Venancio Mondlane welcomes Trump’s victory

Maputo, 7 Nov (AIM) – Mozambique’s fugitive opposition leader, Venancio Mondlane, on Wednesday heaped praise on US President-elect Donald Trump.

Speaking on his latest nightly broadcast transmitted on his Facebook page, Mondlane told the convicted felon Trump “You are defending ethical and moral values”.

Trump, he declared, was also defending “American patriotism and the American family”.

Mondlane asked Trump to “give priority to the Mozambican case” and “put Mozambique on your White House agenda” – although during the US election campaign, Trump had not shown the slightest interest in Africa.

Mondlane’s flattery of Trump should come as no surprise. When he visited Portugal in July the only political party he met with was the far-right group Chega, even though Chega’s links with the Portuguese fascist regime overthrown in 1974, means that it is shunned by every other significant force in Portuguese politics.

So toxic is Chega that the mainstream Portuguese right will have nothing to do with it. Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who heads the ruling right wing coalition, the Democratic Alliance (AD), has publicly stated that Chega will never be part of any government headed by the AD.

The Chega deputy president, Diogo Pacheco de Amorim, led the delegation that welcomed Mondlane. He had vehemently opposed the Portuguese anti-fascist revolution of 1974-75, and had sought exile in Spain, then under another fascist regime, that of Francisco Franco.

If any doubt as to Mondlane’s true political colours remained, his fawning attitude towards Trump removed them.

Mondlane also told his followers that Mozambican soldiers would never open fire on them – the only armed forces that would open fire, he claimed, were “mercenaries” of other countries brought to the country by the current government.

He even urged people attending the mass demonstration he had announced for Thursday to bring roses to place in the gun barrels of soldiers. This is a straightforward plagiarism from the Portuguese uprising of 25 April 1974, when carnations were placed in the muzzles of the guns of the soldiers overthrowing the fascist dictatorship.

But nobody brought any flowers to Thursday’s demonstrations in Maputo, and the police and soldiers who clashed with the demonstrators had no hesitation in opening fire (usually with tear gas canisters).

Repeatedly in his Wednesday broadcast, Mondlane pledged that he would be present in person on the Maputo streets during the Thursday demonstration. But, as of 14.00, he has not publicly shown his face.

Mondlane is likely to have stayed in his hideout, believed to be somewhere in South Africa. He claimed that Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi has put a bounty of 16 million meticais (about 250,000 US dollars) on his head.

The government has not reacted to this claim, What is certain is that, if Mondlane sets foot in Mozambique, he is likely to be arrested, since the police have promised to to begin criminal proceedings against him, on charges of incitement to violence.

(AIM)

Pf/ (524)