South Africans tend not to pay much attention to Mozambique - until something goes wrong.

We saw that after Mozambique's disputed presidential election in 2024. Protests and political violence disrupted the route between Maputo and South Africa, leaving trucks unable to move through the corridor.

Now there are reasons to pay attention again. Opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane has taken allegations of continuing political violence to European lawmakers in Strasbourg and is preparing to face trial at home over charges linked to the post-election unrest.

At the same time, the Islamist insurgency that has devastated northern Mozambique has shown signs of spreading, with militants attacking a hunting camp in Niassa province earlier this month and abducting a South African among a group of workers.

I've been to Mozambique several times and remember driving the N4 towards the capital, passing truck after truck along the Maputo Corridor, linking South Africa’s industrial heartland to the Mozambican coast. It’s one of those connections that most of us probably don’t think about until it stops working. And yet we should.

Election

In the 2024 election, Mondlane ran against Daniel Chapo, the candidate of Frelimo, the party that has governed Mozambique since independence in 1975. Chapo was declared the winner. Mondlane rejected the result.

The election observation mission sent by the European Union (EU) subsequently documented serious flaws in the electoral process. It reported anomalies and errors in the counting and tabulation of results, a serious lack of transparency, and problems with the integrity of voter registration. More than 300 people died in the post-election political violence, according to the EU observation mission. It called on the authorities to protect freedom of assembly and peaceful protest, and ensure Mozambicans could participate in political activity without intimidation or violence.

Mondlane's visit to Strasbourg has put some of these questions back before European lawmakers. He didn't, as some images circulating on social media suggested, address the European Parliament itself, but several Members of the European Parliament subsequently expressed concern about the situation in Mozambique and called for greater scrutiny of European funding.

The EU is deeply involved in Mozambique. It provides development and humanitarian assistance and is also engaged in security operations in the north of the country. This year it has allocated €24.5 million (roughly R458 million) in humanitarian assistance for the close to 1.6 million people estimated to need help in northern Mozambique.

But political instability in Mozambique doesn't remain neatly inside Mozambique.

Migration

Mozambicans have been coming to South Africa to live and work for generations, and families stretch across the border. Between 28 November and 20 December 2024, that migration intensified. The International Organization for Migration recorded 2 122 people moving towards South Africa through the Ressano Garcia border crossing and said the actual figure was probably higher.

This doesn't mean another political crisis would automatically produce a mass movement of people into South Africa, but it does mean that, when we ask what greater instability in Mozambique could mean for us, we shouldn't think only about trucks, gas, and investment. There are people on both sides of that border too.

Mozambique's economy is also under pressure. An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission visited the country earlier this month for discussions about reforms that could pave the way for a fund-supported programme. The IMF says Mozambique faces significant fiscal and external challenges and that further reforms are needed.

The economic relationship runs both ways. For more than two decades, natural gas from Mozambique's Pande and Temane fields has travelled through an 865km pipeline to Secunda, supplying Sasol's operations and South African industry. It is another largely invisible connection between the two countries - until something threatens it.

Mozambique is still grappling with the Islamist insurgency in the north that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Its apparent movement beyond its traditional stronghold in Cabo Delgado is another reminder that the country's security problems are not static, or necessarily contained.

None of this means South Africa should decide Mozambique's politics for Mozambicans. Nor does criticism of the Mozambican government mean every allegation made by its opponents should automatically be accepted. Mondlane is a political actor with his own interests, just as Frelimo has its own. But we also shouldn't be so careful about taking sides that we ignore what has actually been documented.

Matters

This is why the discussion taking place in Europe matters here. If the EU changes the way it funds Mozambique, attaches tougher conditions to assistance, or reconsiders parts of its support, there could be consequences. But the larger issue for South Africa is Mozambique's stability itself. Investors have to be willing to invest, roads have to remain open, and trucks have to be able to cross borders. The allegations of political violence also explain why questions are being asked about where European money goes and how it is used.

We tend to talk about instability elsewhere in southern Africa as though borders contain it. Mozambique shows how quickly they don't. We saw that after the election when the movement of freight was disrupted. We see it in the gas travelling south, in the businesses using the Maputo Corridor, and in the people whose lives stretch across the border.

South Africans don't have the luxury of regarding Mozambique's stability as somebody else's problem. The question isn't whether what happens there affects us. It's how much trouble there has to be before we start paying attention.