‘Ghost voters’ and fraud threaten Mozambican elections

Campaigning in Mozambique’s presidential and legislative elections has reached its final stretch, with the country set to go to the polls on Wednesday.

While President Filipe Nyusi will leave office, having reached the end of his two-term limit, the overwhelming likelihood is that his party, Frelimo, will secure yet another term in power under its new leader Daniel Chapo.

But this is no ordinary election. For the first time, a populist challenger from outside the political establishment, Venâncio Mondlane, has inspired an army of young supporters who could disrupt the status quo.  

Every election since Mozambique’s inception as a democracy in 1994 has largely been a contest between Frelimo and Renamo, the two sides in the civil war that ravaged the country for 16 years from 1977 to 1992. Frelimo has won every one, thanks largely to its increasingly brazen efforts to influence electoral agencies and tilt the playing field in its favour. Observers fear this could be the most manipulated election so far. 

When you control the courts, obeying the law doesn’t matter. 

—  Joe Hanlon, an adviser to Mozambique’s Centre for Public Integrity

Joe Hanlon, an adviser to Mozambique’s Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), an independent anti-corruption watchdog, says the country’s election administration body STAE has registered 1.2-million “ghost voters” — voters on the electoral roll who cannot exist as they exceed the total number of voting age adults in the districts where they are registered.  

CIP has also reported cases of STAE officials instructing polling station staff to guarantee a Frelimo victory. Meanwhile, the National Elections Commission (CNE), responsible for declaring the results, says the vote count at district level will take place in secret.  

This is illegal, but, as Hanlon puts it, “When you control the courts, obeying the law doesn’t matter.” 

Frelimo can afford to boldly rig the vote more than ever before since Renamo handed over the last of its weapons and demobilised its armed wing in 2023. That means this is the first general election in which the main opposition party cannot use the threat of violence as a bargaining chip. 

Renamo’s leader, Ossufo Momade, a former guerrilla commander, has put in a lacklustre performance in the face of this existential threat to Mozambique’s democracy. He was nowhere to be seen in the first week of the election campaign and he has been surprisingly feeble in condemning the open fraud, prompting speculation that he has struck a back room deal with Frelimo that would preserve some remaining privilege for his party.

Enter Venâncio Mondlane, a charismatic former banker running with the up-to-now obscure Podemos party. His electrifying speeches railing against corruption and inequality have appealed to the youth’s sense of apathy and disenchantment with the political class. Everywhere he goes, his rallies attract huge crowds. The traditional two-horse race has been upended. 

“Mondlane is clearly the political phenomenon of these elections,” says Fernando Lima, a Mozambican political journalist. “No-one in the past has provoked such enthusiasm among the electorate.” 

“He can steal votes from both parties, not just Renamo. For example, he can attract the younger sector of Frelimo and new voters who will be voting in this election for the first time,” Lima says.

Mozambique has a very young population. Most voters in this election are not old enough to remember the civil war. Even fewer were alive to see Frelimo lead the war of liberation against Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s. The collective memories that traditionally defined party affiliation are fading — and Mondlane is filling the vacuum.

“He has charisma. He explores the fact that the electorate is tired of traditional politicians and the traditional parties. And he has a populistic tendency that attracts young people,” Lima says. “If fraud does not dominate the election outcome, I expect he will perform very well.”

In 2023, Mondlane campaigned to be mayor of Maputo as a Renamo candidate before defecting to Podemos, and most likely won the election, according to independent election observers like CIP. Amid ultimately unsuccessful attempts to challenge the result in the courts, he led unprecedented marches of thousands of supporters through the streets of the capital. We can expect to see similar scenes if Frelimo claims an improbably large victory in the general election.

If, fairly or not, Frelimo does retain power for another term, would a Chapo presidency depart from the agenda of his predecessor? It seems unlikely.

Lima says: “You do not have any indication that he will be different, taking into account what he has been saying publicly. He is under a lot of pressure from different interest groups within Frelimo so you would only know the real Chapo if he gets elected and after his inauguration.”

On entering office, Chapo would have to contend with severe social and economic challenges. The rate of poverty has grown by almost 20% under Nyusi’s watch in the past 10 years, rising to an appalling 65%. This is partly a result of the fallout of the so-called “hidden debts” scandal in which $1.5bn in state-backed loans went missing causing international donors to pull support.  

The windfall revenues from natural gas in Cabo Delgado province have also failed to materialise as an IS-backed insurgency wreaks death and chaos in the region. The TotalEnergies-led $20bn liquefied natural gas project has been suspended since the insurgent attack on Palma in 2021 and there is no firm indication of when it will resume operations.  

Despite this, the government has barely made an effort to diversify the economy, even as its currency has tanked in value.  

“The expectation is that [Chapo] needs to be different because there is a lot of pessimism in Mozambican society on politics, on what Frelimo has delivered in the past few years,” Lima says. “If he does not act differently, Frelimo will fall more and more into discredit.”