SAMORA MACHEL AND THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has solved a problem that has puzzled scholars and biblical exegists for almost two millennia – what is the identity of the Beast mentioned in the Book of Revelation?In Revelation, a book described by Thomas Jefferson as “the ravings of a maniac”, a mysterious beast with seven heads and ten horns appears who “causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads”. This beast has a number, and the author declares “Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six”.Over the centuries the beast has been identified with Roman emperors (the favourites were Nero and Domitian), with the Catholic Papacy, with Islam, with Oliver Cromwell, with Napoleon, and many others.All are wrong, according to Renamo parliamentary deputy Armindo Milaco. He told a session of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Thursday that the true identity of the beast with ten horns is none other than the ruling Frelimo Party. For at its head was the country’s first President Samora Machel, and you just have to look at his name to see that he is a clear candidate for the Beast. The President’s full name was Samora Moises Machel – three words, each with six letters. 666. Six hundred three score and six. Case closed.Milaco’s discovery, however, had little to do with the subjects under debate. The Assembly was debating problems of urban passenger transport and illegal immigration, following questions on these subjects asked of the government by the three political party parliamentary groups.Milaco preferred to delve into history, accusing Frelimo of trampling on religious beliefs. He recycled the old stories, denied long ago, that during the one party state, Frelimo had entered mosques with their shoes on, and had obliged Moslems to eat pork.He also cited the discredited cables sent by former US charge d’affaires Todd Chapman to the State Department in Washington, that were published last year by the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks. The cables contain lurid claims of Frelimo and government involvement in drug trafficking, much of which we know to be nonsense because Chapman’s main source is easily identifiable and has denied much of which the US diplomat put in his mouth.“Was the American charge d’affaires lying?”, asked Milaco, as if were impossible for a US diplomat to say anything other than the pristine truth.But Chapman was known to have a large axe to grind against the Mozambican government, and so Frelimo deputy Edmundo Galiza-Matos Junior, had no problem in dismissing the Wikileaks cables as “gossip and intrigue” fomented by a diplomat “whom nobody in Mozambique was sorry to see the back of”.Galiza-Matos cited Renamo dissident and former member of the Renamo Political Commission, Vitano Singano, who told reporters last week that Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama had turned the party into “a school of corruption”, handling the party’s finances personally, without any transparency or accountability.“That’s what you should be worried about”, Galiza-Matos told the Renamo benches.Milaco replied with claims that “the people don’t need Frelimo”, and “nobody votes for Frelimo”. He also made personal attacks on Galiza-Matos, claiming that he was recently divorced. “Didn’t your wife run away from you?”, he asked.Not only was this patently irrelevant, but it was also apparently untrue. Galiza-Matos retorted that he has lived with his wife for the past 15 years, and that the only result of such personal attacks will be to reduce still further the size of the Renamo group in the next parliament.Milaco was Renamo provincial political delegate in Cabo Delgado in 2005, when a dispute over the election of the mayor of Mocimboa da Praia municipality erupted into violence in which 12 people died. The police believed that Milaco masterminded the violence, and issued a warrant for his arrest. But they were never able to detain him, for Milaco fled to Maputo and used his parliamentary immunity to avoid arrest.The Assembly could lift his immunity, which would allow him to be arrested and taken to Cabo Delgado for trial. But that depends on a specific request from the Attorney-General that immunity be lifted, and so far no such request has been forthcoming.