Dhlakama dead 1953 - 2018

With the death of Afonso Dhlakama (diabetes), Renamo immediately has crucial battles to fight. Take decentralization to fruition without turning it into a mockery of what has been achieved so far.

Achieve the full integration of your men into the Defense and Security Forces, including special forces, police and security services. In parallel, it has to prepare its electoral machine to contest the October municipal elections and the general elections of 2019.

To meet these challenges, Renamo needs to elect a solid, agile and effective leadership, be it collegial or presidential leadership. To be able to combine in that leadership the eminently political aspects with the military questions, clearly an "unknown letter", since Dhlakama was able to play both roles well and the negotiating capacity and the weight of the military cadres of the old guerrilla are not known.

The obstacles are enormous, notably the specter of savimbization, which may seek to take political and military dividends with Dhlakama's departure, pushing back the bargaining process and gaining electoral gains. However, Renamo can capitalize on the phenomenon of the martyrdom of its leader, who spent the last two and a half years in the middle of the Gorongosa forest and in the unfailing support of grassroots organizations that also have regional and ethnic roots.

In the current economic crisis that plagues the country, Renamo, without great effort, has capitalized in its favor the great popular discontent against the government of the day. Popular support is a vital element in enabling the new leadership to avenge its views on the issues under discussion in the negotiations and in the maneuvers of the electoral process whose curves we can follow on a daily basis.

Finally, Renamo can go on to build a more democratic organization, stripping itself of the authoritarianism and caudilhismo that Dhlakama never abandoned. The women and men of Renamo have the opportunity, once again, to counteract a minimalist narrative which the official propaganda was commissioned to build over the years, after the bloody war that Mozambicans opposed against Mozambicans had passed. Inexorably, the reverse could be tragic for the incipient multiparty movement in Mozambique.