The fallout surrounding fraud claims from last month’s elections in Mozambique has led to the sacking of a second religious leader. The acting Primate of the Anglican Church in Mozambique and Angola (IAMA) was given an ultimatum last week by ten of the province’s twelve bishops that he step down for failing to do his civic duty as chairman of the National Elections Commission, while a Muslim cleric serving on the National Elections Commission (CNE) has been fired for endorsing the results.
Daud Dauto Ussene Ibramogy, a Sunni Muslim cleric and leader of the mosque in Maputo’s Aeroporto district was fired by his congregation after he voted to approve the results of last month’s municipal elections. He told local newspapers “I only exercised my right as a Mozambican citizen under the democratic rule of law”.
He acted “as a citizen, and not as a sheikh or as an imam … As an imam, I have always tried not to mix my professional work with my religious work”, he explained.
An emergency meeting had been called for 14 November 2023 by the IAMA provincial standing committee to seek the resignation of the Most Rev. Carlos Matsinhe, Bishop of Libombos and acting primate. The IAMA bishops had appealed to the archbishop to take actions against fraudulent election returns, that saw the ruling FRELIMO party take 64 of 65 municipal seats, even though the opposition RENAMO party was expected to increase its share of power, including control of the capital, Maputo. Archbishop Matsinhe responded to the bishops’ appeal by abstaining from the certification vote, prompting the calls for his resignation.
The former Bishop of Libombos and Matsinhe’s predecessor, the Rt. Rev. Dinis Sengulane, on 5 Nov 2023 addressed the controversy saying: “Silence can be a lie when you hide what is the truth, because to remain silent is to consent. Your lie can affect many, because you are a person of influence.”
“The lack of truth is called lying, falsehood, or falsification, fraud, deceit and many other terms,” Bishop Singulane said, and “lying comes from the Devil, even if it is dressed in beautiful clothes, opulent clothes and sometimes even sacred clothes, even clothes like mine, seeming to speak about things of God. But in the end, it only leads you to ruin”.
He added that there were religious “leaders who have lost their place of doing the sacred things of God, and linking people to God. They cause many people to lose their faith, or at least to weaken it, because they do not tell the truth, either because they have embraced the lie, or because of their complicit silence’’
The meeting set for today in Maputo to call for Archbishop Matsinhe’s resignation was postponed at the last minute after the archbishop said he would bring armed guards to the meeting for his protection. This show of armed force was unacceptable to the other bishops, prompting them to cancel the meeting.
