RENAMO - South Africa

South Africa

In 1984 the South African and Mozambican governments signed the Nkomati Accord, in which South Africa agreed to stop sponsoring RENAMO if the Mozambican government expelled exiled members of the African National Congress residing there. This was consistent with the Total National Strategy then in existence whereby the carrot of infrastructural development projects would be offered as an inducement for cooperation, supported by the stick of military reprisal if guerillas of the ANC were still given succour. However, the Mozambican government did not expel the exiled members of the ANC and consequently the South African government continued funneling financial and military resources until a permanent peace accord was reached in 1992 and was supervised by the United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) until 1994. In order to nudge this process in the right direction a special operation was launched by the National Intelligence Service called Operation Bush Talk, which was designed to permanently end the civil war in Mozambique in order to stem the flow of military materiel across the porous borders into South Africa. One manifestation of this was the militia of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) that was being trained and armed by the SADF Special Forces as part of Operation Marion which were being armed by weapons coming from Mozambique.

The peace accord led to the disarmament of RENAMO, to the integration of some of its fighters into the Mozambican army and to its transformation into a regular political party. It is now the main opposition party in Mozambique. At the last legislative elections, 1 and 2 December 2004, the party was the main part of the Renamo-UE electoral alliance, that won 29.7% of the popular vote and 90 out of 250 seats. The presidential candidate of this alliance, Afonso Dhlakama, won 31.7% of the popular vote.

Raul Domingos, negotiator at the Rome General Peace Accords and RENAMO's leader in parliament from 1994–1999, was expelled from the party in 2000, and in 2003, founded the Party for Peace, Democracy, and Development.