Meet the youth-led pro-democracy movement making gains in Mozambique

This article Meet the youth-led pro-democracy movement making gains in Mozambique was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Since the presidential elections in autocratic Mozambique last October that were marred by corruption, according to the opposition and international watchdogs, a nationwide pro-democracy grassroots movement has been notching serious gains. It loosely calls itself Anamalala Ngimi, meaning “We are the solution.”

The protests were sparked by Venâncio Mondlane, a 51-year-old political outsider who became the main opposition candidate for president. He began exhorting Mozambique’s youth not to take the fraud lying down during provocative live-streams on YouTube. 

“We worked via the medium available in the hands of every young Mozambican — a smartphone — and asked them to lead at a community level,” Mondlane said. 

Heeding his YouTube, WhatsApp, and Facebook Live calls, tens of thousands of young people fed up with 50 years of misrule, flooded the streets, barricaded roads, burnt tire flares, shuttered the country’s land borders, appealed for civil servants to defect, and began marching to state palaces in once unthinkable but brave protests. In the past, any attempt to mount mass protests in Mozambique quickly fizzled as memories of the 15-year civil war that ended in 1992 still filled older generations with dread. 

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Over the years, Mozambique’s security agencies have been notorious for visiting serious repression on activists. For example, activists who have tried to oppose LNG gas investments in the country’s volatile Cabo Delgado province have reportedly faced extreme violence from the state, including enforced disappearances. 

This repression continued in the wake of the election last fall. For over three months, police beat, abducted, arrested and assassinated young protesters — who pressed on to dismantle a plutocracy that enriches a narrow class and foreign corporations. 

The Mozambique regime, defiant at first, is slowly relenting. At a macro-level, it reached an agreement with the movement, promising an overhaul of electoral laws, prosecution for security officials implicated in violent crimes, release of political prisoners, financial compensation to torture victims and those wrongfully arrested, and the appointment of truly independent and impartial judges to the national election-management body. The authorities also invited Mondlane and others from various civil society organizations into a “state council” that’s negotiating a possible multi-party government. 

Grassroots energy

But away from the glare of big political handshakes and celebrities, the movement is establishing roots on the ground in communities across the country. 

“At first I was the typical hero politician with a YouTube megaphone, but today the movement is now organic — owned, directed by ordinary people in various places,” Mondlane said. 

For instance, the movement has set up and deployed its own volunteer “community teams.” They are monitoring whether the ongoing “peace detente” reached between the rebellious youth and the state in March is translating into direct justice for the families of victims in low-income townships where tensions have been highest. 

“We began in Matola — the biggest low-income township in the capital, Maputo — asking families of political prisoners to provide data on their relatives who were jailed, whether they have been released, and if their tormentors are facing justice,” said Sani Moyo, a fisherman who has become the community leader of the movement in Matola. 

With a paper notebook and smartphone in hand, Moyo visits dozens of homes in Matola every week. 

He and his 10-member team of volunteers are there to collect names and build a register of all supporters who were beaten by security forces or jailed. Their goal is to get them state compensation and make sure no one remains unjustly imprisoned and out of sight. 

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“We welcome the ‘volunteers,’ they are our eyes,” said Gada Phiri, a father whose 22-year-old son spent 60 days in prison for leading local youth to march on the president’s palace in October. “We don’t trust leaving this important task to compromised state prosecutors.”

In Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city, anti-government feelings were more intense than other places in general between October and January. The movement there is aggressively gathering multiple forms of evidence in communities for both digital and offline records, says Evaristo Pinto, an outspoken tribal leader who was sacked from his post by authorities for leaking details about election fraud in his community. 

“We have a target of visiting 20 families every week,” Pinto said, leading his team of five volunteers. 

They collect pictures of bruises (from alleged police beatings), audio or video testimonies from victims and their families, and store all these securely in cloud databases and offline in paper journals. 

“Meeting with these community teams has been assuring,” explained Noba Sala, a torture victim, who says police officers rubbed burning cigarette stubs on his butt and feet as a torture method when he was detained in November at the height of protests. 

By meeting the grassroots teams, he says, he was able to reveal the names of officers who directly tortured him. Some of the officers, rattled, have visited his family with money and small livestock as “peace offerings,” but he rejects their dodgy overtures.

“They fear the consequences,” he said. “We learned from grassroots peace-building efforts in places like Rwanda, where community members took part in aiding the prosecution of genocide suspects.” 

The impact has been visible in Mozambique too. In July, the state prosecutor was forced by the community teams’ relentless pressure to start prosecuting 31 security officers, something that was unthinkable six months ago, according to Moyo. But progress is extremely slow. 

Demanding accountability

The key to cementing democratic gains in communities is to keep the energy going at the grassroots level and not to be completely flattered by big political agreements, Moyo said. 

While Mondlane is pressing for high-level accountability in talks with Mozambique’s leaders and continuing to marshal the youth via Facebook and YouTube, it’s at the grassroots level where community leaders and victims like Moyo and Sala are translating this into actionable outcomes that resonate with common people’s aspirations.

For instance, Esther Xaba, a former pastor in Matola Township is using her skills to unite disparate community forces in Maputo towards one goal of demanding accountability. In November, Xaba and other leaders led hundreds of youths to Renato Garcia, Mozambique’s border with South Africa. They proceeded to persuade dissatisfied border workers to close the border gates, stop work and join them in the growing protest against Mozambique’s ruling regime.  

“It’s churches, tribal elders, former state workers, trade unions — all these influential community figures are prone to state bribery to weaken the people’s demand for justice,” she said. 

Xaba meets with these influential community leaders every two weeks. The aim is to build their muscle to resist these efforts by the government to co-opt them. She is devising a program to encourage them to become “community peace monitors.” That involves them recording where new cases of police abuses have occurred, and whether implicated police officers have been quietly let off the hook.

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“The vigilance is super-important,” said Daudi Jomo, who was informed by pastors that a police officer who allegedly tortured him in custody was not removed from work, as the state prosecutor claimed. Instead, he was being transferred from Maputo to a far-off province where he could live and work off the radar. 

“We quickly raised an alarm via social media platforms and the dubious transfer of the officer was halted,” he said. “He remains suspended from work and under probe for his crimes.” 

There is a lot at stake right now, because Mozambique’s regime has verbally committed itself to ending impunity. But doubts still linger on. 

For instance, in July, Mozambique’s state prosecutor summoned Mondlane and some vocal youth to a meeting. Mondlane specifically was interrogated on whether he was the person behind the voice in a new, widely circulating audio clip that rebukes the government. The prosecutor didn’t charge him with any crime, though. Scores of young activists with the movement met him at the prosecutor’s office, turning the spectacle into a display of public vigilance against the state.

The Mozambique ruling regime is dragging its feet in implementing the democratic reforms, assuming that the pro-democracy movement will gradually run out of enthusiasm, Xaba said. 

“We are vigilant to that and have shifted to a proactive approach,” she said. “We are telling communities and township youth cells that if there is no visible progress on the first reforms being made into law by February 2026, we must be ready to restart and intensify peaceful nationwide protests and only stop when real progress accelerates. We won’t be taken for a ride.”

This article Meet the youth-led pro-democracy movement making gains in Mozambique was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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