Ignores economic and social reintegration of demobilised men

South African lawyer Andre Thomashausen said on Monday that Mozambique’s peace agreement is “a simple surrender to the authorities” which ignores the Peace Fund created in 2014 for demobilised combatants.“The agreement simply proposes a surrender of Renamo’s staff and weaponry to the authorities, to be coordinated by certain joint committees, within deadlines that I think are unrealistic, just as in 2014,” the South African lawyer and professor told Lusa in an interview.

Andre Thomashausen was an adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Mozambique, Aldo Ajello, during the UNUMOZ mission between February and December 1994, and was the author of the [Renamo] proposals and the final document leading to the Rome General Peace Agreement. The agreement was signed by then Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano and Renamo’s Afonso Dhlakhama in October 1992 in the Italian capital, under the mediation of the Community of Santo Egidio, Italy.

Thomashausen stressed that “there is nothing specific” in the new Mozambican peace agreement on the economic and social reintegration of former Renamo fighters, which, in his opinion “is a fundamental responsibility in a society seeking to rehabilitate their national unity.”

“It is surprising that now in 2019 the parties did not even remember the creation by law of the Peace Fund in 2014, with exactly that responsibility. This Fund, which never became operational, could have now been valued and revitalised,” he said.

“In this regard, the agreement of 6 August actually makes only one rather vague reference in paragraph 1 (E), namely: “Mobilising internal and external resources to facilitate the socio-economic reintegration process of demobilised Renamo armed elements under the Memorandum of Understanding on Military Affairs,” the expert on international law points out.

“The carelessness regarding the issue of taking responsibility for the future of the demobilised is manifest,” he said.

Thomashausen says that, for the combatants who surrender their weapons, the agreement “unfortunately offers nothing but an amnesty”, adding that the recent agreement “is a bad deal” for Renamo.

“Renamo receives in return the opportunity to win some possible positions as provincial governor, which by the drafting of the new legislation will always be controlled by a Special Commissioner of the central government ministry. A risky plan, considering that nothing suggests that the next elections will be less fraudulent than the previous ones,” he said. The lawyer noted that “Protocol 4 to the 1992 Agreement on Military Affairs, in addition to providing for the formation of new military forces to be recruited from Frelimo and Renamo, provided for joint responsibility for the appointment of armed groups. private or irregular.”

“This is missing in the 2019 Agreement, although it could have been very pertinent as private armies are operating, terrorising peasants in Montepuez and Cabo Delgado,” he said.In Thomashausen’s opinion, the recent Peace and Reconciliation Agreement signed between the Mozambican government and the opposition Renamo party “is a public-private agreement” that “must obey the rules of administrative law and the Constitution [of Mozambique].

”Despite the criticism, the analyst considered that the country would prove able to “cement the truce” and live with less uncertainty, which may help to win the trust of potential domestic and foreign investors, while underlining the lack of consensus within the opposition.“[The deal] is consensual at the elite level. But it will have to win the minds and spirits on the Renamo bases,” he said. “When in 1992 Frelimo’s political dream was defeated by the imposition in the Peace Agreement of multiparty democracy and the principles of a modern rule of law, Renamo managed to define its political identity as the “Father of Democracy” [in Mozambique]. But Frelimo clung to power and its privileges,” he said. “Today, the economic, social and political exclusion of Mozambicans who do not belong to the Frelimo ‘family’ continues to foment violence [in Mozambique],” Thomashausen said.