Before the Avalanche

Cyclone Chido blew through Mozambique last month. The storm’s 160-mile winds and the 10 inches of rain that fell within 24 hours killed at least 94 people and displaced more than 620,000, the BBC reported.

Some say the storm was a physical manifestation of the tempestuous forces now rocking the African country.

Protesters over the past month have taken to the streets and torched police stations, courthouses, and other symbols of the state’s authority. The violence reflects the rage that erupted after election officials confirmed that Daniel Chapo of the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) political party won 65 percent of the vote in the country’s Oct. 9 presidential election, despite widespread allegations of vote rigging. More than 100 people have died in the unrest.

“There is total madness, people are burning everything that represents the state,” said Adriano Nuvunga, who leads the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in the capital Maputo, in an interview with the Financial Times.

Frelimo has denied any wrongdoing. But European Union observers complained of the “unjustified alteration of election results” in the process.

Election officials said opposition candidate Venȃncio Mondlane of the Optimist Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos) won 24 percent of the vote, wrote Al Jazeera. Mondlane rejected that tally, however, saying he would hold his own inauguration this month because, he claims, he and his party really won 53 percent.

Mondlane had been in hiding since two of his key aides were assassinated in October as they prepared to challenge the election results in court. But on Thursday, Mondlane returned to the country, arriving to applause from workers at the airport, the Associated Press reported. In the arrivals hall, he knelt with a bible in his left hand and said, “I want to fight within this country and I will, until the very end, keep fighting for this country. I’m not willing to accept election results if they are the same as those announced up until now.”

As he spoke, security forces fired tear gas at hundreds of his supporters who had gathered near the airport to welcome him home.

Researchers say the instability and violence rocking the country doesn’t surprise them.

“The current crisis in Mozambique did not occur in a vacuum but is intertwined with historical grievances stemming from the country’s violent past,” wrote Radio France Internationale.

Since gaining independence from Portugal following a decade-long revolutionary war led by Frelimo, Mozambique has struggled with instability and internal conflict.

Initially, it became a one-party Marxist-Leninist state under the Frelimo government, which then faced an insurgency from the anti-communist Renamo party that began in 1977 and continued until the early 1990s.

Frelimo, which won the country’s first multi-party elections in 1994, has maintained tight control over the country since then as complaints about corruption and brutality have grown.

Part of the problem, wrote World Politics Review, is the mood of the country has changed: “While Mozambican voters were generally looking for change, Frelimo relied on old tricks to ensure an overwhelming victory, perhaps not appreciating the public’s reduced tolerance for such methods,” it wrote.

Meanwhile, young Mozambicans – 56 percent of the country’s population is younger than 19 – have no memories of Frelimo’s role in independence, say analysts. Instead, they say they have little future in a country where, despite its mineral riches, deep poverty and corruption are rampant, job opportunities few, and stability rare, especially because of a violent insurgency in the north that has displaced almost 600,000 people, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Now the increasingly repressive government tactics since October are fueling support for the opposition: The police have fired live bullets to suppress demonstrations, killing at least 100 people. The government also shut down the Internet and public transportation to suppress organizing. Even so, the leaders of the country are losing control of it.

Still, observers say Mondlane’s insistence that he should be president may or may not work as a political ploy. But it may not matter, wrote the Economist.

Throughout Africa, the young are frustrated and in some places, such as Botswana, Ghana, and Senegal, angry voters in 2024 threw out parties that had governed for decades.

“Where that option was unavailable, such as in Kenya, they have taken to the streets,” the magazine wrote. Still, in Mozambique, “a protest against vote-rigging has turned into a social revolt.”