Mozambique 8 March: Talking about talking
Good afternoon. The next set of peace talks between President Filipe Nyusi and the leader of Renamo, Afonso Dhlakama, are getting closer - even if in practical terms, the two sides seem as far apart as ever.
Renamo responded promptly on Monday morning to Nyusi’s Friday afternoon invitation to restart talks. The opposition party, however, is requiring its set of three chosen mediators - the EU, the Catholic Church, and Jacob Zuma - to be agreed before the party even meets with Nyusi’s three-man team to talk about whether the two sides can talk. But it is far from certain that Zuma will even be available to mediate, given the political turbulence he is experiencing at home and his role heading up the African Union’s delegation to Burundi.
SEE: Renamo responds to Mozambique peace talks invite
SEE: Nyusi invites Dhlakama for Mozambique peace talks
Renamo seems wedded to a strategy of making hard-line demands from which it ultimately has to climb down. This month, for example, Dhlakama looks certain to miss his own deadline to take power in six of Mozambique’s provinces, for the third time since 2014’s elections. It’s a tactic not found in negotiating textbooks, and for good reason.
While politicians talk about talking, the drought in southern Mozambique shows no sign of ending. It will be the second dry rainy season in a row for the long-suffering people of Mozambique’s southern and central provinces, where an estimated 1.2 million are going hungry according to the latest reports. Humanitarian aid needs to double over the next few weeks to address this, the UN says.
SEE: A million Mozambicans go hungry as drought shows no sign of ending
Last Friday we wrote that while new investors appear to be shying away from Mozambique, existing investors are playing double or quits. This week, one of the first major investors in post-civil war Mozambique, South Africa’s Sasol, said it would invest a further $1.4 billion in the first phase of its new oil and gas development in Inhambane.
SEE: Sasol’s $1.4bn Mozambique expansion set to enter operation in 2021
Even Xtract Resources, which has just sealed a deal to buy a gold mine in Manica province, is no stranger to the country. The company is headed up by a South African who previously ran the same project for another firm. This week he told investors the project should be even more profitable than previously thought.
SEE: Mozambique gold miner predicts $245 million profits
Meanwhile, our neighbours in ‘the land of the rand’ are getting involved in the fight over who gets to build Mozambique’s north-south gas pipeline. South Africa’s power utility has one dog in the fight, while the state investment company PIC is invested in the other.
SEE: Eskom and EDM in talks to use Gigajoule’s Rovuma pipeline
Have a great week.