by Bayano Valy – SANF 06 No 98
The photo of the new Central Committee of Mozambique’s ruling Frelimo party elected at the Ninth Congress has most of the old recognisable faces and a few notable young ones.
The Congress, held in the central city of Quelimane, re-elected Armando Guebuza as the president of the party, with 1,321 votes in favour against four invalid votes and one blank ballot – nobody challenged Guebuza who won the country’s presidential elections in 2004.
The former president, Joaquim Chissano, was appointed Frelimo’s honorary president.
Meeting in camera, the Congress also confirmed 100 of the 160-strong central committee members elected earlier in provincial primaries. The remaining 60 members were elected in the early hours of 15 November in a system that involves some complex computations.
Aware of continuity and gender concerns within its ranks, Frelimo has reserved 40 percent of its central committee membership for new blood; 30 percent of whom must be women, 20 percent under the age of 35, and at least 10 percent must be veterans of Mozambique’s struggle for independence.
Three of the five most voted candidates for the Central Committee are women, in keeping with Mozambique’s position as a beacon for gender equality in decision-making in the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
These are current prime minister, Luísa Diogo, who garnered 1,105 votes out of the possible 1,326; former first lady, Graça Machel with 1,084 votes; and deputy chairperson of the country’s parliament, Veronica Macamo, who collected 1,058 votes.
Diogo was second only to former defence minister, Alberto Chipande. Chipande is credited with firing the first shots in the country’s war for independence.
Veteran politician, Marcelino dos Santos, secured his seat in the central committee, as did the head and deputy head of the Frelimo parliamentary group, Manuel Tome and Margarida Talapa; Foreign Minister, Alcinda Abreu; Edson Macuacua; and former Prime Minister, Pascoal Mocumbi.
SADC’s Executive Secretary, Tomáz Salomão, also kept his seat in the central committee, together with a handful of Cabinet ministers.
In a move charged with lots of symbolism, Frelimo elected into its central committee Nyeleti Mondlane, the daughter of its first president, Eduardo Mondlane, as well as Samora Machel Jr (Samito), the son of the country’s first president, Samora Machel.
It is the elected central committee that eventually chose the 15-member Political Commission, the party’s most powerful body, the secretary general and the secretariat.
The new secretary-general is Felipe Paúnde, who will have to renounce his post as governor of the northern Nampula province – the role of secretary-general is more of an administrator.
The Congress also debated its eight theses on the nature of the party; national unity; role of the party in organising the State and society; social and economic development and the struggle against poverty; values and the morality of society; the campaign against crime and corruption; and Mozambique in the region (SADC and Africa in general).
There were also some invited guests to the Congress, including the deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa, Jacob Zuma, who was ANC’ chief representative in Mozambique for 10 years in the 1980s.
Addressing the Congress, Zuma praised Frelimo’s role in hosting the ANC at the height of the struggle against apartheid, and said Mozambique “continues to occupy a special place in my heart.”
Zuma recalled an incident in 1981 when, after an attack by South African commandos on ANC cadres at a base in Matola near Maputo, the late Mozambican President Samora Machel and the late ANC president Oliver Tambo stood side by side and declared that “Mozambicans and South Africans are one people.”
“We have a unique relationship,” he said. Mozambicans had sacrificed their leader “for us,” he said, referring to the death of Machel on 19 October 1986 when his plane crashed into the hills of Mbuzini on South African soil near the border with Mozambique. Machel’s death has not been properly explained to this date.
For good measure, he told Frelimo members to keep the unity of their party because “without unity in Frelimo, there will be no unity in Mozambique.”
