Good afternoon. Public sector workers today “welcomed” Daniel Chapo, the new Mozambican president, with strike action ranging across various sectors including schools and healthcare facilities. Perhaps Carla Louveira, the new finance minister, will take a grim satisfaction in the money the government will presumably save from not paying the striking workers. After all, the public finances are in a terrible state: Louveira estimates that MZN42bn ($664m) in government revenue was lost last year, at least partly due to election-related demonstrations, in a context where the government was already short of cash (unless it resorts to printing money, something that could not be done overnight in any case).
In his inauguration speech, Chapo acknowledged some of the urgent needs of the population, like creating more employment opportunities for young people and paying public sector salaries on time. But the speech was short on specifics about how to address them. He made general commitments to improve agriculture, healthcare, education and so on, but very few detailed measures were announced. Chapo promised to save MZN17bn ($268m) by cutting the cost of government, but even if his figure is accurate, some of that will be spent on his reorganisation of government ministries and on paying the bonus salary payment which the strikers are demanding and which Chapo says the government will try to pay in full. What is left is unlikely to be transformational.
In contrast to Chapo, his rival for president Venâncio Mondlane has announced 25 specific measures which he is demanding the government carry out, many of them addressing the cost of living (fixing the price of cement may sound odd to an outsider, but it would help tackle the housing shortage by making it more affordable for people to build their own homes).
The demonstrations of the last three months have been fuelled not only by electoral fraud, but also by widespread unhappiness with the government for not dealing with problems like youth unemployment, inequality, and the cost of living, notably food prices which have risen due to inflation, supply problems linked to the protests, and opportunism by some businesses. Clearly, the government does not have lots of spare cash to throw at these problems. But Chapo could have done more to indicate that he was getting to grips with them, for example by proposing new development projects which he could ask donor agencies to fund. Promising to pay the bonus salary payment does not amount to a comprehensive package addressing the cost of living.
The new president still needs to demonstrate that he is putting policies in place which will address people’s aching grievances. When people have been taking out their anger with the government by burning down police stations, the government needs to show that it is listening.
The latest from Zitamar News:



Today’s headlines:
- Mondlane issues policy demands, threatens more protests (Lusa, VOA, Integrity, Integrity)
- Podemos says 106 supporters have been killed (Lusa)
- Government struggles with bonus salary payment as strikes begin (Lusa, Rádio Moçambique, AIM)
- Kidnap victim freed after being mistaken for target (Integrity)
- Mozambique incinerates tonnes of ballot papers (Lusa, TV Sucesso)
Mondlane issues policy demands, threatens more protests (Lusa, VOA, Integrity, Integrity)
Former presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane today issued a set of policy demands to the government, threatening to call more demonstrations and street protests “more intensely” if they were not implemented. The measures, published in full by the website Integrity, include an end to “violence against the population” and his followers, as well as the unconditional release of the more than 4,000 people arrested during the demonstrations, compensation for families of the dead, and the abolition of VAT on basic foodstuffs. He also called for an “eye for an eye” approach to police violence, arguing that the police should receive the same treatment in turn. Responding to this idea in an interview with CNN Portugal, President Daniel Chapo said: “One of the measures is: a Mozambican dies, then a policeman also dies. The population is advised to kill policemen. I don’t know if that makes sense to a man of average intelligence”. He said some of the measures were impractical and denied that the government would respond to Mondlane’s pressure. Chapo also denied Mondlane’s claim that he and Mondlane had been in touch via a “mutual friend”.
Mondlane’s list of demands (24 or 25, according to reports) is surely too long to expect the government to comply with. It seems to be mainly about Mondlane presenting his own ideas to the people and giving himself an excuse to call more demonstrations when the policies are inevitably not all carried out.