Mozambican President considers payment of pensions to Renamo guerrillas “invoice for sustainable peace”

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi said today that a future pension program for former guerrillas of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the main opposition party, is “the invoice” that the country should pay for a “sustainable peace.”

“The bill for peace must be sustained; we have been working to mobilize more support from our partners” to find solutions that make the payment of pensions to former Renamo guerrillas feasible, Nyusi said.

The Mozambican head of state was speaking during the conference “Silencing Arms in Africa in 2030”, promoted in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, by the Royal Institute of International Affairs of the United Kingdom (Chatham House).

The Mozambican President pointed out that there is a consensus in the country that the 5,221 armed men from the main opposition party, more than 91% already demobilized, should have a source of livelihood, receiving pensions, despite not having paid social security contributions.

Filipe Nyusi said that the Mozambican state is working with international partners to finance the first five years of payments to former guerrillas, so the Mozambican authorities will later assume this responsibility.

The transfer of a monthly payment is a phase of the reintegration and reconciliation process with the former guerrillas, which will follow the completion of the ongoing disarmament and demobilization, Nyusi continued.

“We are working so that later this year, we will close the last Renamo base and focus our activities on the reintegration and national reconciliation process, including the institutionalization of pensions,” he stressed.

Filipe Nyusi noted that the progress in implementing the Renamo Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) process results from honest dialogue and trust between the two parties’ leaderships, through a methodology that he qualified as “appropriation by Mozambicans of the negotiation process.

The director of the Chatham House Africa Program, Alex Vines, pointed to Filipe Nyusi’s pragmatism as one of the keys to the advances recorded in the peace process with Renamo.

“The President is an engineer by training, and he is looking for solutions to problems,” he stressed.

This realistic approach, he continued, led Filipe Nyusi to favor direct contacts with the Renamo leadership and to focus on more effective solutions.

Of the 5,221 armed men of the main opposition party, about 4,700 have already been demobilized, and some have been incorporated into the Mozambican Defense and Security Forces.

Last week, Renamo called the closure of the last base of the party’s armed arm “an incognito” following the alleged murder of a former military chief of the organization.

“This is starting to be an incognito: they are assassinating our demobilized personnel,” said José Manteigas, party spokesman, during a press conference in Maputo, where he denounced the alleged murder of a delegate and demobilized in the center of the country.

On the other hand, the main opposition party considered the payment of pensions to its men essential for definitive peace in the country.

With information from Lusa