Liberation movements under siege
BY MOSES MATENGA
A senior official from the Mozambique ruling party, FRELIMO, Lidia Rita Jeremias, said liberation movements in Africa are under siege from foreign forces and should unite to avoid foreign control by those with interests.
Jeremias told Business Times that without unity and working together, the movements will fold with the falling of the United National Independence Party in Zambia and the cutting of influence of South Africa’s African National Congress being a wakeup call.
“We are actually very close and we call ourselves sister parties (that is) all the movements that liberated our countries. We are still very strong with the ANC, Zanu PF, SWAPO in Namibia and Chama Cha Mapinduzi in Tanzania. I am glad to say that now every year, we have all movements coming together at three levels, the secretaries for external affairs meet, the second level is the chairpersons and secretary generals and then there is the presidential meeting we call the summit of the movements,” she said.
“We understand we are under attack and that is what has brought the movements much closer because we know that once they manage to dislodge one us, we know the next one will be affected,” she said.
“We are working well since UNIP in Zambia lost and that is when we had to wake up. Zambia was a wakeup call and South Africa recently, they have a government of national unity and this is because this external hand is not resting,” she said.
She said civic society organisations are being used by some external forces.
“They have created something they call civic society. In fact, I will call them unregistered parties and have an external agenda. They use our youths most of the time, those who don’t understand our history and do not value the sacrifices our fathers, our forefathers gave to liberate our countries. They approach the youths, give them some money, drug them sometimes and instrumentalise them to force regime change.”
“We know this is not new, they tried it in Zimbabwe, tried it in Mozambique and half succeeded in South Africa so if we don’t come together as liberation movements, they will get another one. So far we are happy we meet more often and strategise and we have regained momentum.”
Jeremias was in the country last week with her delegation sent by the Central Committee to work with FRELIMO party structures in Zimbabwe.
FRELIMO has a number of supporters in the country.
“We also came to prepare our members for a national congress which we will have in August. The exercise is to choose delegates from Zimbabwe. We are trying to get them into the mood of participating in the congress by discussing areas of interest and topics to be discussed,” she added.
