The president’s new clothes

Good afternoon. President Daniel Chapo is promising a moment of triumph for himself and the country next week, when a preliminary deal between himself and opposition party leaders, supposedly the beginning of the end of months of protest and death, is to be signed with pomp and ceremony in the Joaquim Chissano Conference Centre in Maputo. Chapo says he will invite “political parties without seats, religious leaders, academic leaders, friendly countries and some cooperation partners of our country”. He does not seem to have left anyone off his list.

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This elaborate ceremony seems to be the confirmation that was needed about the purpose of the talks between Chapo and the opposition: it is all for show. From the start there has been an air of artificiality about them. We know that the content of the deal (or rather the “terms of reference”, since this is all that is being signed) will include changes to the electoral law and decentralisation, but then the government had already been talking about these things before the talks started, so why were the talks necessary to agree them? And how will changes to the law address the concerns of protesters who have grown to hate ruling party Frelimo and the inequality it stands for?


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