s municipal elections, its candidate for mayor in Maputo, Mondlane, was probably the rightful victor before Frelimo snatched this away through its electoral shenanigans.
In the north and central provinces of Mozambique, where the majority of the population lives and Frelimo’s historical legitimacy is weak, Renamo has won majorities or performed strongly in every democratic election since 1994, apart from the contested elections of 2019 and the current ones in 2024, which Frelimo is alleged to have stolen.
Ossufo Momade, meanwhile, has resigned as head of Renamo, opening a leadership contest. His position had become unsupportable after Mondlane beat Renamo into third place in the current elections.
Regional concerns
The impact of the election dispute on the northern insurgency in Cabo Delgado province has yet to be seen. However, the conflict there is regarded to be rooted in local grievances and electoral manipulation could fuel such discontent further.
Another concern is the potential flow of displaced people from Mozambique into South Africa should political violence deepen. Regional mediation through the Southern African Development Community (SADC) would be useful. The Mozambique government, nonetheless, is staunchly opposed to such interference in its domestic affairs.
SADC is already on track to withdraw, by December, all remaining South African forces that have been deployed since 2021 to assist counter-insurgency operations in Cabo Delgado. The SADC military mission was dogged by political tensions with the Mozambique government, which prefers to rely on support from the armed forces of Rwanda, which are less likely to comment on the government’s failings and weak military capabilities.
South Africa needs to assert leadership
South Africa’s government faces difficult choices. It has close, liberation-era, loyalties to Frelimo and has already congratulated the party on its electoral victory. However, it cannot ignore the extent of blatant electoral fraud, or that most of Mozambique’s population is rejecting the elections and demanding justice and a clean voting process.
The continuation of unrest and a disputed election outcome is not in the interests of South Africa, the region, or Mozambique itself. If ever a time for statesmanship and far-sighted leadership in finding an acceptable diplomatic outcome existed for South Africa, that time is now.
The extent of electoral irregularities perpetrated by Frelimo will be damaging to the party’s standing internationally. However, western donors have long since reached the limit of their influence over the Mozambique government and are unlikely to withhold aid or bilateral relations generally because of this. Any compromise solution is more likely to emerge due to a political calculation by Frelimo concerning the extent of unrest and the balance of power inside the country and, possibly, the region. DM