Army captures aide-de-camp to Nhongo

The Mozambican Defence and Security Forces captured three men close to the leader of the Renamo dissident group, Mariano Nhongo, one of whom was his field assistant, the Mozambican President announced on Tuesday.

“After the Renamo Military Junta attacked the car of the National Statistics Institute in Mossurize [Manica] without victims on 11 December, the Defence and Security Forces captured three men from the junta in the Mafambisse [Sofala] area, one of whom was a field aide to Mariano Nhongo and two others,” Filipe Nyusi said.

The President was speaking during a ceremony to allocate patents to officers of the National Migration Service in the Presidency of the Republic, in Maputo. According to Nyusi, the three men confessed that they were part of the dissident group of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), accused of carrying out armed attacks in central Mozambique. “The Defence and Security Forces are still on the ground searching the enemy, Filipe Nyusi stressed, recalling that attempts to negotiate with the Renamo Military Junta have failed. Nyusi said the actions of this group are being instigated by “well-served people”, who have the “individual ambition” to weaken democracy in the country.

The Renamo Military Junta, led by Mariano Nhongo, a former guerrilla leader, is accused of carrying out armed attacks against civilians and government forces on roads and villages in the provinces of Sofala and Manica, central Mozambique, incursions that have caused the death of at least 30 people since August last year. The Nhongo group demands better conditions for reintegration, the renegotiation of the 2019 peace agreement between the government and Renamo, and the resignation of the current president of the main opposition party, Ossufo Momade, accusing him of having diverted the negotiation process from the ideals of his predecessor, Afonso Dhlakama, a historic leader who died in May 2018.

On Sunday, the representative of the United Nations secretary-general in Mozambique, Mirko Manzoni, said that the leader of the Renamo dissident group had expressed his willingness to negotiate. “Despite the difficulties for a physical meeting, I can confirm contact with him and thank him for his willingness to engage in dialogue and his proposal to send his representatives to begin such dialogue,” Mirko Manzoni said in a statement.

 

 

Companies move closer to stabilisation

The monthly Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) prepared by Standard Bank Mozambique has found that, as in October, private sector companies in Mozambique in November continued to recover from the crisis caused by the spread of the new coronavirus. The analysis supports its recovery diagnosis with the fact that levels of production and volume of new orders from companies are close to stabilisation, suggesting a decrease in the impact of Covid-19. The headline PMI rose to its highest level in eight months, at 49.4 (in November), up from 48.1 in October, and closer to the 50.0 neutral threshold. As a result of this recovery, the Standard Bank analysis reads, firms raised workforce numbers in the month under review at the strongest pace since February, albeit only modestly. Increased workloads, shop openings and marketing efforts were all reported among businesses seeing a rise in employment. Nevertheless, the lack of purchasing power constrained efforts to expand inventory levels, even as pressures on the production costs continued to fall, confirming the first decrease in since June.

“Businesses were more confident that activity would increase over the coming 12 months in November. The degree of optimism ticked up for the first time in four months, with approximately 37% of respondents giving a positive forecast. Hopes were often linked to new investments and expectations that the COVID-19 pandemic will end. By contrast, only 2% of companies predicted a fall in output by November 2021,” the PMI reads “Decreases in stocks of inputs were registered for the eighth successive month during November. Where firms cut inventories, this was linked to falling sales and a lack of purchasing power. That said, despite accelerating from October, the rate of depletion was the second-slowest in the aforementioned sequence,” the report reads. On a more positive note, “there was a further improvement in supplier performance as lead times shortened for the third month in a row”, the document emphasises. Despite the recovery, the PMI reports that “cost pressures continued to weaken in the latest survey period, led by a fall in supplier input prices. This supported renewed discounting efforts, as average prices charged decreased for the first time in five months”. Standard Bank Mozambique’s PMI is based on responses to questionnaires sent to the purchasing directors of a panel of about 400 companies in the private sector. The panel is stratified by specific sector and company size in terms of number of employees, based on contributions to gross domestic product. The sectors covered by the survey include agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction, wholesale, retail and services.

• You may read the full report, in English, HERE.

Graphite mines in Australia

POSCO, the world’s fifth-largest steelmaker by output, is considering buying stakes in graphite mines in Australia and Mozambique, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.The move is part of POSCO’s efforts to diversify import sources of graphite, a material required in making anodes, he said.An anode is a key material in a battery that preserves lithium coming from the cathode and generates electricity while releasing lithium.A cathode is one source of lithium in a lithium-ion battery and is also a key component for electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

Currently, POSCO imports all of the graphite it uses to produce anodes from China. POSCO said the envisioned stake purchases in graphite mines in Australia and Mozambique would lower its heavy reliance on China to less than 50 percent in the medium to long term.The official did not provide further details on the possible stake purchases in graphite mines in Australia and Mozambique.POSCO said it plans to import 220,000 tons of lithium and 100,000 tons of nickel per year by 2030 to ensure its affiliate, POSCO Chemical Co., can produce 400,000 tons of cathodes and 260,000 tons of anodes by 2030. POSCO Chemical has said it plans to supply cathodes to EV battery facilities in South Korea, Europe, China and the United States.The EV battery market has been on a roll as automakers around the world race to go electric and eco-friendly due to tightened regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists say are to blame for global warming.

45 YEARS LATER ?

Some in Portugal want to prove their position on the conflict by sending soldiers back to their former colony. On January 1, 2021, Portugal assumes the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, and some military and government officials are increasingly using this circumstance to push for the EU's military involvement in Mozambique, with an important Portuguese presence.

A few days ago, Defense Minister João Gomes Cravinho (who will be in Maputo in a few days and was the penultimate ambassador in Maputo)) said that Portugal could send troops to help Mozambique fight terrorism. Former President Ramalho Eanes also said: "The answer will be easy as long as there is strength and initiative and action to mobilize Europe and the United Nations, and it is very easy, with specialized forces and drones, to resolve the situation". About 10 days ago, Portuguese PM, António Costa, called the President of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, saying that “Portugal is in solidarity and ready to support Mozambique's efforts to fight terrorism in Cabo Delgado, bilaterally and within the framework of the EU ”(Público - Lisbon - 1 Dec). Portugal's ambassador to Maputo, Maria Amélia Paiva, said last week that a Portuguese delegation is coming to Mozambique this week specifically to discuss Cabo Delgado.

"It is undeniable that the barbaric attacks have increased in recent weeks", writes Michael Hagedorn in Público (Lisbon). “However, the Mozambican government continues to refuse to address the multiple causes of this conflict, of which a considerable part is its responsibility. Thus, it avoids, in addition to a military offensive, that other important measures are taken to deal with the causes of the conflict, namely to give the local population perspectives of a dignified life ”.

(Portuguese colonial army on the front against the guerrilla of the Liberation Front of Mozambique, 1960s and 1970s)

Hagedorn concludes: “Portugal and the EU would do better to face the situation in all its complexity, than to exclusively and unconditionally support the Frelimo government and its narrow military vision for the solution of the conflict in Cabo Delgado”.  President Filipe Nyusi said recently that "terrorism is not combated unilaterally" and that Mozambique "is open to any kind of support that can be given in matters of terrorism". (JH)