FRELIMO's political elites, human rights and privileges in Mozambique

 Josué Bila (uhurubila@gmail.com) 

The latest Mozambican elections are perhaps exposing the final stages of the nakedness of FRELIMO's political elites, as they are politically out of touch with social reality, which is why both those elites and their hand-kissers have found themselves in the season of public vituperation.

It's obvious that the unstoppable demonstrations underway are a display of the ingloriousness of the ruling FRELIMO party, whose people's museum preserves the memory of the crushing of human dignity and gross violations of human rights - physical and moral murders, operation production, pejorative adjectives towards anyone or groups that think differently, persecution and threats, excessive partisanship of the state, dilapidation of the economy, social anorexia by blocking opportunities for all and the veiled demonization of liberal democracy. How is it that, in almost 50 years, young people who won national independence from Portugal in 1975 can no longer walk the streets in peace as seniors? Because they served the antonym of human dignity and human rights on the plates of Mozambicans, who, exhausted by the cheesy political elites, are giving back with political-democratic demonstrations (sometimes with the vices of rancorous citizenship) to reckless, indecent, stupid, unintelligent, mutinous, unjust and shameless governance. Meanwhile, FRELIMO's political elites are the problem with everything and everyone? This question needs sophisticated hypotheses and a look at underlying factors, and most ordinary human rights defenders can hardly answer it, because many international donors to NGOs in Mozambique fund these institutions to denounce external violence and not to research the causes of structural violence.

Fragile republican and democratic ethics

Society has already realized that the political elites are not only in a state of nakedness, but that their ethical sterility has never produced republican practices, because the party and its hand-kissers have placed semi-dictatorship and arms as the only means of political and social relations in the state. Thus, for almost 50 years, the political elites have not ridden the republican horse, nor have they incorporated the principles of the rule of law.

As a result of the current political-electoral events, which have triggered social exhaustion, the emissaries of the political elites are in every corner of the world looking for dialogues and making diplomatic moves capable of producing a turnaround in the electoral results. FRELIMO's political elites can change the outcome of elections in their favour, as the history of electoral semi-democracy in Mozambique shows here 25 years of electoral fraud r3. However, there are a few dishes that are already in their kitchens, which will be their daily supper: the violence of popular exhaustion and systematic rancorous citizenship, the latter also fuelled by civic groups, which have been anointed for the sole purpose of observing political phenomena and the actions of the FRELIMO government.

In any case, it seems to me that these dishes - violence of popular exhaustion and rancorous citizenship - represent the ideology of the excluded of all shades. I very much doubt that the techniques of those ideological-security trainings of the former USSR, China and Cuba ([counter] intelligence, agitation, propaganda, sexespionage and threats, assassinations of democrats, defenders of social justice and human rights activists), for example, will successfully confront the violence of popular exhaustion and the rancorous citizenry.

Because FRELIMO's elites have some weaknesses in their republican and democratic ethics, they allow themselves to be advised by hand-kissers (known as boot-lickers), who manipulate them with flowery flattery, according to which they (FRELIMO's elites) are moral reserves and exclusive holders of the only staff that indicates Mozambique's destinies, meaning that the overwhelming majority of Mozambican society is made up, according to the red vanguardists allegedly always waiting for some violent shepherds and machine-gunners of the different thinkers of the Frelimist congregation. All this guillotining by FRELIMO's red vanguardists has produced a vile collection of political vermin, which has been transformed into ignominy and tastelessness. It is no longer charming to belong to FRELIMO and its government, because it has become a public aberration from which, were it not for the force of threats, weapons and the use of the state to maintain its hold on power, we would be facing a very early rehearsal of the Party's demise.

Since independence, professional flatterers have exposed political elites to a variety of political embarrassments that make them look ridiculous in Mozambique and around the world. The flatterers are undoubtedly also responsible for the social chaos in which Mozambique is plunged. The flatterers of the mockery elites, because their charlatan fame blinds them, have recently come out in the open to call our rogues of national shame moral reserves. Moral reserves! Moral reserves! Moral reserves!

The only way to analyze and the rancorous citizenry

Not everything is caused by FRELIMO and its ludicrous practices, especially when we study the history of structural violence, corruption and human rights violations in Mozambique. FRELIMO's violence, both as a Front and as a political party (in power), has encouraged the radicalization of groups opposed to the regime and, consequently, the construction of the one-sided narrative that ‘we, the defenders of democracy and human rights, are right’.

In our civic history, observing the dynamics of social structures and people in their various interactions, pursuing their own interests and coalitions, outside the radius of FRELIMO's party chaos, is anathema to human rights and transparency groups. Our institutional deficiencies in the state can also be linked to the widespread behavior linked to thefts of cakes, treats, pieces of meat, drinks and other delicacies at marriage ceremonies, for example. Taking this reality and the stomach-churning sabotages carried out by guests against the master of the feast in these ceremonies is, in my opinion, an observational bridge to understanding corruption and violence in the wider political economy, society and the state. The problem of secret negotiations for the exploitation of Mozambique's natural resources is clearly FRELIMO's, as many studies and reports have shown. However, the memories that support these FRELIMO behaviours are social, with historical implications, such as the many agreements ‘signed’ between African and European leaders in colonial times, without consulting the communities.

Even though I've also been a human rights defender for 21 years, I can't help but point out the underlying roots of our state-sponsored violence, which permeate the party in power. I therefore hypothesize that in order to understand politics (the state, the FRELIMO government, for example) we need to understand the many different behavioral patterns and social interactions of ordinary Mozambicans, including families and communities. When we arm ourselves with rancorous citizenship, we are easily angered by statements from our walls of political ignorance, like many spokespeople, ministers and other senior state agents. It is hardly through rancorous indignation that we look for mechanisms to understand the nature of Mozambican politics. One of the ways to understand the nature of Mozambican politics would be by observing the social relations that exist in interpersonal interactions, in society as a whole, and extracting some regular behaviors from them. These hypotheses, which I raise, are the result of various empirical experiments to produce a political analysis based on observations of the way in which various individuals and classes of people are served or serve themselves at parties.

Notice, for example, that the religious leaders are served first, with the best delicacies and juices or even other types of exquisite drinks. Widows and orphans, on the other hand, are served perhaps last and without the best delicacies and drinks. I've been trying to make these associations (pastors, as if they were FRELIMO's elites, and widows and orphans, as the majority of the excluded and without equal rights). It is very likely that this social structure - the institution of social relations and interactions - accompanies our behavior, on the basis of privilege. Our social relations are almost always driven by relations of privilege, which is why we can also call Mozambique a society of privileges as opposed to a society of rights, and this concept (privilege) permeates my analyses of Mozambique. In this way, I have to confess to you that we are not only criticized by FRELIMO and its elites, but also by people and groups who oppose it, who don't allow us to reflect, but lead us towards points of accusation or rancorous citizenship. There is no intellectual elegance when the debate is institutionalized solely between the oppressed and the oppressors, as if the oppressed were mere naïve sheep, incapable of producing an incalculable variety of corruptions and injustices. 

 

Conclusion

Regardless of the soon-to-be-released election results, Mozambican society may need an open and less prejudiced debate about whether the behavior of the ruling elites is not a spiral reproduction of the corruption and violence found in our social structures, or what the underlying causes are. I, who am also calling for FRELIMO to be uprooted from power, predict that the next people to occupy power could also be the third phase of colonialism, if they don't self-evaluate that both they and the current leaders belong to the same social structure and mindset, where privileges are the pendulum of social relations, with political implications. It's not about them (reckless elites) and us (‘the country is ours. Save Mozambique’). It's about the structure of privilege in which we energize our social relations - when all of us, with a few exceptions, are in the seat of power, we find ourselves with the prerogative to violate, humiliate, sabotage and, consequently, grab what doesn't belong to us. These behaviors are structurally social (and underlying) and less governmental (and obvious). And the seats of power are not only in the government and state structure, but they are also in our homes, from where we humiliate and violate our maids or any people who are in a lower position, when we find ourselves in the position of power. The discourse and studies on human rights in Mozambique need to take this chess of humiliation and interpersonal violence into the game of public debate. Otherwise, denouncing human rights violations could become a field for charlatans in the future, whose intellectual silliness will reproduce the emotions of a rancorous citizenship.

 

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