[I support this!!! Renamo was created by Rhodesia and sustained by S.Africa. I must still ask PW Botha what he thought of Renamo’s performance in the war against the Communist Frelimo in Mozambique. To me, Renamo is one of the greatest creations of the war we fought in Rhodesia against Mugabe. We nearly defeated the commies in Mozambique. I am somewhat sad that S.Africa later abandoned the fight in Mozambique – but I understand PW Botha’s reasons. I often wondered if in Angola and Mozambique… former Portuguese colonies… whether we could have defeated the commies and installed pro-Western black Governments there.

I am DELIGHTED by this talk in Mozambique. But… I also do NOT believe this will happen. This will be squashed quickly. S.Africa won’t allow this. But… I sympathise… Here you can see black anti-commies g

Afonso Dhlakama, the leader of Mozambique’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, has threatened to set up his own army. Look at his arguments. The Frelimo Communists DID NOT DO AS THEY PROMISED IN THE PEACE DEAL IN 1992.

That’s how it always goes. Communists and Socialists are liars. They can never be trusted. The only trustworthy communist is a dead one. My argument exactly. We are wasting our times with these leftist scumbags EVERYWHERE IN SOUTHERN AFRICA.

Renamo won’t be revived. Sadly, once people lay down their arms, it is extremely difficult to recreate an army. Plus – it won’t be allowed. But Mozambique and Zambia too, are well worth watching in the future. Both countries have troubles brewing. Jan]

Interviewed on Tuesday, by the private television channel STV, Dhlakama claimed that the government had never implemented various clauses in the 1992 peace agreement, the 14th anniversary of which is being commemorated on Wednesday.

He declared that he intends to issue the government with an ultimatum, and if he does not receive a satisfactory reply within a deadline (but he did not specify when this deadline would run out), then “I, Dhlakama, will form my own army”.

The main complaint Dhlakama mentioned in this interview was that the 1992 agreement stipulated that the future Mozambican army was to consist of 30,000 troops – 50 per cent drawn from the old government army, the FAM/FPLM, and 50 per cent from Renamo.

This, said Dhlakama, never happened.

But sometimes the most dangerous lies are half-truths.

Dhlakama was correct that the peace agreement stipulated an army of this size – but he neglected to add that the agreement also stipulated that all 30,000 founder members of the new army were to be volunteers.

When the troops were demobilised, in mid-1994, it turned out that the vast majority of them had no intention of volunteering to join a new army. Tired of fighting in the bush for years, they simply wanted to pick up their demobilisation pay and go home.

Attempts to pressgang people into the new unified army, the FADM, or to delay demobilisation, backfired in spectacular fashion, as both the Renamo army and the FAM/FPLM disintegrated in a wave of mutinies across the entire country.

That was why, when the FADM came into existence, in October 1994, it consisted of just 11,939 troops – 8,293 drawn from the former government army, and 3,646 from Renamo. Among this total, there were more officers than privates.

Contrary to Dhlakama’s current claims, Renamo had agreed to this: the Renamo and government teams on the Supervisory and Control Commission (CSC), the body in charge of implementing the peace accord, reluctantly accepted that there were nowhere near enough volunteers for a 30,000 strong army.

Rather than seek for what was now an impossible parity, the CSC agreed simply to transport whoever wanted to join the new army to the FADM training centres. Renamo thus accepted that its men were in a minority in the FADM.

There is no way to return to the original plan for a large army, formed on the basis of a political share-out. Recruitment to the FADM of the 21st century takes the form largely of conscription, and the 18 year old conscripts are not asked what political party they belong to.

The army has ceased issuing statistics on its size – but the FADM cannot be more than 15-16,000 strong. Raising this, over the short term, to 30,000 would be quite impossible due to budgetary and logistical constraints.

As for Dhlakama’s threat to form his own army – if he could not persuade his supporters to join the army in 1994, how can he possibly persuade them now? Quite apart from the obviously illegal nature of his threat, how would Dhlakama pay and equip an army of his own, now that he no longer has any powerful foreign backers?

Source: AllAfrica.Com
URL: http://allafrica.com/stories/200610040522.htm…/p>