‘MAPUTO INALIYA (Maputo is crying).’

Once again we fi nd ourselves having to remind liberation movements, agonisingly so, that the struggle is far from over. And we will never tire of telling this sad, tragic tale of our times until its pervasive impact fi nally settles into the ears of those controlling the levers of power. We are under siege, Comrades! Daggers are still being drawn and sharpened to slice through the glue binding liberation movements and what they stand for.

Mozambique, the land that housed, nurtured and nourished the birth of SADC’s struggle for freedom is in fl ames ignited by the same enemy who, only yesterday, fought hard to extinguish Zimbabwe’s independence fl ame . Something has to give.

The disaster in neighbouring Mozambique should cajole progressive forces to sift through their agonising past, their now wobbly present and what is now their uncertain future. That we spent the better part of the festive season frantically trying to douse the raging ‘Smith was better’ fl ame, our focus diverted from the anarchy being clearly sponsored by our erstwhile enemies in Mozambique is indicative how times are changing. But how did we get there? We are all at fault here! Everyone — including our Comrades, both departed and living. Our dear Comrades who allowed the story to be stolen from them and us. Of course, the Smith ‘debate’, which erupts every year at curiously timed intervals, has all the tenets of romantic nostalgia founded by Rhodesians who have stolen our narrative and unashamedly made it theirs.

PThere we have admittedly been caught fl at-footed. We silently descended into our shells after our heroics in the bush and allowed the enemy to steal our narrative. Granted, the road to total independence and freedom was always going to be a bumpy one. A nasty ride to prosperity. But without our story, and only holding the fl ag without arming our people about the vagaries of war, there were always going to be openings for the enemy to manipulate the masses.

POn September 11 1999, we saw a blatant disregard of our sovereignty when Rhodesians fi nally climbed out of their shells to openly declare another war with the owners of the country. From then on, it has been war after war as the enemy brazenly sought, and still seeks, to regain control of the land and means of production in independent Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe, we repeat, is the prime target of the project to annihilate liberation movements.

The job is half done in South Africa; Zambia, as we all know, is long gone while Namibia barely survived. And now the same is happening in Mozambique, the grandfather of Southern Africa’s struggle for freedom.

Make no mistake about it: Nelson Chamisa and all his wannabe ‘democrats’ in Zimbabwe, Mmusi Maimane in South Africa and Venancio Mondlane in Mozambique, do not at all represent the people or the ‘renewal’ they haughtily flaunt to their clueless followers. These are poster boys of the now brazen CIA and Western agenda to subdue liberation movements, an uncanny agenda driven solely by their desire to reverse the gains of the liberation struggle and lay their hands on Southern Africa’s vast untapped mineral resources.

The anti-liberation movements ‘project’ has been in motion since 1999 when the CIA co-opted the West into having a go at Southern Africa, the last bastion to installing puppet and pliant leaders. Mondlane represents the forces of destabilisation. His sponsors, as revealed by the Mozambique Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Carvalho Muaria, in an interview with The Sunday Mail this week, have been behind the ‘crisis’.

Ambassador Muaria revealed what many have long suspected — a third force behind the anarchy that has rocked his country since October last year. “It is evident that there (is a) third force involved in the planning and fi nancing of these costly acts, including the logistics to accommodate the losing candidate in a foreign country from October 21 2024 to January 9 2025,” he said.

“The opposition leaders who are front-running the deadly and destructive protests, which constitute acts of sabotage and terrorism, with the intent to destabilise not only the peaceful Mozambique but also the SADC region have no proven source of fi nancial income to fund and mobilise such a level of urban terrorism, which is violating essential human rights with alarming and untold consequences for the country’s future and regional co-operation.” Following the now tired script, Mondlane audaciously declared himself the ‘winner’ of the election when the National Electoral Commission in Mozambique had counted less than 10 percent of the votes in October last year.

A similar pattern played out in Zimbabwe during the August 2018 harmonised elections when the then leader of MDC-A claimed he had ‘won’ before vote counting had been completed. Both Mondlane and Nelson Chamisa’s supporters took to the streets where they only unleashed an orgy of unprecedented but well-coordinated violence that targeted strategic points, raising fears of a third force at play. But the people are not fools.

No sooner had both Mondlane and Chamisa unveiled their real intentions than their gullible backers abandoned them. On Monday, PEDAMOS, a grouping that had backed Mondlane, duly dumped him when the next Parliament in Mozambique was sworn in, backing off from the initial agreement where they were supposed to boycott national unity in favour of anarchy. Soon after the 2023 harmonised elections in Zimbabwe, and tired of their leader’s inconsistency, Chamisa’s supporters left him high and dry as well as exposed.

We will explore this matter at length some other day. But what do liberation movements learn from these unnerving incidences? There is no doubt that with the exception of Zimbabwe which has embarked on various programmes aimed at empowering its people, most liberation movements have all but failed to address the colonial era and liberation struggle grievances.

Upcoming generations have no ties whatsoever to the struggle for freedom and all their clamour for are opportunities to participate in their economies. Redistribution of land and resources has been painfully slow in most of these countries. Therein lies the tragedy with Zimbabwe.

The economic war that is being waged against the country by the West is everyone’s fight, not ZANU PF’s fi ght alone.

Liberation movements must now regroup and give the masses what rightfully belongs to them. ‘SADC inaliya!’