Mozambique democracy

MAPUTO: The death this week of an opposition leader has inflicted a heavy blow to Mozambique’s fragile democracy after the loss of Afonso Dhlakama, a charismatic former guerrilla fighter, analysts say.

Daviz Simango, the 57-year-old founder of Mozambique’s second largest opposition party, died of an undisclosed illness in a South African hospital. His sudden death came little more than two years after Dhlakama died following a heart attack.

Dhlakama, the former leader of the Renamo rebel movement, had been the face of opposition to the Frelimo government after the country’s long and brutal civil war. The loss of these two prominent figures deprives the country of two nationally-heard voices of dissent, say commentators.

“The opposition was already dying, fighting this big elephant which is the ruling Frelimo party,” said political science professor Domingos do Rosario of the Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo. “It is a dark scenario.”