DAVIZ BACKERS FORM NEW PARTY

Backers of the newly re-elected mayor of Beira, Daviz Simango, formed a new party in Beira at the weekend. The Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM, Movimento Democrático de Moçambique) has so far drawn its support largely from Renamo, which has haemorrhaged members since Renamo was trounced in local elections in November.


Renamo President Afonso Dhlakama at the last minute did not select the popular Daviz as Renamo candidate for re-election. In less than a week, Daviz’s backers organised enough signatures to allow him to stand as an independent. He won with 62% of the vote. Dhlakama’s very tight control of the party and his failure to organise campaign support for Renamo candidates in the local elections was the last straw. Renamo parliament members now fear the will lose their seats in elections this year. Several, including Maria Moreno, head of the parliamentary group, attended the MDM founding conference -- Moreno made clear she had not left Renamo yet. Many key figures seem to be sitting on the fence, hoping Dhlakama can be forced to change and invite Daviz back in; but they will join MDM if they are expelled from Renamo, as it likely to happen at a Renamo special political commission meeting this week in Nacala.


Daviz and MDM leaders have confirmed that they will stand candidates for provincial and national parliaments in elections later this year. But it remains unclear if Daviz will stand for president against Armando Guebuza -- time is short, and he already has a fight on his hands as mayor of Beira with a municipal assembly controlled by his opponents.


The popularity of Daviz and organising skills of Daviz and party spokesman Geraldo Carvalho could turn the MDM into a formidable opposition, but it will take a huge amount of work and the MDM is unlikely to be able to mount a credible challenge until 2013-2014 elections. This year, it will do very well to gain more parliamentary seats than Renamo. Frelimo has a huge and well organised party machine, and Renamo is fixed in many voters' minds as the only real opposition.


At the constituting meeting at the weekend, 252 voting delegates named Daviz president of the MDM, and selected 9 of 11 members of a political commission, a 60 member national council based on provincial representatives, and a five member supervisory commission. A secretary-general is still to be named.


The MDM Supervisory Commission is headed by the party’s top jurist, Eduardo Elias, who is a former Renamo deputy, and currently a member of the Higher Council of the Judicial Magistrature (CSMJ). One member is Zaida Mussa, a lawyer and the wife of Renamo MP Ismael Mussa.


The new party seems to be making an explicit effort to link back to Renamo’s 1981-92 guerrilla war and to Portuguese backing for that war. A member of the MDM’s new 11-member political commission is Ivete Fernandes, widow of the Renamo secretary-general in the mid-1980s, who was assassinated in Portugal in 1988. In that period, Ivete Fernandes had strong links with the Portuguese Social Democratic Party (PSD), and the PSD was officially represented last weekend at the MDM founding conference. Another member of the political commission is Simango’s press spokesman, Geraldo Carvalho. According to Canal de Moçambique, Carvalho was “a senior officer and active guerrilla” during the war. (The US Department of State report “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2000: Mozambique” said that Carvalho had been killed by government security services in 2000, and this was repeated in the 2001 report.)


Daviz is the son of one of the founders of Frelimo, Rev Uria Simango, who fell out with the successful leadership of Frelimo in the bitter struggles of the late 1960s. Uria and his wife (Daviz's mother) Celina were executed in the early years of independence, but the details have never been published.


CONFUSION WARNING: The Frelimo mayor of Maputo is DaviD Simango and the MDM mayor of Beira is DaviZ Simango. They are not related.

HANLON, JOSEPH MOZAMBIQUE PEACE BULLETIN,