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

Now, according to Mozambican authorities, he is dead.

A source in the Mozambican military said the insurgent leader’s last battle was fought in the dense Kathupa Forest in Macomia district.

There, the insurgents launched a daring offensive in mid-August on government troops and soldiers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The offensive is believed to have been targeting the chief-of-staff of the Mozambican army, Joaquim Ribas Mangrasse.

Intelligence analysts concluded that only one rebel commander had the authority to go after such a major target: Bonomade Machude. An intense manhunt ensued, and about a week later the army said that he was dead.

Authorities have been hunting Bonomade since at least August 2020, when insurgents occupied his hometown of Mocimboa da Praia. This was three years into the Cabo Delgado insurgency, which has sought to impose Islamic law in the north of the country.

During the six-day offensive on Mocimboa da Praia, fighters claiming to be from the Islamic State Central Africa Province (Iscap) attacked several villages and two military bases, killed or wounded at least 50 government soldiers, seized dozens of guns and eventually occupied the town of 30 000 people.

It remained under the fighters’ control for the next year.

Bonomade was believed to be one of the top leaders, if not the leader.

The occupation of Mocimboa da Praia was a major victory for the insurgents and as big an embarrassment for the Mozambican government. On 6 August 2021, the US state department designated Bonomade a member of the Islamic State and a global terrorist, saying he headed Isis-Mozambique’s military and external affairs department and acted as senior commander and main co-ordinator of all the group’s attacks in northern Mozambique.

Iscap was eventually forced out of Mocimboa da Praia, with help from Rwandan troops acting in support of the Mozambican armed forces. But it remained in control of other territory, including two bases — Siri I and Siri II — in the dense forest on the banks of the Messalo River.

They continued to raid villages in the districts of Macomia, Muidumbe and Metuge, on the other side of Pemba Bay. Bonomade personally led another raid on the Amarula Hotel in Palma in 2022, which left dozens dead and displaced thousands.

Shortly after that, the head of Mozambique’s military, Cristóvão Chume, now the country’s defence minister, promised that Bonomade “will be captured dead or alive”.

With support from Rwanda and SADC, the state went on the offensive, forcing the insurgents on to the back foot and to retreat into the bushes between Macomia and Mocimboa da Praia.

By the time of his killing, Bonomade was thought to have been commanding far fewer fighters than he did during the occupation of Mocimboa da Praia.

It is easy to gloss over Bonomade’s campaign against the Mozambican state with the broad brush of “Islamist terrorism”.

He did study Islam in several countries after completing his 12th grade at the Escola Secundária Januário Pedro in Mocimboa da Praia. On his return, he joined the ranks of a charity, the Africa Muslim Agency, in the city of Pemba.

But he also had other influences, including his personal experiences as a marine in the Mozambican navy between 2006 and 2008.

While the country’s armed forces and the government are celebrating Bonomade’s death, they would be wise to remember that the root causes of insurgency don’t disappear with the death of the leader; and that much more needs to be done to understand and address the animus that fuelled his war on Mozambique. 

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

For this trial, the normal courtroom was not nearly big enough. In the dock were 19 men, some of the country’s most powerful and politically connected figures, charged in connection with their alleged role in the “hidden debt scandal” — one of the biggest fraud cases in African history.

Under former president Armando Guebuza, the government secretly borrowed $2 billion from international banks. The money was intended to refurbish the country’s fishing and military patrol boats, with the debt guaranteed by the state. Most of the money disappeared. 

This fraud was knowingly facilitated by Swiss bank Credit Suisse, which has been fined by regulators for its criminality. No Credit Suisse executives have faced criminal prosecution, despite the company admitting liability.

This week, the court reached its verdict. It took five days for Judge Efigénio Baptista to read out the 1388 pages of findings. Twelve of the 19 were found guilty, including Armando Ndambi Guebuza, the eldest son of the former president.

Guebuza junior was found to have received $33 million to “move influence” with his father, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He intends to appeal. There is no word yet on whether his father will also be charged.

The current president, Filipe Nyusi, was minister of defence when the hidden debt scandal occurred.

The cotton business in Cabo Delgado has been precarious for some time already. British company Plexus Cotton, which holds the biggest concessions in the province, needed a $2-million government bail-out in 2020 to allow it to pay farmers and its striking workers. 

But now the company says the insurgency in the region, inspired by Islamist fundamentalists as well as by poverty and inequality, is making conditions too dangerous to work, and banks will no longer lend to businesses in the province.

“We have a farming base in Cabo Delgado of about 165 000 farmers, all of whom have about seven dependants,” said Nick Earlam, Plexus’s chief executive, in London late in June. 

Pointing out the company services about 900 villages in the province, he lamented that banks in Maputo, at the opposite end of the country, do not want “to fund agriculture in Cabo Delgado, or the security capability to protect the crop”.

“In a few days we are going to close down,” Earlam warned.

A former agricultural banker in Mozambique confirmed, as far as he was aware, “Mozambican banks do not provide any loans or overdraft to companies in Cabo Delgado”.

Three of the areas where Plexus operates, Ancuabe, Meluco and Chiure, have seen “frightful insurgent attacks,” Earlam said. “Our staff are reluctant to go out without proper security,” he said, adding that their intelligence suggested that the problem will continue to get worse. 

But if Plexus can’t buy this year’s harvest, that will create “50 000 angry farmers and their families to add to the discontent”.

Earlam’s statement has been seen as an attempt to hold the government hostage. “It smells of blackmail,” wrote Marcelo Mosse, editor of the online news site Carta de Moçambique. The state news agency AIM described Earlam’s comments as “less than honest”, pointing out that most of the cotton in Cabo Delgado is in the province’s southern districts, which have been the least affected by Islamist militants.

“Plexus is in serious financial difficulties, which have nothing to do with security,” AIM wrote.

Wherever the blame lies, farmers in the province are worried. Artimiza Fernando has always farmed the land, selling cotton as part of an association in Cabo Delgado “It was worth getting paid late, but now that they are going, as I heard, will they pay what they still owe us?” she asked. “What will become of our children? The government has to help us otherwise we will starve to death.”

While farmers will still have their subsistence crops, the loss of income from Plexus might be felt even more keenly in other parts of the province.

“The shop owners that sprang up in production areas will not have a market,” said one farm owner. “Wholesalers in town will lose [a] substantial part of their sales. We already see a drastic decline in buying power all over the north.”

Badru Selemangy is also desperate at the news of the company’s departure: “Cabo Delgado is cursed.” 

Plexus might pay what it owes, even after delays, but if the company leaves, he said, “all that’s left is for al-Shabaab to come and cut our necks”. 

Or they might be compelled to join the insurgency — which could now spiral further out of control. 

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.

In April, the Rwandan embassy in Maputo started a campaign to persuade refugees to return home, and 19 Rwandans agreed to go.

“The people who returned had no choice. They were threatened,” said Sembene Mentynhagu, adding that refugees who still had family in Rwanda were especially vulnerable. 

The high commission of Rwanda in Maputo has previously insisted that the process is voluntary and they “hope to receive more people interested in returning to their origins”.

Still, refugees fear that disinterest in returning will get them labelled and taken. 

“The capture argument will be the génocidaire label, we are afraid,” said Theophilus Andame. 

Many of the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide fled the country afterwards and are wanted by the authorities, but refugees say that President Paul Kagame’s government also uses the label to target critics or dissenters not linked to the genocide.

“Our fear now is that the Kagame regime will choose those they call ‘génocidaires’ and the [Mozambican] government will give them up,” said Rosalia Ntiema, who left Cyangugu in Rwanda after the genocide and has lived in Maputo ever since.

When these concerns were put to Rwandan high commissioner Claude Nikobisanwe, he said: “How is it raising fear? Are they criminals?”

Mozambique has been a safe haven for about 6 000 Rwandan refugees since the 1990s. But the feeling of safety was splintered a year ago, shortly after Rwanda sent troops to Mozambique to fight militants in Cabo Delgado.

In May last year, an asylum seeker called Cassien Ntamuhanga was taken from his home in Maputo by what his brother in Uganda described as “10 plain-clothed security personnel, among whom were four speaking Kinyarwanda”. 

The Rwandan high commissioner denies that the country had any involvement in the abduction.

Ntamuhanga, a radio presenter, had been involved in a political movement that opposed Kagame before being arrested in 2015, alongside the musician Kizito Mihigo, who was later found dead. Ntamuhanga escaped from jail and fled to Mozambique. The Rwandan refugee community in Mozambique believes he was taken to Rwanda.

Now refugees fear that under the new extradition agreement, such actions will no longer need to be clandestine. 

At least five Rwandan refugees have been murdered in Mozambique in mysterious circumstances — both before and after Rwandan forces arrived in Mozambique — and the cases have not been solved by the Mozambican authorities. One of those killed was Revocant Keremangingo, the treasurer of the refugees’ association. He was gunned down last September. 

According to the refugees, a list of alleged génocidaires — consisting largely of opponents of Paul Kagame — is updated annually. “Our names were never wanted but now it may be that those who do not want to return will be placed on that list,” says Ntiema. “We are scared.”

The Association of Rwandan Refugees in Mozambique has called on the Mozambican government to respect international law regarding refugees. 

“For me, the rapprochement of two African countries is always good,” said the association’s president, Cleophas Habiyareme. “But it is necessary to respect the Geneva Convention and the rights of refugees.” 

The names of some of the people quoted have been changed.

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.

The first attack, on the village of Nanduli last Sunday, led thousands to flee their homes. Many are heading towards the provincial capital of Pemba, which is already bursting at the seams with people displaced from the conflict zone.

Provincial governor Valige Tauabo insisted that people should return to their homes, promising a greater military presence to ensure no further attacks happened.

He even led by example, accompanying some of the displaced in vehicles from his own entourage back to the village of Silva Macua. He was there on Wednesday when a graphite mine was attacked, less than 15km up the road. When the military arrived it found two headless bodies, before retreating when confronted by insurgents.

Beheading 

A third attack now seems to have taken place, at a village called Ntutupue, a little further along the road to Pemba. A group of insurgents captured two artisanal miners, then beheaded one and sent his companion away to spread the news.

The civilian population is increasingly left with nowhere to go. The latest attacks will increase pressure on the coastal city of Pemba, where many thousands of displaced people already subsist off a combination of food aid from national and international relief agencies and the kindness of friends, family and strangers in the city.

More than a million people in Cabo Delgado faced a food insecurity crisis in the first three months of this year, according to a recently published humanitarian plan for the region. A further 23 553 face a food emergency, meaning that they are likely to starve to death without immediate food aid.

Last month, The Continent visited a refugee camp at Muaja in Ancuabe.

Amina Mussa, 30, fled from the district of Macomia, where she used to farm and sell her produce across the province. Along her four-day trek to safety, she buried two of her children. “They couldn’t stand the hunger and died, I had to bury them along the way,” she said. “I covered them with branches and continued on.”

Refugees said they were being excluded from food aid distribution on suspicion of belonging to the insurgency, and in favour of people from the area. This, they said, was being done by people in local government who distribute aid from the World Food Programme.

Atia Kululu, head of the administrative post of Minheiene and one of those accused of blocking access to food, denied the claims.

Mussagy Alawe, 37, has been at the refugee camp for two years and said he never imagined he would end up “running away from war to be discriminated against because of food”. He tried to take the case to the police, he said, but “nobody took our complaint seriously. You know here the police obey the government.”

The World Food Programme said it reached 920 000 people affected by the conflict with humanitarian food assistance in April and May: 850 000 in Cabo Delgado and 70 000 in Nampula. 

But a funding shortage has forced them to halve the rations they give. Now, less than 40% of an adult’s caloric needs are covered by the assistance. The organisation says it urgently needs $86-million to provide lifesaving assistance to people affected by the conflict through December 2022.

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.

Attacks have resumed in Mozambique’s north-east, after a lull in April. These include in the district of Palma — home to the liquefied natural gas projects that carry the hope of transforming Mozambique’s economy (if they go ahead, and if the money is not stolen by elites).

Insurgents raided the village of Olumbe, 20km down the coast from the gas project site on the Afungi Peninsula. But the raid, although backed by the threat of violence, was not a murderous one. Instead, the insurgents — along with women and children hostages who accompanied them — had arrived to take food. 

A source said that the unrest in Olumbe began in the late afternoon of 6 May, when militants “accompanied by women and children fired several shots into the air”, forcing the local population, which had recently returned to the village, to flee again. “The people who had returned and had started their lives over, were left with nothing again.”

The incident is not a positive sign for the insurgency, which seems to be struggling this year during the lean months that follow the rainy season. 

In addition to the raids to steal food, there are also increasing numbers of reports of hostages being released — fewer mouths to feed — and even of fighters surrendering en masse, unable to tolerate the privations of life in the bush. 

But an attack in the district of Palma is a setback for any hopes that French oil company TotalEnergies will restart work on the Mozambique gas project this year — or that ExxonMobil will take a final investment decision on the even bigger project it plans to build next door. 

Any such decision will only come after TotalEnergies returns, Exxon and its partners have made clear. Speaking in France last month, TotalEnergies chief executive Patrick Pouyanne reiterated that work will not restart until he can safely visit not only the project site but also the towns of Palma and Mocímboa da Praia. 

Moreover, he said, “we don’t want to restart our activity surrounded by refugee camps”. The raid on Olumbe notwithstanding, the key districts of Palma and Mocímboa da Praia have been largely peaceful since the arrival of Rwandan troops in 2021. But to achieve the “sustainable security” that Pouyanne wants, Cabo Delgado needs more than just regular patrols by the Rwanda Defence Force.

Attempts to ramp up security are generating controversy. The Centre for Public Integrity, a Mozambican think-tank, last week issued a report accusing the government’s Cabo Delgado Reconstruction Plan of favouring Palma and Mocímboa da Praia, the two districts vital to the gas projects, over the rest of the conflict-hit region. 

“Palma and Mocimboa are key districts and economically important,” points out Tomás Queface, a Mozambican analyst on the Cabo Ligado project that monitors the conflict in northern Mozambique. 

“Mocímboa and Palma had more infrastructure destroyed than districts such as Nangade and Quissanga,” he says, pointing to Mocímboa’s port and aerodromes in Mocímboa and Palma as examples. 

Either way, the reconstruction plan is only a partial solution. A more holistic response has been drawn up by the Mozambican government with the support of the United Nations, the European Union, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. 

But its plan hasn’t yet been approved by Mozambique’s Council of Ministers. Some from the conservative wing of Mozambique’s ruling party, Frelimo, apparently find the plan’s conclusions on the causes of the insurgency unpalatable. At issue is the idea that Frelimo, which has ruled the country since independence in 1975, shares the blame for the discontent that fuelled the insurgency.

The strategy paper has a section on “the endogenous factors of the conflict”, which include “socioeconomic asymmetries, the frustration of social expectations related to the exploitation of natural resources”. It notes that “the youth, in particular, feel in a constant state of waiting” and that they are excluded from decision-making. That contradicts the official government narrative that the insurgency is a foreign import. 

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.

The move has raised questions about what Rwanda, or its politicians, are getting in return for providing military assistance in Mozambique’s insurgency-hit north.

Paris-based news site Africa Intelligence reported at the end of February that NPD had joined Italian, South African and Portuguese contractors in bidding for the contract on the TotalEnergies-led project and was added to the shortlist at the last minute, the report said. 

The work would involve clearing the site and doing structural work at the project. 

TotalEnergies did not respond when asked for comment.

In July last year, Rwanda deployed to Mozambique’s north-eastern province of Cabo Delgado a 1 000-strong military and police force, which has since doubled in size. In the face of much speculation that the deployment was being paid for by France or French oil major TotalEnergies, which operates the gas project there, Kagame said in an interview with state broadcaster RBA that “no one is sponsoring” the military support in Mozambique.

Maputo has since appealed to the European Union for financial support for the continuing deployment, which has been broadly successful in returning Palma and Mocímboa da Praia, the two key districts for the gas project, to government control.

“We’re using our means,” Kagame said in September. “We have decent means, which we are also ready to share with friends and brothers and sisters. So there is no one who sponsored us for this.”

Rwanda’s high commission in Mozambique said: “The first step of help is military. Second is development for the Cabo Delgado province, with high interest from Rwandan companies.”

But journalist Michela Wrong told Zitamar News: “Rwanda has a track record of benefiting economically from its military interventions.” 

NPD is a subsidiary of Crystal Ventures (CV) which, according to Dr Phil Clark of the School of African and Oriental Studies in London, is the investment arm of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, Kagame’s ruling party.

Clark said there was “an ever-revolving door between senior Rwandan government positions and CV management … it is entirely plausible that CV has tendered for a job on the back of the RDF’s involvement in Mozambique”.

Edson Cortez, director of the Mozambique’s Centre for Public Integrity, said the entry of NDP was a sign that “there are no free lunches”.

“It is understandable that the government of Rwanda had some kind of gains from the investments made in the security of Cabo Delgado and it may be that the form of payment arranged was this,” he said.

“We regret that local content is again being relegated to the background, because the work that this company will carry out could be carried out by Mozambican companies that will pay taxes in Mozambique, and pay salaries to Mozambicans.”

According to Fidel Terrenciano, an academic and dean of the Arco Iris University based in Pemba, Cabo Delgado, the entry of the NDP company in the gas business in Palma was another step in the increasing rapprochement between Mozambique and Rwanda — but also a sign of the close relationship between Rwanda and TotalEnergies.

“From a reliability point of view, Total trusts Rwanda more, to the detriment of face-to-face negotiations with the [President Filipe]Nyusi government,” he said. “More business will be managed by Rwandan companies in the coming years. Let’s keep our eyes open.”

Clark agrees. “With close links between Crystal Ventures and the Rwandan military, as well as the deepening economic and military ties between Rwanda and Mozambique over the last three or four years, it makes sense that CV would see vast opportunities in Mozambique.” 

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

But for two days, more than a week ago, Guebuza was treated like an ordinary citizen and subjected to gruelling questioning in a courtroom in Maputo. He was forced to explain his role in the $2.2-billion “hidden debt” scandal that plunged the country into a severe financial crisis — and took place under his watch.

Although his appearance may, for some, have dented the former president’s reputation, it was also an opportunity for him to address the Mozambican public — and to attack his successor, Filipe Nyusi.

And as Frelimo gears up for a congress in September to choose Nyusi’s successor, this battle between the party’s two biggest beasts has a significance beyond the corruption trial itself.

A fishy business

Guebuza was the last of 67 witnesses called by the attorney general’s office to testify at the televised hearings. For the past six months, the court — sitting in a tent in the courtyard of a maximum-security prison outside the capital, Maputo — has heard evidence that has implicated his inner circle in serious financial irregularities.

Although the former president has not himself been prosecuted, the accused include his private secretary and his chief political advisor, as well as his son, Ndambi. The defendants have been charged with assorted crimes including money-laundering, forgery, embezzlement, blackmail, criminal association and influence peddling.

The accusations centre around $2.2-billion that was borrowed by companies set up by the Mozambican intelligence service, backed by state guarantees. Infamously, some of this money was used to purchase tuna fishing boats that were allegedly vastly overpriced and unfit for purpose, and are currently rusting — unused — in Maputo’s harbour.

Under Mozambican law, debts of that size should never have been taken on without the approval of parliament and the administrative court. But parliament was never consulted, until after the scandal broke when it retroactively approved the loans.

In 2019, under pressure from civil society, the Constitutional Council ended up declaring the debts null and void. Mozambique has refused to honour two of the loans, but is slowly repaying one of them, which was worth $850-million, but will cost the country as much as $2.4-billion by the time it is paid off.

The man who signed the guarantees, the then finance minister Manuel Chang, has been languishing in a South African prison since December 2018, stuck in an extradition tug-of-war between Mozambique and the US.

Credit Suisse, the bank that financed part of the fraudulent deal, was fined $547-million by regulators in the US and UK. But no one has yet been brought to justice in Mozambique. And Guebuza, in his testimony, did his best to convince prosecutors – and the Mozambican public – that his hands are clean.

Passing the buck

Although Guebuza accepted responsibility for creating the companies in question, he pointed the finger of blame for the fraudulent activity at none other than Nyusi, who was his minister of defence at the time, and who chaired a group of senior officials that Guebuza set up and, he says, put in charge of the project.

“I trusted them. I delegated because I trusted the people I was working with,” Guebuza told the court.

But Nyusi has denied any involvement. Nyusi’s testimony, given to state prosecutors in 2018 and read aloud by the judge in court on Friday, said that he knew nothing about the dodgy companies at the heart of the scandal — and found out about their existence only when the scandal broke in 2016. Video footage currently doing the rounds in Mozambique casts doubt on this account, because it shows Nyusi discussing them in 2014 and 2015.

The two presidents’ contradictory accounts will make it difficult for prosecutors and judges to get to the bottom of what happened. But they may not be the final arbiters. Instead, all eyes turn now to the Frelimo party congress in September, at which Nyusi and Guebuza are vying to have the final say on who will be the candidate to succeed as president. They will each be hoping that their favoured candidate wins the nomination — and can keep them out of jail.

This article first appeared in The Continent, the award-winning pan-African weekly newspaper designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here

Last April, the head of Mozambique’s military, Cristóvão Chume, promised Omar “will be captured dead or alive”. Chume is now the country’s defence minister. On 6 August last year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a statement designated Omar as a member of the Islamic State and a “global terrorist”.

Described as quiet and brutal, but with a sense of justice, Omar served as a navy soldier in Mozambique’s defence force from 2003 to 2005. But now he is apparently behind the insurgency in Cabo Delgado.

The Southern African Development Community and Rwanda have sent troops to contain the insurgency. But, warns Mozambican researcher João Feijó, the author of the Mozambique OMR think tank’s report on Omar, any solution to the conflict must include social inclusion, and meeting the basic needs of local people.

Who is Bonomado Omar?

In an article in September 2020, Mozambique’s Centro de Jornalismo Investigativo identified Bonomado Machude Omar, also called Omar Saide or Sheikh Omar, as the speaker in a video that went viral on social media in March 2020. The speaker in the video claims to be a leader of violence, which, by that time, had been going on for three years.

The following year, OMR published a further profile of the man — explaining how he was born in Palma in the village of Ncumbi, and moved to Mocímboa da Praia at the age of five after his father died. 

His mother remarried, and Omar’s stepfather introduced him to Islam, which he studied and mastered. He finished 10th grade at Januário Pedro High School in Mocímboa da Praia and, according to former teachers, was a calm young man, a good student and a good football player.

After leaving school, he served in the navy in Pemba, and then moved to an African Muslim boarding school to finish 12th grade. He was popular among his peers, known for his sense of justice and protection of the younger ones. 

One of his hobbies was playing football. Because of his height, between 1.80m and 1.90m, and the fact that he played in midfield, he acquired the nickname of Patrick Vieira, the French footballer who made his name at Arsenal.

Omar made a living selling vegetables and Muslim clothing at a market in Pemba, on behalf of a foreign merchant, who is said to have been either Tanzanian or Somali. He travelled to Tanzania and South Africa. He then returned to Mocímboa da Praia, where he built a mosque, as well as a stall for the sale of trinkets acquired in Tanzanian markets or in the city of Pemba.

Then he participated in the first attacks on Mocímboa da Praia in October 2017, and took refuge in the bush. 

It is still unclear how he became radicalised, or what prompted the turn to violence.

For his military skill and camouflage ability he acquired locally the nickname “King of the Forest”. He is, OMR says, the leader of the insurgents in Mozambique and the US department of state statement last year described him as being “the lead facilitator and communications conduit for the group”.

Promise to the people

Omar led the insurgency’s attacks on Palma in March 2021, and on Mocímboa da Praia a year before. Both towns have since been retaken by Mozambique’s military with the help of the Rwandan Defence Force; Mozambique was unable to hold or retake them on its own.

It was after the fall of Mocímboa da Praia in 2020 that Omar made his now famous speech, recorded on a cameraphone and distributed far and wide. It gives a sense of his motivations.

Standing in front of the town’s police station, a symbol of state power that had fallen to the jihadis, Omar told the local population that they would not kill anyone or steal from the people, despite facing opposition from them. “We know that your will was for us to disappear,” he told the crowd. “But God has blessed us and we have gained more strength.

“We came the first time, we’re back, this is the second time, we’re giving you another chance; we’re not going to kill anyone, we’re not going to destroy anything that belongs to the people, everything we spoil will be the government’s,” he said.

“We occupy to show that the government today is unfair. It humiliates the poor and gives advantage to the bosses. It’s the lower class who get detained, so that’s not justice,” he continued.

He said his group was working for an Islamic government — and that “we are children from here, and these faces are not new. There are so many of us in the bush.”

Despite his noble words, the insurgents have been implicated in multiple massacres of civilian populations — just like the security forces they are fighting. Omar, according to one source with knowledge of the group’s operations, plays a leading role in commanding military operations.

The insurgents are divided into about 30 groups with each having their own specialisation, such as bomb-making, tunnel-boring and intelligence-gathering, and the leaders of each group report to Omar. The source said the group finances its activities through mineral smuggling and drug trafficking, and this too allegedly runs through him.

Omar could not be reached for comment.

A new Dhlakama?

Since that day in Mocímboa da Praia in 2020 — and the fall of Palma in March 2021 — the Mozambique government, with the help in particular of troops from Rwanda, are back on the front foot. The towns have been retaken, and Omar is thought to be moving from base to base, as troops from Mozambique, Rwanda and the Southern African Development Community mission in Mozambique dismantle the bases that they find.

But the appeal of Omar and his men to the dispossessed of Cabo Delgado remains a danger, warns Feijó.

“Various testimonies describe him both as someone sinister and brutal, but also with a sense of justice,” Feijó said in an interview last week.

“There are several factors that produce these types of leaders: radicalisation through studies in madrasas, revolt with the concrete experience of poverty and marginalisation and even opportunism, which takes advantage of the desperation of communities.

“I draw a parallel with Afonso Dhlakama,” Feijó added, referring to the late leader of the Mozambican resistance movement and later opposition party, Renamo. “He was the protagonist of a civil war tearing up the country, but he attracted crowds and was very popular.

“I am not against defence and security solutions, but this approach must be accompanied by the creation of jobs for young people, the provision of basic social services, respect for human rights and incentives for the democratic participation of communities in the political and economic life of the country,” Feijó said. 

This article first appeared in The Continent, the award-winning pan-African weekly newspaper designed to be read and shared on WhatsApp. Download your free copy here