Mozambique’s internationally acclaimed writer and poet Mia Couto hopes for a “fresh start” for his country, which heads to the polls on Wednesday, but he doubts the young democracy is ready for change.
His dream, he told AFP in an interview from the capital Maputo, would be for the country of more than 33 million people to elect leaders who set an “example” by “dividing” and “sharing” resources.
But there “are no big options to choose from” among the four main candidates running for presidency, said the 69-year-old, born in the southern African nation to Portuguese parents.
The opposition argues it is their turn to take the helm but are offering more of the same “system” and “ethical values”, said the marine biologist and former journalist, who used to support the ruling socialist Mozambique Liberation Front, Frelimo.
The author, who has blue eyes and a white beard, likes to remind people he is older than his country, which gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and held its first democratic elections in 1994.
Almost immediately after independence, he said, a civil war broke out with “no time to focus on reconstruction” until a peace accord was signed in 2019.
“Until now we are still learning” and dreaming of a “fresh start”, said Couto, who has a piercing gaze behind his thin glasses.
“The liberators (Frelimo) think they are the owners of the country,” he said, and will most likely win Wednesday’s vote but they have “less and less space to rule the country alone”.
There is more friction within the party than with the opposition, Couto pointed out, even though it has managed to maintain power for the past 49 years.
– Living and dead –
The “Sleepwalking Land” author won the 2013 Camoes Prize, the most important literary award in the Portuguese language, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 for his entire body of work.
Couto warned against applying simplistic or Western perspectives to the diverse coastal country, where more than 28 different languages are spoken across an area three times the size of the United Kingdom.
“Many people go to church in the morning, mosque during the day and talk with their ancestors at night,” he told AFP.
The country and its people are very much a source of inspiration for his novels, which have been translated into more than 20 languages.
“In Mozambique, people talk, tell stories,” he said, adding that he is particularly fond of the strong relationship Mozambicans have to nature and spirituality.
He cited the example of a woman who once told him about a river whose name meant “the water becomes pregnant”.
And while he still feels partly European, he is attached to his African identity and the notion that the dead are still present.
When Couto’s father died in 2013, he believed part of him kept on living.
“He did not die, he is inside me. These are not my hands, they are his hands,” said Couto.
Going back to politics, Couto said that while the majority of the country’s population is too young to remember the war, which officially ended in 1992, its impact is still significant.
“This country is so tired of violence and war that we don’t mind who is the winner (of the election), we just want results that will be peacefully accepted,” he said.
“We are voting in peace for peace.”
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