Mozambique opposition chief alleges assassination attempt, runs for safety

Mozambique’s leading opposition politician, Venancio Mondlane, claimed in a video this Monday to have escaped an attempted assassination in South Africa where he had taken refuge after last month’s disputed elections.

Mondlane rejects the results of the 9 October elections that the electoral authority says were won by the candidate of the Frelimo party, in power since 1975.

He claims he won and has used social media to call for protests and strikes.

“When I was in South Africa, assassins were at my door to kill me,” Mondlane said in the video on Facebook. “I had to jump out the back door, slip out through a hair salon and run with my bags and my family.”

He said he had been staying in Johannesburg’s upmarket Sandton area and had since left the country. He did not say when the alleged assassination attempt was meant to have occurred.

South Africa’s foreign ministry told French news agency AFP it had no knowledge of Mondlane being in the country and that such a matter should have been reported to the police.

After his lawyer and another associate were gunned down on 19 October as they prepared to challenge the results in court, Mondlane said they were assassinated and he could be next.

Mozambique’s electoral authority announced on 24 October that Frelimo’s Daniel Chapo had won the election with more than 70 percent, compared to Mondlane’s 20 percent.

In two days of protests directly after the announcement, security forces killed at least 11 people and more than 50 others suffered serious gunshot wounds, Human Rights Watch said last week.

The Mozambique security forces’ violent crackdown on post-election protesters has severely increased political tensions.

Mondlane has called a march in the capital Maputo on Thursday, which he said is to be “the day of Mozambique’s freedom”. It will be the culmination of a seven-day strike he called last week.

Police used tear gas Monday to disperse more than a dozen demonstrators on a main road in Maputo, according to AFP reporters in the capital.

Mozambique anti-corruption NGO, the Center for Public Integrity said last month’s elections were the country’s most fraudulent for 25 years.

Election observers, including from the European Union, have also noted serious flaws before, during and after the vote, with the electoral body accused of manipulation to keep Frelimo in power.

AFP