via Dhlakama confident Renamo will rule six provinces – The Zimbabwean 25 March 2015
Afonso Dhlakama, leader of Mozambique’s former rebel movement Renamo, on Monday insisted that the Renamo bill to set up “provincial municipalities” will be passed at the next session of the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.
Speaking at a rally in Catandica, in the central province of Manica, reported by the independent television station STV, Dhlakama declared that, with this bill, the provinces “will be stronger and richer” – although by creating extra taxes, and an entirely new layer of governance, the bill seems more likely to impoverish the provinces.
The bill demands the immediate establishment of “provincial municipalities” in six central and northern provinces – Manica, Sofala, Tete, Zambezia, Nampula and Niassa. Dhlakama declared that these provinces “will be governed by Renamo, by the policy of Renamo, by Mozambicans who, although they might not be members of Renamo, are appointed because they enjoy our technical and professional trust, who are not thieves, drug addict or bandits”.
Before setting off for Manica, Dhlakama met with students and academics in the western city of Tete, at a meeting where he compared himself with the icon of southern African liberation, the late Nelson Mandela.
Dhlakama claimed “I have given everything to my people since 1977. It is not just Mandela of South Africa, there are more Mandelas, such as Dhlakama in Mozambique”.
Mandela, however, was jailed for 27 years by the same apartheid regime which was paying Dhlakama to lead a surrogate army in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Mozambican government.
Asked her opinion about the Renamo bill on “provincial municipalities” on Monday, the Minister of State Administration and the Public Service, Carmelita Namashalua, was cautious. She did not reject the bill outright, but told STV there was a great deal in it that Renamo needed to explain when it came before parliament.
She warned that, even if the Assembly were to approve it, the bill would take “a very long time to implement – it cannot be done from one day to the next”.
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