Mozambique is holding general elections this Wednesday with government candidate Daniel Chapo, 47, as the clear favorite to be the country’s new president, given that the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, cannot run after two terms in office. Designated as a candidate by the leftist Liberation Front of Mozambique (Frelimo), which has been in power for 49 years, Chapo aspires to embody the generational change of an aging ruling class. Opposite him will be the veteran Ossufo Momade, leader of the right-wing opposition party Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), and the independent Venancio Mondlane, 50, who has great support among young people.
With some 34 million inhabitants, Mozambique enters these general elections under the simultaneous threat of several crises. In the northern province of Cabo Delgado, the jihadist insurgency that began in 2017 remains active and has caused some 6,000 deaths and almost a million internally displaced people. However, for most of the population the main risk comes from the sky in the form of increasingly intense droughts, storms and floods. According to the United Nations, Mozambique is the third African country most affected by climate change, with a clear impact on 58% of its population. At the same time, several corruption scandals have plagued Frelimo leaders, which has eroded their image among citizens.
To face these challenges, the government party made a surprise bet on Daniel Chapo, a new face of the party and in recent years governor of the southern province of Inhambane. Graduated in Law and Political Science, radio host and television presenter for a short period, he joined Frelimo in 2009 and rose through the ranks in the party, although he is not considered someone from the hard core of Maputo. The unwavering support of the government party, which also enjoys a large majority in Parliament, underpins its status as a favorite in these elections.
The candidate best placed to confront him is the veteran leader of the traditional opposition party Renamo, Oussufo Momade, 63, who came in second place in the 2019 elections with 22% of the votes. The former guerrilla general was one of the signatories of the peace agreements five years ago between Renamo and Frelimo that put an end to a long civil conflict that dated back to 1977. Now he intends to “sweep away all the dirt from Frelimo,” as he stated in this electoral campaign, for which he has chosen a broom as a symbol. In addition to denouncing corruption and abuses of power by the government party, Momade brings under his arm a decentralizing proposal: Maputo will continue to be the political capital, but he proposes turning Beira into a parliamentary seat and Nampula into an economic engine.
However, the real challenge facing Frelimo and its candidate is called Venancio Mondlane. Under the motto “Save Mozambique, this country is ours”, this 50-year-old former banker has managed to mobilize the youngest vote. After running as a member of Renamo for mayor of Maputo last year, he managed to turn his defeat into a moral victory, as many Mozambicans believe that he actually won the elections and that he was removed due to fraud. His break with the main opposition party, for which he intended to be a candidate, has turned him into an independent candidate, his main handicap, but he represents the breath of fresh air that many citizens crave.
A fourth candidate is running for president. This is Lutero Simango, a 64-year-old mechanical engineer, leader of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), a minority party founded in 2009 by his brother, Daviz Simango, who died in 2021. In these 15 years, the MDM has never managed to overcome the barrier of 10% parliamentary representation, although it holds some local power and has the advantage of never having been a guerrilla group, unlike Frelimo and Renamo.
This Wednesday’s elections will also serve to renew the 250-member Parliament, controlled by a large majority of 184 Frelimo deputies and an opposition made up of 60 seats from Renamo and six from the MDM. Likewise, the governors of the country’s 10 provinces and the deputies of the provincial chambers will be elected. The last elections held in the country were local elections a year ago and in them Frelimo won 60 of the 65 mayoralties, although the opposition strongly denounced the existence of widespread fraud. Some 16 million Mozambicans are registered on the electoral roll.
