President Filipe Nyusi pledged to continue search for lasting peace

Locals in Vunduzi, a village near the place where Mozambican soldiers and former Renamo rebels fought their last battle, fear that Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama’s death this month could spell fresh unrest.

Sitting at the foot of the Gorongosa Mountains in central Mozambique, Vunduzi was a ghost village two years ago with a handful of stalls basically serving government troops deployed there.

At the slightest sound of gunshot, villagers would rush into the thick forest to hide. At night they slept in the forest to avoid government soldiers or spies locally known as the “death squad”, who were blamed for kidnapping and murdering supporters of the Mozambique National Resistance or Renamo.

But after Dhlakama unilaterally decreed a truce at the end of 2016, life returned to normal. Military checkpoints disappeared and cars, trucks and motorcycles moved around freely in the village.

The main school, which had been shut in 2015, reopened. Public buildings have been repainted and the village now has electricity.

However, Dhlakama’s sudden death on May 3 in his Gorongosa bush camp has left the small village shaken and worried about the future.

For the majority of people here, Dhlakama was the father of democracy - the only person to stand up to the brutal regime. Since his death anxiety reigns in the village.

“It is a disaster,” said an agriculture ministry official.

“Maybe it will be a return to unrest. We do not know. It will all depends on the behaviour of those who will replace him,” he said.

In this Renamo bastion many residents interviewed by AFP chose to remain anonymous.

“To avoid persecution,” Dhlakama’s loyalists “are discreet,” said a school teacher.

In his 30s, the teacher is a Renamo supporter, but is registered as a member of the ruling Frelimo and must contribute one per cent of his salary to the party, which in his case is 50 meticals ($0.83).

“With Dhlakama gone... we are wondering how the political situation is going to evolve. Will his men take up arms again?” said shop owner Ricardo Armando.

But a clothing salesman Santo Gerente is unfazed and believes that the normal life he has enjoyed for the past year-and-a-half will not be disrupted. “We are free, we can have fun, listen to music,” said the 30-year-old man.