On October 9, 2024, Mozambique held its seventh presidential elections since the political opening and establishment of multi-party rule in 1992. Until then, the country lived under a one-party regime, led by Frelimo (Mozambique Liberation Front), as a result of an independence process in 1975, achieved in the context of the Cold War, in which the country aligned itself with the socialist bloc at a geopolitical level. However, since the first general elections in 1994, the ruling party has won every election, largely due to the control it has historically always exercised over the state apparatus, with public institutions invariably in its favor. This state of affairs has led to widespread mistrust of the transparency of the Mozambican electoral process in various sectors of society, both at home and abroad. And the current elections seem to show that a critical point has been reached.

As has been the case in all previous elections, the 2024 ballot was characterized by recurrent electoral malpractice of the most diverse kinds, most often with the aim of favoring the Frelimo party. This perception is not limited to complaints from its political opponents but has also been the consensus of public opinion, among national and international observers, in addition to various studies and public reports that demonstrate this historical trend. However, since the 2023 local elections, popular and society-wide contestation of election results has grown, with violent demonstrations responded to with equally violent and disproportionate police repression. Since then, Mozambique has experienced a situation of political and social tension, aggravated by the increase in poverty and the general precariousness of the population’s living conditions. There is indeed a general feeling of discontent with the country’s present and future, often interpreted as a direct consequence of the excessive concentration of political, economic, ideological, and institutional power in the hands of a single political force.

At the same time, the country is about to mark the 50th anniversary of its political independence from Portugal. Naturally, such a historic milestone brings with it a whole set of reflections and self-analyses, in order to take stock of these past five decades, not only in Mozambique but also in other former Portuguese colonies on the continent, whose recent historical processes are directly connected. An event that took place two weeks before the vote is illustrative of the deeper historical significance of current events.

On September 25, 2024, the nation celebrated the 60th anniversary of the start of the Armed Struggle for National Liberation, the political and military process of confronting Portuguese colonialism, which began in 1964. To commemorate this, a statue of Eduardo Mondlane, Frelimo’s founder and first president, recognized in official history as the “architect of national unity,” was erected in Maputo City. However, the government faced widespread criticism of the statue by public opinion. For critics, the statute did not correspond to Mondlane’s physical characteristics, with serious alleged errors of proportion. Public dissatisfaction even led  the Ministry of Culture to set up a technical team to assess the work and, if necessary, make the necessary corrections.

Technical and aesthetic issues aside, this episode is symptomatic of a very deep structural problem in Mozambican society: the authoritarian political culture, the legacy of a nation built under a monolithic regime. It is striking that the statue, which replaced a previous one in the same place, was inaugurated without any kind of communication, consultation, or interaction with the public. In other words, the government decided to intervene in an important national symbol linked to the very construction of the country without at least involving the community in some way. This situation reinforces a widely held perception that the ruling party has “appropriated” the country. In this case, we are dealing with an appropriation of collective memory, more precisely, the memory of the struggle for independence, which is often used as a source of legitimization for maintaining Frelimo’s power.

The allegations of electoral fraud are based on this perception, corroborated by the facts, and the notorious confusion between party, state, and government in Mozambique. This is because the countless reports of electoral offenses recorded in this and all other elections point to the instrumentalization of various public institutions, from the police, state officials and facilities, and the media, as well as the electoral and judicial bodies themselves. In the specific case of the statue, its inauguration on the eve of the elections opens up room for even more speculation about the use of public machinery to promote the regime.

None of this is new, except the current popular contestation of the elections is taking place at a moment of reconfiguration in Mozambican politics, marked by the weakening of the main historical opposition parties to Frelimo: Renamo and MDM. This power vacuum was filled this year by the recently created Podemos party, which became the greatest real threat to the ruling power through the charismatic leadership of its candidate, Venâncio Mondlane. As a member of Renamo, VM7, as he is known, lost the 2023 local elections in Maputo City, the country’s capital, to the Frelimo candidate. In response, he led a series of marches and popular demonstrations challenging the allegedly rigged election results, which ended in heavy police repression in various parts of the country.

These demonstrations stood out for their massive mobilization of young people, who make up the overwhelming proportion of the country’s population, 80 percent of whom are under 35 and half of whom are under 16, according to UNFPA data. This segment of the population is highly dissatisfied with its current conditions and prospects for the future, haunted by unemployment, poverty, and violence. In addition to the material dimension, many young people do not identify with the official nationalist ideological discourse, as it is a generation that has had little exposure to the rhetoric of the Armed Struggle and the set of values associated with it. The youth’s support for Venâncio is also a reflection of the times: much of their articulation and mobilization around the candidate has taken place via the internet and social networks, “bursting the bubble” of the public media, made up of public radio and television, as well as the main national print newspapers. Added to this is the notorious strengthening of Mozambican civil society, which has also contributed to giving voice to and mobilizing not only this mass of youth, but also various other sectors of society demanding greater social justice and respect for human rights.

In short, the situation is one of high tension, fueled by fears of political violence. The main opposition parties and candidates had spoken out publicly to contest the partial results that had been released by the official electoral bodies, which pointed to a victory for Daniel Chapo, the Frelimo candidate. What’s more, Venâncio Mondlane had even declared himself the legitimate winner of the election, based on his party’s internal parallel counts, and called for a general strike and demonstrations across the country if the electoral bodies confirmed the ruling party’s victory. This situation could also prove to be a historic turning point for this young nation, on the eve of its 50th anniversary. Dramatically, Mozambicans need to reflect on their own historical journey: to what extent are the ideals, values, symbols, and institutions created to give shape to “national unity” still legitimate today?

The case of the unveiling of Mondlane’s statue in the context of the elections themselves is a strong symptomatic allegory of how various sectors of Mozambican society have historically been excluded from decision-making processes, which have been concentrated in the hands of a specific group. In concrete terms, the unilateral and arbitrary celebration of a national hero reveals a pattern of relations between state and society that definitely does not contribute to strengthening citizenship in the country. It reinforces, above all, the corrosion of the credibility of public institutions in general—and electoral bodies in particular—which is the fundamental cause of popular discontent and the threat of instability and political violence present at the moment. Transposing this to the wider African context, we are talking about the notorious crisis of legitimacy experienced by many African liberation movements, such as the ANC (South Africa), the MPLA (Angola), and ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe), not coincidentally historical allies of Frelimo.

Given the above, the question arises: Could this legitimacy crisis be a turning point for a kind of “second independence” capable of generating a new “architecture of national unity” in Mozambique?

On October 19, Mozambique experienced a tragedy that confirmed the worst fears about the political instability resulting from an electoral process marked by notorious irregularities in favor of the regime. Elvino Dias, who was Venâncio Mondlane’s lawyer, and Paulo Guambe, who was a representative of the Podemos party, both prominent opposition activists, were brutally murdered. Although still unclear, the circumstances and modus operandi of the crime have generated repudiation and indignation from broad sectors of Mozambican society and the international community. Meanwhile, as expected, on October 24, the official electoral bodies announced the victory of Daniel Francisco Chapo, the Frelimo candidate, with 70 percent of the vote. As a result, popular demonstrations in protest intensified in various parts of the country, which were promptly met with harsh police repression, including arrests and even deaths. In short, there is an atmosphere of great political tension after the official results of these elections were announced, which promise to change the course of history, as many say and wish on the streets of the country.