Nyusi grooms potential successor

Agriculture minister Celso Correia is pegged as Nyusi’s choice for president if he can’t get a third term. But can he go the distance?

Good afternoon. If you’ve been wondering when fireworks will start ahead of the next electoral cycle, wonder no more. Ahead of a meeting of Frelimo’s Central Committee later this month, agriculture minister Celso Correia has managed to capitalise on what seemed a major gaffe a couple of weeks ago, going on the offensive with the support of his political patron, Filipe Nyusi.

After Correia took down the arguments of the FDC this week, the respected NGO headed by Mozambique’s first First Lady Graça Machel, his supporters on social media — apparently coordinated, and quite likely paid — have come out in vocal support. Though Correia failed to show that 90% of Mozambicans have three meals a day, as he had claimed, he slammed the FDC as part an “industry of misery and poverty” and said he was changing the paradigm around Mozambican agriculture. Mozambique can and will feed itself, is his message.

Frelimo has a big decision to make, over who its next leader and presidential candidate will be. Nyusi would like it to be him, and with the support of his party, could change the constitution to allow that. Large parts of the party will be resistant so Celso Correia is probably Nyusi’s ‘plan B’.

Correia will also face resistance from within Frelimo, largely because of racism: he does not look like a Black African Mozambican. Yesterday, Nyusi warned his party of influences seeking to divide it along tribal and regional lines. It sounds like a warning not to reject his charismatic and successful agriculture minister in favour of a candidate who ‘fits’ in terms of tribal and regional identity.

Nyusi also called for Frelimo to sweep the board at this year’s municipal elections. If it does so, under Correia’s guidance as campaign manager, Nyusi and Correia’s stock will be higher than ever. Frelimo may find itself having to choose between the two of them — both options would be a win for Nyusi.

Meanwhile, the main opposition party, Renamo, has completely failed to capitalise on the opposition momentum that has gathered around the death of Azagaia — even organising a football tournament in the name of the party’s leader, Ossufo Momade, at the exact moment that the march in homage to Azagaia is due to happen tomorrow morning. So despite growing dissatisfaction with Frelimo, total victory at the next elections is certainly on the cards.

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Today’s headlines:

• Chinese depleting fish stocks in Mozambique, CIP says 

• Some civil society organisations want to destroy Frelimo and the government, says Nyusi

• Detained missionaries granted provisional release

• Two Chinese citizens detained carrying prohibited minerals

• Mocímboa da Praia and Muidumbe hospitals in urgent need of rehabilitation

• Cholera kills eight people in Quelimane