A decade ago, such a protest movement in Mozambique would have been difficult to fathom

On October 9, Mozambicans cast their ballots in the general election. After widespread fraud during last year’s municipal vote, many believed that the outcome was a foregone conclusion. The ruling party would rig the results, the opposition would capitulate, and Frelimo would usher in its sixth decade of rule. Sure enough, the election was fraught with irregularities: from ghost voters to fake observers, ballot box stuffing, and fictitious counting. In protest, the opposition party Podemos called for a stayaway. Then, two of its leaders were brutally assassinated, unfurling an unprecedented wave of protest action across the country. As journalist Tomás Vieira Mário observed, while Frelimo may have won the elections, they lost the people.

According to the National Elections Commission, Frelimo got 71% of the vote, securing 195 seats in parliament. Podemos replaced Renamo as the leading opposition party with 31 seats; while Renamo and MDM saw their shares dwindle to 20 and 4 seats, respectively. The results were widely contested, including by minority members of the National Elections Commission. But as the Centro de Integridade Pública points out, Mozambique’s electoral architecture is structurally rigged. While ballots are counted at polling stations, under the watchful eye of party members and independent observers, the tabulation of results is conducted behind closed doors. Because members of the National Elections Commission are appointed by parliament based on party representation, the ruling party, Frelimo, holds inordinate power to affect the final electoral outcome.

At the time of his assassination, opposition lawyer Elvino Dias was preparing to challenge the election results on behalf of Podemos’ presidential candidate, Venâncio Mondlane. Dias was a brilliant litigator, capable of unraveling legal arguments with surgical precision. In the early hours of October 19th, the proverbial death squads riddled his car with 25 bullets. In addition to Dias, they killed one of Podemos’ top leaders, Paulo Guambe, and injured market vendor Adácia Macuácuá. The police spokesman attributed the assassination to a conjugal dispute and urged political figures to avoid crime-ridden areas. But just hours before his assassination, Dias had predicted his fate, announcing via Facebook Live that he had copies of the original ballot tabulations and cautioning the ruling party against hurting Mondlane. “As for us,” he said, resigned. “We died a long time ago. The vandals know where I live, which is why I have no reason to run away.”

The assassination of Dias and Guambe was met with collective shock, galvanizing popular support for Podemos and Venâncio Mondlane. The Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos, or “yes, we can”) first burst onto the political scene in 2019. Founded by disaffected Frelimo members, its broad goal was to advance a brand of “liberal socialism” based on democracy, good governance, and social and economic justice. The party’s first presidential candidate was music producer Hélder Mendonça, the grandson of liberation hero Francisco Manyanga. However, the Constitutional Council disqualified Mendonça from running, along with the late human rights lawyer Alice Mabote of the Democratic Alliance Coalition. On the eve of this year’s general election, Podemos was a party without a candidate, who found in Mondlane a candidate without a party.

Mondlane is a charismatic leader who managed to ride the wave of youthful indignation, capturing the hearts and minds of disenfranchised generations. A prosperity gospel preacher with links to Nigerian televangelist Joshua Iginla, Mondlane believes that God has foreordained him to lead the country. In 2013, he launched his political career through MDM, then jumped to Renamo, followed by the Democratic Alliance Coalition, and finally, Podemos. In his online sermons, he preaches about tyranny and corruption, development and prosperity, peace and unity. But he has a penchant for authoritarian populists and has met with the European far right, paid homage to Bolsonaro, and heaped praise on Trump for protecting America’s moral values. And through the skillful use of social media, he has been able to fragment the political establishment.

In response to the electoral results, Mondlane called for a four-phase general strike to liberate Mozambique. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country and throughout the diaspora joined the call, adopting a diversity of tactics–including banging pots and pans, marching to symbolic sites, blocking logistical arteries, and destroying symbols of state power–to voice their discontentment. But communities have paid a heavy toll, as heavily armed police fire tear gas into private homes and live ammunition into crowds. While there are no conclusive statistics, Human Rights Watch estimates that thousands of people have been arrested, hundreds have been shot, and at least thirty have been killed in just the last week. Meanwhile, the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique estimates that the general strike cost the economy up to 2% of GDP.

So far, Frelimo has proved recalcitrant. Following the announcement of the official results, President Nyusi jubilantly sung, “Chapo President, no matter who it hurts.” Behind closed doors, however, many Frelimo members concede that it is unlikely that they won a landslide victory. After all, the elections took place at a turbulent time, marked by skyrocketing poverty and inequality,  a deepening public debt crisis, and a jihadist insurgency in Cabo Delgado. If only the party had toned down on the rigging, members muse, the results would have been more plausible. But the combination of “rigging from above,” by party leaders eager to secure a parliamentary majority and fill party coffers, and “rigging from below” by party deputies eager to retain their positions in parliament, delegitimized the electoral process and reinforced the belief that regime change can only happen through force.

As Mondlane prepares for the fourth phase of the general strike, all eyes are on the Constitutional Council, which will have to make a final pronouncement on the election results. Under pressure from civil society organizations, the President of the Constitutional Council ordered the National Elections Commissions to hand over the original tabulations and minutes for contested precincts. However, given the extent of irregularities at the precinct level—including the destruction and disposal of the original tabulations—a forensic exercise will be necessary to extract the original results. Even if the Constitutional Council manages to do so, a victory for Mondlane is not guaranteed. Given the high levels of abstention—particularly in the Northern provinces of Nampula and Cabo Delgado—Frelimo may well win without the legitimacy to govern.

Ultimately, a progressive political movement has never been more urgent. Yet, it is unclear whether the marriage of (in)convenience between Podemos and Mondlane will be able to deliver (indeed, early signs suggest that it may be coming apart at the seams). Like many evangelical leaders, Mondlane’s theological views are deeply intertwined with a neoliberal economic agenda, which emphasizes individual accumulation and material prosperity over redistribution. Although Podemos has “socialist” roots, it does not have the political coherence or organizational power to sway Venancio Mondlane’s political base. Nevertheless, trajectories of struggle are hardly linear or predetermined. A decade ago, the kind of protest movement seen over the last few weeks would have been difficult to fathom. Oppositional voices were few and far between, and all the Frelimo regime had to do was persecute an unlucky few in order to restore order. Today, the oppositional voices are too many and too diverse to be silenced. And it has become increasingly clear that if there is no justice, there will be no peace.

This article first appeared in Africa is a Country