– Mozambique’s self-exiled presidential candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, has promised, for the second time, to return home. He claims he called off his first planned return because of the risk of assassination
Por MOZTIMES
Maputo (MOZTIMES) – Presidential candidate Venâncio Mondlane announced on Sunday evening that he will return to Maputo next Thursday, 9 January.
Mondlane has been in self-imposed exile at an undisclosed location for just over two months, having fled Maputo at the end of October after being struck by tear gas grenades fired by the Rapid Intervention Police while he was addressing journalists.
Speaking during a live broadcast transmitted via Facebook, Mondlane stated that he would arrive at Maputo International Airport at 08:05 a.m. on Thursday, without disclosing his point of departure or which airline he would use. However, a check with Maputo International Airport shows that the only flight scheduled to arrive at that time on Thursday, is the Qatar Airways flight from Doha.
Addressing the risk of arrest, given the existence of legal proceedings against him, he boasted that if he were arrested or targeted in an attack, a popular uprising would ensue.
“You no longer need to pay mercenary companies scouring the world looking for me. I will personally be in Maputo,” declared Mondlane. “You don’t need to chase me anymore. You can kill me, but my struggle will not die. With my fall, the popular fury that will erupt in Mozambique will have no parallel in African history” he claimed.
Mondlane invited his supporters to welcome him at the airport and urged them to wear black and white in mourning for the approximately 300 people killed during protests.
Mondlane had previously pledged to be in Maputo on 7 November to march with his supporters to the Presidential Palace, but he failed to appear at the last minute, claimed, without any evidence, that his supporters had asked him to stay away citing the risk of an attack.
The opposition leader also criticised MPs elected from opposition parties, who are preparing to be sworn into the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on 13 January. He accused them of rushing to assume their seats while people are being abducted and killed for defending “the truth about the elections”.
“At the first opportunity, they want to rush to take office. At the first opportunity, they want to go and sit in the National Assembly while a genocide is unfolding in Mozambique,” he said. (MT)
