Mozambique: Renamo - a Three-Sided Coin?

By Fredson Guilengue

General elections will be held in Mozambique on 15 October. Incumbent president Armando Guebuza is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. RENAMO is key player in these polls and the politics of Mozambique generally, although its influence has waned in recent years and its real agenda remains confusing
The government of Mozambique and the former rebel organisation RENAMO finally signed a ceasefire agreement on 24 August 2014. This agreement which was subsequently ratified by the Mozambican President Armando Guebuza and RENAMO's president Afonso Dhlakama and passed into law by the country's national assembly on 8 September 2014 is likely to put an end to the political and military instability which started in 2012.
In 2012, after 20 years of peace and
stability in the country, some RENAMO operatives reverted to the armed struggle to, amongst other issues, force Mozambique's government to change the electoral legislation and to (re-) integrate part of its troops into the national army and the police.
This article sheds light into the dynamics of permanence and change within RENAMO, in order to identify common and divergent trends in RENAMO's political evolution.
It argues that since its formation in 1976 to date RENAMO has operated in three distinct forms: as a merely guerrilla movement (1976 - 1992), as a political party (1994 - 2012) and more recently as a hybrid of both political party and guerrilla force (2012 to date). The analysis provides inputs into current debates on the political future of RENAMO and the democratic settlement in Mozambique.
INTRODUCTION
In June 1975, after 10 years of armed struggle against the Portuguese colonial ruling, Mozambique finally proclaimed its independence. The struggle over independence was conducted by the guerrilla movement Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO).
However, in 1976 the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Office (CIO) created the Mozambican National Resistance (MNR), later called RENAMO, to fight the FRELIMO government and the Zimbabwean nationalist guerrillas operating from Mozambique in 1977.
After the Zimbabwean independence in 1980 RENAMO's basis of support had to move to the apartheid state of South Africa where it started getting military, political, financial and sociological support (Vines 2013).
After the demise of the apartheid regime and the end of the cold war, in October 1992 a General Peace Agreement (GPA) was signed between the government of Mozambique and RENAMO. Amongst others, the GPA comprised the transformation of RENAMO from a guerrilla movement into a political party.
From 1994 to date (2014), RENAMO has contested four general (parliamentary and presidential) and three local elections (two municipal and one provincial election).
Meanwhile, since 2012 some RENAMO operatives led by its president Afonso Dhlakama have been constantly calling off the GPA and conducting guerrilla attacks against Mozambique's army and civilians, while others continue to normally develop the party political activities countrywide including in the national parliament, where RENAMO has been represented since the first multiparty elections in 1994.
In this context, I argue here that RENAMO's trajectory has witnessed three distinct phases in the Mozambican political landscape. From 1976 to 1992 RENAMO has operated a merely a guerrilla movement without any visible power or political ambitions.