In July and August 2021, Rwandan soldiers were deployed to Mozambique, ostensibly to fight the Islamic State. The Rwandan Armed Forces are France’s confidante on African soil. Behind the campaign, led by a well-trained and equipped Rwandan army, is French maneuvering that benefits energy capitalist giants TotalEnergies SE and ExxonMobil. At the cost of how much blood of the people of Mozambique have the EU bankers already estimated the natural gas of occupied Africa? …

Mozambique, one of the largest countries in Southeast Africa, washed by the waters of the Indian Ocean. Historically colonized by the Portuguese, Mozambique has its capital, Maputo. The geographic area of ​​the country is more than 90,000 square meters. km. (which is almost the size of California). Mozambique is rich in natural resources such as natural gas, oil, gems, graphite and coal. The population of the country is about 29 million people, the official language is Portuguese, and however, since the country is multi-ethnic, its peoples speak several languages, the largest of which are Swahili and Sena. The Christian population in Mozambique is 38%, Muslims 11%, the remaining 50% are indigenous beliefs. This is one of those rare cases in the African region, as well as among all the Third World countries, where in the 70-80s of the 20th century the struggle for the decolonization of the country ended with the proclamation of building socialism. The head of the independence movement, which began in 1962 of the twentieth century, Eduardo Mondlan, one of the first Africans to receive higher education at the University of Lisbon. Standing at the origins of the popular Frente de Libertado de Mogambique – FRELIMO, Euardo Mondlane, who is a sociologist and historian by training, regarded Marxist socialism as the only tool necessary to liberate the Mozambican people from colonial oppression and capitalist exploitation. At the same time, the actualization of the results of the struggle was made for the expropriation of the means of production, the nationalization of natural resources and the equal distribution of national wealth among the people, among whom they immediately began to create branched schools, and in Maputo the Front government created the first African university. The people’s government, which left the ranks of the FRELIMO front fighters, without waiting for the end of the civil war with the reactionary forces, made a number of rather successful attempts to carry out economic reforms in the territories of the country liberated from the ultra-right RENAMO, in the paradigm of the Marxist-Leninist political doctrine. FRELIMO as a tool and historical form of the social process that culminated in the liberation of the Mozambican people at the beginning of the 1980s. created, according to Samora Machel, a new personality with a new mentality acquired as a result of the struggle; those who become an agent of transformation and activation of social relations of a new type that will characterize the new society in all spheres of production, education, culture, leadership structures and relations. Maoist China and the socialist Soviet Union were strategic partners of Mozambique at that time of its development up to 1986. However, with the beginning of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the temporary crisis of China as a Maoist state, forced to enter international economic processes by compromising its guiding principles, Mozambique, which has taken the path of socialist development, loses international communist support… In that fateful 1986, Mozambique had to conclude an agreement with the IMF, which, in the end, ensured that the next president, traditionally nominated by FRELIMO, decided to isolate its Marxist-Leninist ideological component from the party program, leaving only the social-democratic “rhetoric construction of an independent multinational state”. Such a successor to the opportunistic president Chissamo is the modern social democratic government led by President Filipe Nyusi, who decided to follow the instructions of the curators from the Development Bank and the IMF and accept proposals for investments in the development of natural resources from the two largest corporations of the French energy company TotalEnergies SE and the energy company United States Exxon Mobil. This happened immediately after, along with the country’s richest resources, which were already being developed, the largest massif of liquefied gas was discovered in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. From that moment on, serious upheavals began in the socio-political climate in the forgotten Cabo Delgado, where the spearhead of the unstoppable fighting of the ultra-right militants RENAMO moved for the last thirty years. It can be assumed that this is connected with the culminating “passions” over who will control the rich deposits of natural resources in the African country.

Beginning July 9, 2021, 1,000 troops have been deployed in Mozambique to replenish military formations fighting Al-Shabaab militants, who in modern political rhetoric are attributed to the capture of Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado. The extremist rebel groups operating in this region with particular brutality there, according to a number of Western observers, are associated with the Islamic State. One thing is clear: at present, the military formations of the rebels, making forays into the peaceful regions of the country, operate very skillfully, and possess such types of weapons that were not previously seen in the country. Their exact claims and political ideology are in fact unknown at this time. We, following those comrades from FRELIMO-MLWF who today have remained faithful to Marxism, believe that these are the same rebels from the ultra-right “revolutionary” front RENAMO, who have begun to be more actively supported by foreign intelligence and military structures. There is no evidence that the current insurgent fighters in Mozambique are directly linked to the Islamic State. We do not exclude that this narrative came into use and is supported by the state structures of Mozambique, closely connected with transnational corporations, in order for the developed capitalist powers of the world to contribute to the strengthening of military forces for the most problematic region of Mozambique – Cabo Delgado, from where now peaceful refugees are emigrating in masse. This is confirmed by the fact that, first of all, federal forces, supported by troops from Rwanda, recaptured the port city of Mosimboa da Praia from terrorists on August 8, 2021, in the vicinity of which, not far from the coast. It is for this geographical object that large natural gas concessions Total Energies SE and ExxonMobil have been invested. Immediately thereafter, on August 27, 2021, African Development Bank President M. Akinwumi Adesina announced that Total Energies SE would resume the Cabo Delgado LNG project by the end of 2022. This may explain why, since July 2021, Rwandan troops intervened in the internal affairs of Mozambique: to ensure the safety of two large energy companies.

A few months before the military contingent left the Rwandan capitals of Kigali, heading towards the north of Mozambique, a very peculiar series of events occurred from which certain conclusions can be drawn. Since 2000, the President of the African interventionist country has been the former Rwandan Minister of Defense Paul Kagame, whose militaristic rule is manifested in many of Rwanda’s military operations outside the framework of international law. So, over the past decades, the Rwandan military, enjoying the patronage of official Washington – the Rwandan military contingent is well trained and armed at the expense of large financial infusions – two military interventions have been carried out: in South Sudan and the Central African Republic. A particularly difficult situation has developed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, because of the lasting since the late 1990s. Rwandan militarization has affected hundreds of thousands of Congolese civilians. According to a UN report, around a million Congolese civilians were killed in 2003 alone. The government of Mozambique, having signed an energy deal with the French energy giant in the amount of billions of dollars, for its country has only a very small share in projects for the development of liquefied gas, which, most likely, the administration of the corporation, the presidential headquarters of Macron and the IMF want to completely withdraw, citing the need to invest in protecting employees and businesses in Cabo Delgado.

At the end of 2020, President of Mozambique Filipe Nyusi announced that TotalEnergies SE, operating in the north of the country, is going to ask the French government for military assistance to ensure the security of this area, which is necessary for the normal functioning of the corporation’s production sites. In January 2021, French Defense Minister Florence Parly and his Portuguese counterpart, João Gomes Cravinho, held a telephone conversation, during which, it is assumed, they discussed the possibility of a Western intervention in Cabo Delgado. Around the same time, TotalEnergies SE Executive Director Patrick Pouyanne met with the President of Mozambique Nyusi, in the presence of Defense Minister Jaime Bessa Neto and Interior Minister Amade Mikidade, to discuss a joint “action plan to strengthen security in the area.” However, as it turned out, the French government was not interested in direct military intervention. Instead, French President Emmanuel Macron apparently received a proposal that Rwandan troops, not French forces, should be used to ensure the security of Cape Delgado. Obviously, Paul Kagame did not go for it out of respect for Emmanuel Macron. What he was promised for the implementation of military intervention remains behind the scenes.

On May 18, 2021, a summit was held in Paris under the chairmanship of Macron, which was attended by several heads of government – P. Kagame, F. Nyusi, as well as – President of the African Development Bank Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Union Moussa Faki Mahamat, President of the West African Bank Development Serge Eque. The summit was supervised by the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Kristalina Georgieva. The purpose of the summit was the aspiration of E. Macron “to increase funding in Africa amid the Covid-19 pandemic.” As the official agenda of the summit was “a way out of financial suffocation”, which African heads of government with the President of France and the IMF Managing Director, however discussed, as it became known; the plans of the Rwandan intervention in Mozambique were discussed at closed meetings. At the end of May 2021, Macron traveled to Rwanda and South Africa to provide humanitarian assistance – the French President brought with him 100,000 Covid-19 vaccines. However, most of the time in the capital of Rwanda, Kigali, Macron spent in private closed negotiations with the President of Rwanda, General Kagame. After two days, 26 and 27 May, spent in Kigali, Macron went on a further visit to Africa, on 28 May he paid a visit to the President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphos, with whom he discussed affairs in Mozambique, stating that France is ready to “take part in operations on the sea side ”, but would otherwise be subordinate to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other regional powers. He did not specifically mention Rwanda.

“It worries me that in this whole security debate in the Mozambique region, where Total’s manufacturing facilities are located, there has never been a discussion of the problems of people – local residents living in marginal conditions. The security of infrastructure, multinational personnel, expatriates is constantly being discussed”, – says Zenaida Machado, a researcher from Angola and Mozambique in HRW Africa, who advocates for the interests and urgent needs of people living in crisis areas of Mozambique with pain and indignation. “I find it very unfair, disgusting and inhuman that people who have lived in these areas for decades are forced to flee because gas was discovered. They understand that their interests are being ignored, because the priority is not their protection, but the protection of transnational corporations and large investments, which should be profitable” – continues the representative of the African research department, worried about the fate of the people of this part of long-suffering Africa.

Is there any hope that the ruling left-wing party of Mozambique FRELIMO, led by President Nyusi, in the current situation, as in the old days, will be able to act against the violent conditions of TNCs, based on the priority of national interests and independence, as well as the protection of the social rights of the country’s citizens? – The question is now difficult and the answer to it is likely to be pessimistic and negative… It must be repeated, today the leading bourgeois party group FRELIMO can be called “left” only in relation to right-wing liberal, radical Islamist and nationalist tendencies in Africa. However, there is a split within the party: over the past two years, a fairly large Marxist-Leninist workers’ faction FRELIMO-MLWF has formed, which is merging with the trade unions of the mining industry in Mozambique. Comrades from this faction are increasingly getting in touch with the internationalist communist community, overcoming isolation with the awareness that only the international revolutionary struggle and horizontal interaction of workers today, like 100 years ago, can bring positive results. After all, it is extremely difficult to deny that any conscious Marxist movement operates in almost every country in the crisis capitalist world, where socio-economic conditions are already close to the situation in modern Mozambique.

Mark LeBlanc
Quebec, Canada
Specially for Resistentiam.com