Nation on edge after contested poll

Maputo awoke to carnage on Friday as protests overnight turned violent following ruling party Frelimo's re-election after 49 years in power. Demonstrators protested what they called a ballot ‘stolen’ by a ‘corrupt’ Electoral Commission, which on Thursday announced candidate Daniel Chapo had won the 9 October election with 71% of the vote. As the election authority, widely accused of acting in favour of Frelimo, was announcing the results, crowds gathered in multiple cities. Protests escalated, with rioters setting fire to tyres to block avenues in Maputo and scaling Frelimo's election billboards and destroying them. News24 reports that Chapo, a 47-year-old former provincial governor with no experience in national government, was little known before his surprise nomination as candidate for the ruling Frelimo party. He will take over from President Filipe Nyusi in January. Opposition leader Venancio Mondlane, who has declared himself the winner and claimed irregularities, officially won just over 20%. Protesters attempted to block the road leading from the capital to SA. Police said that clashes with protesters had left several injured across the country and reported one death in Nampula in the north. The 47-year-old winner Chapo will officially take charge in January, becoming Mozambique's first President born after independence from Portugal in 1975 when Frelimo first took power.

According to Search for Common Ground, a civil society organisation, there are more protests expected in the next couple of days, with the Podemos party calling for a nationwide strike about not only electoral fraud but to ‘bring Frelimo to the knees’ and overturning the government. Mondlane had called for protests on Thursday with the publication of final election results, and also on Friday, urging everyone who is not protesting to stay at home, close offices, shops, companies and ‘shutting down the country’. News24 reports that the Mozambique Electoral Commission's (CNE) president Carlos Matsinhe said ‘the announcement of the results by the CNE does not close the electoral process’. Dr Jeremias Alfredo Manjate, the secretary general of the Constitutional Council, has since formally written to advise Mondlane to lodge his electoral complaints with the courts. The AU and EU have led calls condemning the surge in political violence in Mozambique in recent weeks. However, SADC which falls under the annual rotational leadership of Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has been more quiet. On Wednesday ahead of the results proclamation, Mnangagwa congratulated Frelimo for a ‘resounding victory’.