MOZAMBIQUE: Renamo member shot dead in front of family

Renamo organiser Joao Jose Bongo was shot dead by an unknown assailant at his family home in Bairro Novo on the outskirts of Quelimane on the evening of Thursday 31 March.

DW Moçambique (File photo) / Abdala Ossifo

Diario da Zambezia reports that the gunman arrived at the house of the victim and asked his wife if her husband was at home. Answering yes, she called him and when he arrived, the visitor shot him and calmly left the scene.

The crime has shocked the Quelimane neighborhood. Bongo, a Renamo party activist who had recently complained of death threats, was the second Renamo member to be killed in Zambezia in March.

Speaking to Diario da Zambezia, provincial Renamo delegate Abdala Ossifo says Renamo holds the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) responsible for the deaths and does not lack the capacity to respond in the same fashion.

But this way is not what they intend, and to Ossifo, it is the government’s systematic killing of Renamo members that must come to an end.

Ossifo said that if Renamo wished to respond in kind, it would not be difficult, since his party knows the addresses of every secretary, provincial director and administrator, even the governor. “We know where Frelimo members live. If we do not retaliate, it is not out of fear, but because we do not want to go down that route,” he said.

On Bongo’s death in Bairro Novo, Ossifo said he would have been killed for being influential, but that Renamo would not be intimidated.

Diário da Zambézia/Club of Mozambique