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Southern Africa spiraled in political events in the year of record elections
Members of the military drive past protesters during a “national shutdown” against the election outcome, at Luis Cabral township, in Maputo, Mozambique on November 7, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Mozambique’s ruling party Frelimo candidate Daniel Chapo was declared winner of the presidential election, that opposition parties say was marred by voting irregularities.
- Opposition leader Venancio Mondlane claims that he won the election and has rallied his supporters to stage daily protests that target the country’s key economic infrastructure such as ports.
By the time the year turns over to 2025, Africa may still have not found a solution to Mozambique’s post-election violence. This is because the protesters rejecting the election results have stood their ground and the international community has done little beyond calling for calm.
What we learnt about those elections on October 9, is that Mozambique’s institutions now carry little confidence, especially among the opposition supporters. Yet that chaos is hurting even countries that endorsed the winner, such as Zimbabwe.
Mozambique’s ruling party Frelimo candidate Daniel Chapo was declared winner of the presidential election, that opposition parties say was marred by voting irregularities.
Opposition leader Venancio Mondlane claims that he won the election and has rallied his supporters to stage daily protests that target the country’s key economic infrastructure such as ports.
According to Amnesty International and local human rights groups, about 130 people have been killed during the protests and thousands arrested in a clampdown by security forces.
The unrest has affected operations for several businesses, including mines and has on several occasions led to the closure of key trade corridors, which has affected landlocked countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eswatini, Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
South Africa’s economy is losing about $558 000 a day due to the disruption in the movement of exports through Mozambique’s Indian Ocean ports.
And Botswana’s October 30 elections produced a shocking outcome that reverberated across the region.
The ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was dislodged from power since the country’s independence in 1966, after it was defeated by new President Duma Boko’s Umbrella for Democratic Change Party.
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu PF was accused of interfering in the Botswana election as was the case in the Mozambican and Namibian polls.
Zanu PF, which was a key player in Zimbabwe’s 1970s war of independence, claims liberation movements in the region are under siege from neo-colonialists and actively campaigned for its sister parties in Botswana, Mozambique and Namibia.
In South Africa, the ruling African National Congress lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since the end of apartheid in polls held in May this year. President Cyril Ramaphosa was forced to form a coalition government, a first in South Africa’s 30-year democratic history.
Former South African president Jacob Zuma’s shock move to form the rival MK party was largely responsible for the ANC’s reversal of fortunes.
The country’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), received the second-highest number of votes (21.81 percent) followed by the MK party (14.58 percent) and EFF (9.52 percent).
At the centre of the conflict is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) who have been operating in eastern DRC for over 25 years and the M23 rebels, which Kinshasa insists are backed by Rwanda.
The FDLR was originally created by Hutus, who fled Rwanda after playing a key role in the genocide against Tustis in 1994 while M23 consists of ethnic Tutsi Congolese.
President Lourenco has been spearheading the Luanda Process, which aims to build bridges between DRC and Rwanda.
In July 2024, he brokered a ceasefire agreement between the two countries, which took effect on August 4.
However, the deal remains fragile and in December peace talks between the two countries that were scheduled for Luanda were cancelled at the last minute.
Rwanda said the talks could not take off because of lack of consensus over direct talks between the DRC and the M23 rebel group.
South Africa’s ANC loses its majority.
UDC won 36 out of 61 directly elected seats in Parliament while the BDP won only four seats.
SADC, the regional economic bloc, has been accused of failing to handle the Mozambique crisis despite repeated warnings that the polls would degenerate into chaos.
Mozambique has been plagued by civil wars and post-election unrest since it gained independence from Portugal in 1975.
SADC leaders in November extended the regional body’s peacekeeping mission in eastern DRC by a year, as concern grew over a worsening humanitarian crisis fuelled by a raging civil war.
The SADC Mission in the DRC was deployed on December 15, 2023 and has been battling to contain the conflict that has displaced millions of people.
Angolan President Joao Lourenco has been pushing for a peace deal to resolve the crisis in eastern DRC with limited success.
