/ 28 October 2024

Mozambique election: Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo declared election winner amid tension

Daniel Chapo
Mozambique President Elect Daniel Chapo. (Alfredo Zuniga/AFP via Getty Images)

Last Thursday afternoon, Mozambique’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) confirmed Daniel Chapo, Frelimo’s presidential candidate, as the winner of the 9 October presidential elections with nearly 71% of the votes cast.

Chapo’s incoming presidency means that Frelimo, the country’s liberation movement that has led Mozambique since independence in 1975, will continue its uninterrupted run.

According to the electoral commission’s result, Chapo beat the first runner-up, Venȃncio Mondlane, by more than 3.5 million votes and the second runner-up, Ossufo Momade, the candidate of the largest opposition party Renamo, by nearly 4.5 million.

The opposition candidates and their supporters strongly disagree. Days after the election, Mondlane (or VM7 as he calls himself) live streamed from Facebook and YouTube to say that his team’s parallel count showed he had won the election. He then called for a day of boycott because official preliminary results showed Chapo in the lead. On 14 October, Maputo was a ghost town, with many staying away either to heed VM7’s call or steer clear of the likely chaos. 

The Confederation of Economic Associations says that in most cities and provinces, business slumped by 50% and estimates that the Mozambican economy lost more than 1.4 billion meticais (nearly $22 million).

The tensions escalated into nationwide riots on 17 and 18 October, in which at least six people died: two policemen and four civilians. Then on that Friday night, and on one of Maputo’s main avenues, two key figures in the election were shot at close range and killed — Mondlane’s deputy and lawyer Elvino Dias and Paulo Guambe, the deputy leader of Podemos, a political party that endorsed Mondlane.

 “It was very fast and extremely violent,” Rafael Anastacio, said an eyewitness. The killings echoed the 2015 gunning down of Franco-Mozambican constitutionalist Gilles Cistac. 

He had publicly argued that Renamo should govern the provinces where it had beaten Frelimo in the 2014 elections. He was shot dead outside a café in a chic area of Maputo. Renamo and Podemos say they will challenge Thursday’s result before the Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s electoral court. 

This article first appeared in The Continent, the pan-African weekly newspaper produced in partnership with the Mail & Guardian. It’s designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here