Decades ago, Mozambique’s liberation party, Frelimo, easily attracted adoring crowds. The promise of salvation from Portuguese colonizers, and a life with jobs and housing for all, was an easy sell in a southern African nation that was suffering under racist rule.
But when Daniel Chapo of Frelimo became president on Wednesday, he assumed the leadership of a country more dissatisfied with his party than at any point during its 50 years of independence. Tens of thousands of people took to the street after the October election, which voters, international observers, opposition leaders and rights groups have roundly criticized as fraudulent.
The country of 33 million has been roiled by political chaos since the vote. And now, Frelimo’s grip on power is being tested like never before at a time when Mozambique faces urgent economic and social crises, analysts say. Two of the three opposition parties boycotted the opening of Parliament on Monday.
The anger among voters exploded into massive street protests in the past several months that led to clashes with the police. At least 300 people have been killed.
Mr. Chapo and his party had likely hoped that the inauguration on Wednesday would help move the country toward reconciliation and stability. Instead, the challenges facing Frelimo’s leadership could just be getting started, political insiders say.
“Frelimo became used to seeing themselves as the chosen party,” said Gabriel Muthisse, a former top party official who remains an active member. “They believed that elections were only a formality for the people to confirm their leadership. Over the past five, 10 years, things are showing that that is false.”
Last week in the capital, Maputo, the police responded with deadly force when supporters took to the streets to greet the top opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, who returned to Mozambique after a self-imposed exile. The fiery populist has won the support of disaffected young voters who see him as an ally in their fight against a corrupt political elite.
Mr. Mondlane, who claims to have won the election, has called for continued protests, though this week has not attracted the mass demonstrations that shut down the capital and other cities in previous months.
In an interview in Maputo, Mr. Mondlane said that he has communicated with Mr. Chapo through a mutual friend. He expressed hope that the president would negotiate a resolution to end the political crisis and accept reforms put forward by him in a recent proposal. Those reforms include building three million houses for poor Mozambicans and creating a half-billion-dollar fund for startups led by women and young people.
“You must give the people something very crucial and something tangible,” Mr. Mondlane said. “I don’t know if all the items that are in my proposal will be satisfied or not. But I think that we will begin a platform of dialogue.”
Protests were still needed, he added, because to ensure reforms will happen, “you must put the government under pressure.”
Mr. Chapo, 48, emerged last year as Frelimo’s surprise presidential candidate. Unlike others in the party, he did not lobby for the nomination. He entered public office just 10 years ago, but came face to face with the country’s troubled political history long ago.
When he was 5, he said, his family was kidnapped by guerrilla forces fighting Frelimo during Mozambique’s 16-year civil war. A lawyer by training, he served as a provincial governor before running for the presidency for the first time last year as a member of Frelimo.
Branquinho João da Costa, a 43-year-old doctor living part time in Maputo, recalled his grade school days when the glory of Frelimo was drilled into him and his classmates through freedom songs. “It’s very difficult to be completely disconnected from Frelimo,” he said.
Many Mozambicans were now disgruntled with the party over accusations of corruption and its failure to address rising prices, which he called “a new kind of slavery for the people.” Mr. da Costa said the Frelimo of his childhood was more in touch with the party’s socialist roots, and that it was led then by officials who cared less about wealth and power.
“The real aim of Frelimo was serving people,” he said. “Now many of them, they fight to get political positions just to steal from us.”
Frelimo no longer has the luxury of ignoring such criticism, some party members say. The past few months have been a warning, said Alsácia Sardinha, who was sworn in this week for her third term as a member of Parliament for Frelimo.
“We have to reinvent ourselves to respond to the demands of the people,” she said. That reinvention includes the party policing its own government against wrongdoing, she added.
Mr. Muthisse, the former Frelimo official, said that Parliament can no longer rubber stamp laws put forward by the president. The party needs to focus on reforming institutions, like the electoral commission and the courts, in order to regain public trust, he said.
That reform should be at the center of negotiations with the opposition, Mr. Muthisse said.
“Everybody has to bring ideas,” he said, “so that in the next elections, we all believe.”
