Murder in Mozambique shoots to heart of national politics

Customers at the ABFC cafe and bakery in central Maputo sip coffee and eat Portuguese-style custard tarts as though it were another ordinary day. A makeshift memorial outside suggests otherwise. "We support freedom of speech," reads a sign at which bouquets have been placed in memory of constitutional lawyer and academic Gilles Cistac, a Frenchman who was gunned down while leaving the cafe one morning last month.

The 53-year-old, who lived and worked in this southern African country since 1993 and had taken Mozambican nationality, was shot several times with an assault rifle by one of four unidentified men in a passing car.

A respected professor of law at the city’s Eduardo Mondlane University, he was one of Mozambique’s few experts on constitutional law, and an adviser to various government ministries.

Why he was murdered, how his killing could have happened on such a busy street and in daylight, and how his assassins escaped so easily are topics that have dominated conversations in this city stunned by his loss.

Devolution

Shortly before his death, Cistac had said there was a legitimate constitutional basis to demands by the main opposition party,

Renamo

, for the devolution of political power.

Renamo lost parliamentary and presidential elections last October to Frelimo – which has controlled Mozambique since independence from Portugal in 1975 – but won majorities in its power base in northern provinces, where massive gas reserves were discovered in recent years.

Renamo's leader, Afonso Dhlakama, says the vote was rigged. He nonetheless wants a bigger say in those areas where his party did best – and a bigger share of gas revenues, which he says must be distributed among all instead of channelled towards the political elite. While Dhlakama used Cistac's pronouncement to leverage his bid for greater regional autonomy – and went even further by talking of an independent republic – Cistac came under fire from Frelimo and the pro-government media for expressing his legal opinion.

A Frelimo spokesman dubbed him dishonest and an “ingrate” for not respecting Mozambican hospitality.

Cistac became the target of a social media campaign, and a week before his death had filed a complaint to the attorney general over threats on Facebook by a user with the name “Calado Calachnikov”, Portuguese for “silenced by Kalashnikov”.

The killing prompted a protest by hundreds of students and rights activists, but many in Maputo say there is little political will to find those responsible.

In a poignant twist, Cistac's murder took place just around the corner from where newspaper editor and investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso was gunned down in 2000 after exposing pervasive corruption in the upper ranks of Frelimo.

Among those charged with his murder was the son of then president Joaquim Chissano, whom several of the accused testified had ordered the killing. Six people were jailed, but Nyimpine Chissano died in 2007 before the case against him was pursued.

Blame

Renamo was quick to blame Frelimo for Cistac’s killing. Opposition newspaper

Canal de Moçambique

ran a front-page story headlined “Frelimo assassins”.

The murder shone a spotlight on an internal power struggle in the ruling party between former president Armando Guebuza and his successor, Filipe Nyusi.

Their tussle reflected a more serious divide between the old-guard party hardliners, such as Guebuza, opposed to engaging with Renamo on the devolution issue, and the apparently more conciliatory Nyusi, a northerner who won the election with slogans such as “the son of farmers – a Mozambican like you”, and who, while making no promises, has held talks with Dhlakama on his demands.

Frelimo, which began as a Marxist rebel movement fighting Portuguese colonial rule from 1964 to 1974, later spent 15 years locked in a devastating civil war with Renamo, a rebel group sponsored by the white regime in neighbouring Rhodesia. There were echoes of that war two years ago when Dhlakama took to the northern hills to lead an insurgency that saw frequent clashes between Renamo fighters and the army on the country’s north-south highway.

Dhlakama agreed to a truce in time for elections after Frelimo acceded to several of his demands on electoral reform and the integration into the army of remaining Renamo forces. He then rejected the poll results, led a Renamo boycott of parliament, and threatened to declare an independent republic.

Cistac’s murder appears to have steeled Dhlakama’s resolve. His party’s 89 deputies ended their boycott after Nyusi agreed to more talks on devolution. Renamo has since presented a Bill to parliament on setting up autonomous provinces, accompanied by a warning of more violence if its demands go unheeded.

Nyusi’s challenge is three-fold: keeping Renamo sufficiently on board to avoid further violence; balancing Dhlakama’s ever-changing demands against those of his own Frelimo colleagues; and ensuring concerted and transparent efforts are made to find Cistac’s killers.

It will test his presidential mettle. It will also test Mozambique’s young multiparty democracy and its proclaimed commitments to freedom of speech and justice.