Good afternoon. The new interior minister, Paulo Chachine, wants to improve the reputation of the Mozambican police. It is hard to see how that reputation could get any worse. Before October’s elections, the force was already notorious for corruption, brutality (especially to opposition supporters) and collusion with organised crime. Since then, according to credible figures from the NGO Plataforma Decide, over 300 people have died in clashes with police. The number includes a few security forces members killed by protesters, but over 95% of the victims were civilians, who were mostly shot by police.
Moreover, away from the demonstrations, more than 100 opposition supporters and activists have been killed since the elections, and the security forces have inevitably come under suspicion for what looks like a series of targeted assassinations. At very least, this suspicion needs to be addressed, and the killings, along with all the other deaths, need to be investigated.
Chachine, who was a senior police officer before entering the government, has spoken of the need for the police to act lawfully and ethically, and that people should not fear them. He has also talked about the need to fight corruption. All these issues ought to bring him into conflict with the police commander, Bernardino Rafael. Rafael is not a bad symbol for everything, or almost everything, that is wrong with his force. Ever since the protests began in response to October’s contested elections, Rafael has played down police violence and exaggerated the danger posed by protesters. He is continuing to do that this week, claiming improbably that only 96 people have died in protests (see below). Far from investigating the brutality of his officers, he has shown bland indifference towards it. The fact that almost 20 times more civilians than police have died means nothing to him.
But then Rafael’s sympathies for ruling party Frelimo are well known. He has made partisan political attacks on the opposition in the past, and the police have a track record of suppressing opposition marches.
So far, that has been fine with the Frelimo government. But Rafael has also failed to address his officers’ obvious involvement in kidnappings, something that President Daniel Chapo has promised to act on. He has furthermore enabled police corruption by persuading the government to abandon its plans to move police officers onto the same payroll system as other government employees. This is what has allowed senior police officers to create the so-called ghost employees, fictitious staff whose pay they pocket. He has been protected in the past by his allegiance, and his family and ethnic ties, to previous president Filipe Nyusi, but that is over now. If Chapo is determined, as he says, to reduce the cost of government, then he needs to deal with the ghost security forces.
If Chapo and Chachine are genuine in their intentions, then it is hard to see how they can keep Rafael in his job. Getting rid of the police commander would send a powerful signal that the government is intent on change, much more so than any speech.
From the Zitamar Live Blog:

Today’s headlines:
- Chapo demands change in governing style from provincial governors (Mediafax)
- Police need to change their behaviour, says new interior minister, as Mondlane calls for popular justice against police (Mediafax, O País, Lusa)
- Military escorts reintroduced between Macomia and Awasse (Carta de Moçambique)
- Police accuse protesters of stealing 53 weapons (Mediafax)
- TotalEnergies hired lobbyist to revive Mozambique gas project (Bloomberg)
- Fuel import bill soared in 2024 (Notícias)
- Deal reached with Libya to restart rice growing project (Libya Herald)
Chapo demands change in governing style from provincial governors (Mediafax)
President Daniel Chapo yesterday urged provincial governors to work towards what he called a “new era” in governing geared towards solving the people’s problems. He called on them to fight corruption and eliminate the misuse of public funds, for example through the creation of ghost employees whose salaries are embezzled by senior officials. Chapo also said there must be an end to favouritism and nepotism in public procurement, and condemned cartels that enriched themselves at the expense of “the suffering of the people”. Governors should take a meritocratic approach to filling jobs in the civil service, he went on. “We are in a new era, and things have already changed,” Chapo said. “We need to do things differently to obtain different results”.
Police need to change their behaviour, says new interior minister, as Mondlane calls for popular justice against police (Mediafax, O País, Lusa)
The Mozambican police need to regain the confidence of the people, the new interior minister Paulo Chachine has said, in a speech where he called for wide-ranging changes in the behaviour of the police. Speaking at his presentation ceremony yesterday, he said that police needed to act with proportionality and respect for ethical values. “The population cannot be afraid of us, the citizen cannot be afraid of us… The citizen must be the starting and ending point of our activities, he must be there at the centre,” he said. Chachine added that the population could not be afraid of the police, and highlighted challenges such as fighting corruption, nepotism and unnecessary bureaucracy. He spoke a day after Venâncio Mondlane, the former opposition presidential candidate, called on the public to set up an “autonomous court” and issue “sentences” against law enforcement officers guilty of brutality. Over 300 people have died and another 600 have been shot since October, amid protests sparked by the contested election results.