I repeat – we don’t need a foreign boss!

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza declared on Sunday that the ruling Frelimo Party “is the party of dialogue, the party which, through an increasing multiplicity of channels, actions and programmes, promotes dialogue inside its own ranks and inside the Mozambican nation”.Speaking at the close of a three day meeting of the Frelimo Central Committee, Guebuza said that the very foundation of Frelimo, in 1962, was only possible “because of dialogue among Mozambicans of the most varied origins”.Through this dialogue “we developed an awareness of one and the same nationality, which wasn’t Portuguese”.Because of Frelimo’s commitment to dialogue, he argued, it had been able “to consolidate mechanisms for the construction of peace and embark on an exemplary reconciliation process”.Guebuza stressed national unity against the “narrow and stereotypical vision” of those who claim that resources and opportunities in one part of the country should only be for those who happen to live there.Those who thought like this “ignore that we overcame this way of looking at Mozambique and its people in 1962”, he said. “They ignore that the National Liberation Struggle was conducted by nationalists from various parts of this motherland of heroes. They ignore that Mozambicans from different regions are fighting together against poverty”.Dialogue, Guebuza explained, did not necessarily mean that the people involved agreed with each other, but it was “an important step towards sharing visions and proposed solutions for concrete challenges. Dialogue is an important mechanism for the construction of consensus”.It was “with Frelimo as a promoter of dialogue that we should win, in an overwhelming and convincing manner, the forthcoming municipal elections”, he declared.Guebuza added “it is in this environment created by Frelimo as a promoter of dialogue within Mozambican society, that we shall show those of our fellow countrymen who feel that they need a boss, a boss who must necessarily be foreign, that we are already a free and independent Mozambique, a country whose boss is the Mozambican people”. “I repeat – we don’t need a foreign boss”, he concluded.