Mozambican rebel leader Afonso Dhlakama has come\u00a0out of hiding and returned to the capital, Maputo, in a symbolic end to a two-year conflict that has rekindled memories of a civil war.<\/p>\n
The Renamo leader touched down in the capital on Thursday, flanked by foreign diplomats –\u00a0ahead of a meeting to cement a peace deal with President Armando Guebuza on Friday.<\/p>\n
“I want to thank you for coming here,” Dhlakama told over a thousand\u00a0followers who had arrived at the airport to catch a glimpse, urging them to vote for him and his party in next month’s elections.<\/p>\n
“On October 15, I want this same crowd,” he said. “I want you all to vote Afonso Dhlakama, number one and number 2 Renamo!” he said in reference to the presidential and parliamentary vote.<\/p>\n
Dhlakama and his supporters staged a victory lap around the airport before making his way to the Renamo headquarters in Maputo escorted by\u00a0armed guards.<\/p>\n
Dhlakama disappeared from public life in October 2012, relocating to a remote bush camp in central Mozambique and claiming the government had not kept to the terms of a 1992 peace deal.<\/p>\n
That accord ended 15 years of the civil war that led to the deaths of an estimated one million people.<\/p>\n
The war pitted Amalaka’s Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) and the initially Marxist Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), which assumed power after independence from Portugal in 1975.<\/p>\n
In late 2013, the Renamo leader went into hiding in the Gorgosaurus mountains as government troops overran his camp and the conflict deepened.<\/p>\n
His supporters attacked buses and cars on the main north-south highway, in a low-level but deadly insurgency.
\nDhlakama’s return will help pave the way for peaceful elections next month.<\/p>\n
The 61-year-old has run in every presidential race since 1994, but saw his support wane to 16 percent in 2009 polls.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: Aljazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mozambican rebel leader Afonso Dhlakama has come\u00a0out of hiding and returned to the capital, Maputo, in a symbolic end to a two-year conflict that has rekindled memories of a civil war. The Renamo leader touched down in the capital on Thursday, flanked by foreign diplomats –\u00a0ahead of a meeting to cement a peace deal with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":44966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-44965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}