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The second dramatic factor is that Dhlakama did not just wake up one fine day and say he would leave his Nampula home and return to his former base in bushy Gorongosa. This was not nostalgia, for goodness’ sake, especially when it comes from a man who was on a killing path from 1977 to 1992.
He made sure that the international media captured his moves and articulated his demands to the Mozambican government and Sadc leaders.
Dhlakama is not as senseless as some of us would want him to be, and neither is he a spent-force.
And, to demonstrate that he has become a negative regional issue, some of South Africa’s major business papers picked the story. They did not in any way celebrate him as the Western media did. As they informed, they were also telling Sadc to be wary of Dhlakama’s actions.
Indeed, the pictures I have seen show a few middle-aged men and some women undergoing training with some old AK-47 assault rifles. You work with what you have or you do that in order to dupe the world. But, why should we trust Dhlakama now, if he spent close to two decades destroying those elements of trust and brotherhood that had come with Mozambique’s independence?
Why should we not take him seriously if the Rhodies and the Boers made him believe that fighting his own people on behalf of others would reverse the gains of independence?
Isn’t it also ironic that the rest of the camp that is supposed to have 800 former rebels and new volunteers is not shown to us? Have those who took the pictures become part of the plot?
If we do not know how rebels like Dhlakama were initially created, for they are never their own men, how can we just brush them aside? Isn’t it also amazing that Dhlakama — who will turn 60 on January 1, 2013 — actually started his insurgency activities in 1977 when he was 24 years old?
How old was he when he was co-opted to lead the rebel movement? Today, how many 60-year olds are fighting tooth and nail to become presidents in their various countries?
Why would it be different with Afonso Dhlakama if he fits the agenda of his creators?
If he drove the Rhodesian and apartheid agendas in the Cold War era with his so-called “anti-Communist movement”, what can stop him from becoming a devil in the detail again in this neo-colonial stage of Africa’s political economy?
Initially, Dhlakama said that he did not want war, but in that same statement, he also said he would not stop his supporters if they opted to fight government.
Two positions in one statement? On Tuesday, The Herald again carried a story with excerpts of Dhlakama’s interview with the AFP news agency.
Contrary to his double-speak a few weeks ago, in Tuesday’s story, Dhlakama told AFP that he was “willing to provoke a fresh bloodbath and to divide the country if the government does not meet his demands.” Noone is putting terms like “provoking (sic) a fresh bloodbath and to divide the country” in his mouth. Neither should we think that we should not lose sleep over the rantings of a 60-year old man so used to shedding human blood.
He added, “I am training my men up and, if we need to, we will leave here and destroy Mozambique . . . If it is necessary we can go backwards. We prefer a poor country than to have people eating from our pot.” 
Tough talk in my view because if it was not, the international media would not have bothered.
And, what does a Mozambique, which is deliberately being taken backward mean for Sadc and Africa as a whole?
When Dhlakama decamped at Gorongosa the first time, in my stream of consciousness, I posed the following questions, considering that I know some of the atrocities that were committed by Renamo, and the economic losses to a new Zimbabwean economy, which a good number of us would rather forget: Is Dhlakama calling the Mozambican government’s bluff, or he is serious?
What does this mean for a Mozambique that is now beginning to reap the fruits of peace? What does this mean for regional peace and security? What does Dhlakama’s action mean for Zimbabwe’s peace and security, including its internal politics?
And most critically, who is financing Dhlakama?
Will the mineral resources found along the border of Mozambique and Zimbabwe become another stage of contestation as Renamo pillages and plunders them in order to finance its insurgency?
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, illegal mining of the country’s rich mineral resources funds rebel activities.  We have to wake up and smell the coffee!
Much as I might have treaded on issues that have already been dealt with, it is important that we revisit the Renamo issue with open mind-sets.
800 people, some of them in their late forties and fifties might sound like an insignificant number, but a crazy person always starts from somewhere.
For as long as we do not know the manner in which the Rhodesian and apartheid governments got him to do their dirty jobs, it remains an unfinished story, which he hopes to complete now.
Now is actually more convenient for him to try and carry out the task to its logical conclusion because in the past twenty years, Dhlakama has realised that he can re-invent himself, and make it look like he has the people’s interests at heart in so far as the sharing of the national cake is concerned.
Having parliamentary representatives also gives him that false illusion that he is the right person to lead the people — fantasia of the unconscious!
He also has a very compelling reason to manipulate the people of Mozambique by easily telling them that despite the rich resources, they continue to be paupers because Frelimo thinks that it has the overall control of the people’s resources. Isn’t it happening in Zimbabwe right now? A populace that believes that it is being short-changed by its own government, especially where money is concerned can easily buy into such populist messages.
Thus I ask once more whether Dhlakama suffers from an attention seeking deficit disorder, which he knows will have the region talking. Are his desires fulfilled by mere talk? The Middle East is sick and tired of the centuries old wars, but has that stopped the wars being fought in that region? Haven’t we seen outsiders fuelling those wars?
It is this naivete in our approach to critical issues like banditry elements that display whether we have learnt any lessons from past activities.
In this information age it is also easy to see how a story breaks, and how various sources present it.
Each presenter reveals underlying agendas. It was the same with the Renamo report where Dhlakama is presented as a victim of Frelimo machinations.
Some reports did not hide their empathy for Dhlakama and in some cases presented him as a freedom fighter. I realised how easy it was to rewrite a nation’s history barely five decades after its birth – most of it full of falsehoods.
There are also other aspects. Dhlakama’s decamping coincided with a number of historical events on the Mozambican and regional calendars. Firstly, it coincided with the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Rome Peace Accord. It also coincided with the 26th anniversary of the murder of Cde Samora Machel by the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Such coincidences are usually hard to come by.
Then there is the language from some news agencies. Apart from making him look like a re-incarnated hero, they report that Dhlakama is demanding a “new political order”. What is this “new political order” that he wants? Another two decades of wanton killing and suffering of the Mozambican people?
Isn’t it astonishing that a person, who spent a good part of his life creating political disorder, is finally seeking order? Has he seen the light?
Here is what one agency said, and it is up to you to read between the lines and realise that it’s not over until it is over. Maybe Sadc will also realise that we don’t wine and dine with the enemy under the false hope that we defeated imperialism in the various armed struggles the region waged.
There is no need to get into detail, but the evolution of the liberation struggles through the Frontline States that gave birth to SADCC and now Sadc has revealed some fissures.
You might argue that the cracks are artificial, but the truth of the matter is that a crop of leadership is rising and it is happy to sell out this region for a mere thirty pieces of silver.
Wrote the agency: “Twenty years after agreeing to lay down arms as part of a peace agreement with his Marxist Frelimo rivals, Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama has decamped to the foothills of a remote mountain range,” allies said.
“The camp, thought to house 800 men, some armed — is also close to the site of a base which Renamo, backed by white-ruled South Africa, used to fight a bloody 16-year conflict against Frelimo, former rebels against Portuguese colonialism who took over the country on independence in 1974.
‘“We want a new political order in Mozambique.
“We have already tried dialogue with Frelimo but they don’t take it seriously,” Renamo MP Ivone Soares said in the capital Maputo.
“We don’t want to go back to war. We want Frelimo to give us equal opportunities. We have the right to protect ourselves,” she said. However, she added, “Our people don’t need bazookas. They are prepared to use their own teeth if they are attacked.”
And some of us think that this is mere semantics and sleep talking by a middle aged person who has nothing better to do but to instil fear?