For the ruling parties of Southern Africa – heirs of the former liberation movements – 2024 will probably be remembered as the annus horribilis, during which, in an unprecedented way, they lost consensus (Namibia), the absolute majority (South Africa), or even went into opposition (Botswana), in elections that shook the post-independence status quo. The presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections in Mozambique on 9 October confirmed amazon database this trend, opening a political and social crisis unprecedented in the history of the last thirty years of the country. A crisis that can also serve as a warning for Angola, where there is strong discontent with the governing MPLA party, which lost its two-thirds majority for the first time in 2022 and could see its consensus further reduced in the 2027 elections. In the protests that have continued since 21 October throughout Mozambique and which have resulted in clashes with the security forces, 303 people have lost their lives (as of 15 January, Plataforma Eleitoral Decide ), GDP growth estimates have been revised from 4.1% to 3.2% for 2025 (Oxford Economics) and we are witnessing a total loss of credibility in the electoral process and, with it, the legitimacy of the institutions. This is the most intense protest against the ruling Frelimo party since the end of the civil war, one of the longest in Africa (1977-1992), which Frelimo fought and won against the opposition party Renamo, both former liberation movements from Portuguese colonial domination, which ended in 1975. Frelimo won the first multiparty elections in 1994 and since then the six subsequent rounds of elections, including the last one, amid accusations of fraud.
The 2024 elections have introduced an element of strong discontinuity in the political context, which has remained substantially unchanged over the last thirty years, namely the reconfiguration of the opposition and the end of the two-party system until now dominated by Frelimo and Renamo, apostrophized by some as the “Frenamo” partycracy, to indicate the connivance of the opposition with the majority in exchange for a division of institutional positions. The one who upset this balance was the independent candidate for the presidential elections, Venâncio Mondlane, a charismatic Pentecostal pastor and former television commentator, former member of Renamo, of which he was the candidate for mayor of the city of Maputo in the municipal elections of 11 October 2023 and which he left in 2024 after losing the primaries for the nomination as presidential candidate.