21 December 2011
Maputo — Margarida Talapa, head of the parliamentary group of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo Party, on Wednesday called on opposition deputies to stop inciting violence.
Speaking at the closing session of a sitting of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Talapa recalled that on 8 December, when he was received by President Armando Guebuza in the northern city of Nampula, Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, pledged that Renamo would never go back to war.
That, however, was not the message conveyed by members of the Renamo parliamentary group. “We hope that all those who continue to make intimidatory speeches and who use the parliamentary microphones to incite violence will refrain from doing so”, said Talapa, “because that is the position your leader has taken. It’s disgraceful not to respect your chief”.
“War and violence does not interest or benefit anyone”, she said. “They would only serve to roll back the gains we have made so far, and would put stability and harmony in our country at risk”.
Instead, it was the duty of everyone “to prioritise dialogue under all circumstances”, Talapa added, “and to place our abilities, our intelligence and our creativity at the service of peace, stability and the welfare of all our people”.
Talapa criticized the opposition for voting last week against the government’s Economic and Social Plan and state budget for 2012. Such votes, she said, “showed that they are not here to solve the problems of the people, they are not interested in more hospitals for the people, more medicines, mores nurses and more doctors; they are not interested in more schools for the people, more textbooks and more teachers”.
There had also been systematic attempts to obstruct the work of the Assembly. “This is an infantile form of opposition”, said Talapa, “and one which has always failed”.
She recalled that, during his state of the nation address on Tuesday, Guebuza had declared “Mozambique is a nation building its progress and well-being with the participation of all of us”. Who, she wondered, wanted to exclude themselves from the word “all”.
“They do!”, she exclaimed, answering her own question with a wave in the direction of the Renamo benches.
“But even those who exclude themselves have eyes that let them see the schools, the maternity facilities, the bridges spanning rivers, the cars they have bought to drive along the new roads, the houses they live in”, Talapa said.
Renamo deputies heckled angrily, and when the Assembly chairperson, Veronica Macamo, banged her gavel on the table to restore order, Talapa told her not to bother. “I’m a teacher, and I know how to handle people who have no discipline”, she said.
Renamo had abused the podium of the Assembly, she accused, “by continually repeating messages that incite to violence, to tribalism and regionalism”. These were “antipatriotic speeches” made “in a desperate attempt to impose obscure agenda that in no way serve the interests of Mozambicans”.
Recalling Renamo’s war of destabilisation, she asked “Is there anyone among us who feels nostalgic for destroyed and burnt-out schools, for the ashes of health posts, for the ruined roads and bridges, for electricity pylons blown up, for factories paralysed with their machines destroyed?”
“Is there anyone among us”, she continued, “who misses the smell of burning human flesh from buses in flames, or the screams of women and men fleeing from their villages?”
She was sure that “we all want to be Mozambicans, and so we want to see Mozambique continue to progress. So let’s work. Let’s allow the government to work. Let’s stop obstruction”.
The head of the Renamo group, Angelina Enoque, in her closing speech, denied that there was any incitement to violence. Instead “it was the people’s will” to make “revolutions”. She used this term to cover not only the national liberation struggle that led to Mozambican independence in 1975, but also the apartheid war on Mozambique in which Renamo was a willing tool, and the riots against price increases in February 2008 and September 2010.
Enoque attacked the presence of Frelimo party branches inside state institutions. “The Frelimo-isation of the Mozambican state has become a malign cancer”, she claimed. “The people need an antidote to this evil”.
She alleged what “with party branches in public institutions, state employees owe primary obedience to their secretaries, because of the force of their statites”. In the real world, no such duty of “primary obedience” can be found in the statutes either of Frelimo or of any state body.
Enoque said that the Law on the Organisation of the Public Administration, passed in this Assembly sitting, would perpetuate political party discrimination inside the state apparatus.
“Instead of criminalizing the installation of party cells in state institutions, the law encourages it”, she declared.
But in fact the law makes no mention of party branches, and states unambiguously “nobody shall be discriminated against because of their ideological or political positions”.
Enoque also claimed that it was Guebuza who requested the meeting with Dhlakama, and that by accepting the meeting Dhlakama showed “that the problems of the people are at the top of his agenda”.
Again, the reality is rather different. Guebuza did not go scurrying to Nampula because he wanted to speak to Dhlakama. He already had appointments in Nampula to close a course at the Military Academy there, and to inaugurate a statue of the country’s first president, Samora Machel. Dhlakama simply took advantage of Guebuza’s presence in the city to request an audience – and even then, he turned up late.
Dhlakama has had many earlier opportunities to speak to Guebuza – he is regularly invited to state events, and has boycotted them all. He even boycotted the informal lunch that Guebuza offered to the defeated presidential candidates after both the 2004 and 2009 presidential elections.
At the end of her speech, Enoque, despite the secular nature of the Assembly, suddenly turned into a Christian missionary. Xmas, she said, “is the time of hope because Christ is our hope. Let us prepare for the glorious coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus is coming to give us life”.
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Continued here:
Mozambique: Frelimo Urges an End to Calls for Violence