In the Mozambican capital of Maputo, demonstrators protested Wednesday against the inauguration of their new president, Daniel Chapo. His election had been rigged, they charged.
Their chant, which loosely translates to “power to the people,” was ironic. Half a century ago it was the cry of Frelimo, the guerrilla liberation group that overthrew Portuguese colonial rule. Today, Frelimo is still in power, and many Mozambicans are tired of it.
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Fifty years ago, “power to the people” was the rallying cry of Mozambique’s anti-colonial guerrilla movement Frelimo. It is still in power, and in a sign of dashed hopes, it is the group’s opponents using the slogan today.
“We can’t be held hostage by a single regime,” says Estância Nhaca, a young woman whose grandfather and mother fought with Frelimo.
This kind of generational political rupture is occurring across southern Africa. Botswana’s voters last year evicted the party that had ruled the country since 1966. And in South Africa, support for the ruling African National Congress, Nelson Mandela’s party, slipped below 50% for the first time.
Frelimo has not brought the equality and prosperity it had promised at independence. Instead, public services decayed and political leaders flaunted their wealth. For many voters, the last straw came in 2019 when the Frelimo presidential candidate won in part by stuffing ballot boxes and intimidating the opposition.
“The young generation knows their history,” says Borges Nhamirre, an expert on Mozambique. It tells them something simple: “They should be able to make change.”
Estância Nhaca was born with rebellion in her blood.
In the 1970s, her grandfather fought for a guerrilla movement called Frelimo in Mozambique’s struggle for independence from Portugal. During the civil war that followed, her mother, Joana Nhaca, ran a Frelimo training center for female soldiers.
Estância knew her family members had put their lives on the line for her to live in a free Mozambique. Now, she felt, it was her turn.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused on
Fifty years ago, “power to the people” was the rallying cry of Mozambique’s anti-colonial guerrilla movement Frelimo. It is still in power, and in a sign of dashed hopes, it is the group’s opponents using the slogan today.
Late last year, she joined the masses of demonstrators filling the streets in the capital, Maputo, in protest of the country’s heavily disputed presidential election.
“Povo no poder,” they chanted, loosely translating to “power to the people,” echoing the words of Mozambique’s first president, a Frelimo guerrilla commander named Samora Machel.
But now the fight was against Frelimo, the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, which has transformed into a political party.
This past October, Frelimo leader Daniel Chapo won an election in which European Union observers noted the “unjust alteration” of votes. Since then, Mozambique has been roiled by once-in-a-generation protests in which more than 300 people have died, according to local civil society groups. Demonstrations, and police violence, continued during Mr. Chapo’s inauguration today.
“We can’t be held hostage by a single regime,” explains Estância. “There needs to be change.”
A similarly forceful generational political rupture is underway across the region. Young southern Africans like Estância grew up not with the injustice of colonialism, but with the poisons of poverty and corruption that followed it. Now, from South Africa to Botswana, they are increasingly turning their backs on the parties that led their liberation movements.
“People are simply tired,” says Borges Nhamirre, a Mozambique expert at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank based in South Africa. “The young generation knows their history,” he says. And it tells them something simple: “They should be able to make change.”
The cost of liberation
Like all Mozambicans, the Nhacas know well what freedom costs.
Joana, Estância’s mother, grew up in the final years of Portuguese rule in Mozambique. Her family was among the 99% of Mozambicans deemed by the colonial government “non-civilizado” – uncivilized – subject to brutal forced labor and a humiliating racial hierarchy.
When she was a child, her father joined Frelimo. The group won its war against the Portuguese, leading the country to independence in 1975.
“It was the birth of a new world,” recalls Joana, who was 17 years old at the time.
But even at the moment of its birth, that new world was cracking apart. Less than a year after independence, civil war broke out between the socialist Frelimo and an anti-communist group called Renamo, bankrolled and trained by the white governments of neighboring Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. Still a teenager, Joana enlisted with Frelimo’s military.
After the war ended in 1992, Joana remained fiercely loyal to Frelimo, which became the ruling party in Mozambique’s fledgling democracy.
But as she watched her children grow up in the country she had risked her life to create, her faith in Frelimo corroded. Instead of enjoying the equality and prosperity she had been promised, she says, she saw public services decay as political leaders flaunted their wealth. Poverty soared, and unemployment remained stubbornly high. A violent Islamist insurgency erupted in the north of the country.
“The party still has the name Frelimo, but there’s very little left of the socialist ideals of the liberation movement,” Mr. Nhamirre says.
The final straw for Joana, like many Mozambicans, came in 2019, when Frelimo’s Filipe Nyusi muscled his way into a second term as president by stuffing ballot boxes, giving votes to dead people, and intimidating the opposition.
It was at that moment, Joana says, that she gave up on Frelimo once and for all.
A country “without hope”
Mozambicans’ disenchantment with their liberation party mirrors a broader trend across southern Africa. Last year, voters in Botswana ousted the party that had ruled the country since 1966. And in South Africa’s election in May, the long-vaunted African National Congress saw its support slide below 50% for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994.
This past October, many Mozambicans went to the polls in a similar mood. On the ballot beside Mr. Chapo of Frelimo was a fiery former banker and TV commentator named Venâncio Mondlane. His maverick style and promises of future prosperity captured the attention of young Mozambicans like Estância. At 23, she has not worked, except on her family’s farm, since she finished high school several years ago.
“We’re living in a country without hope,” she says. After Mr. Chapo was declared the winner, she was among the millions who filled the streets, choking on tear gas as they marched on police firing live bullets into the crowds.
To date, at least 300 people have died in those protests. Three more were killed in demonstrations against the inauguration Wednesday morning, according to the Center for Democracy and Development, a local pro-democracy advocacy organization.
Standing beneath a massive bronze statue of the first president, Mr. Machel, Mr. Chapo appeared unmoved by the chaos unfolding nearby. Addressing a heavily guarded crowd, he explained that his presidency “marks the beginning of a new phase in … the construction of … a prosperous nation,” a story that began with “the best sons who dared to fight for freedom” in the liberation war.
At home on their farm just outside the city, Joana and Estância watched the speech on television, disenchanted. But if there was one thing Estância had learned from her mother, it was not to give up.
“It’s not over yet,” she says.
