RENAMO (Mozambique Resistance Movement)*
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In 1977 a new resistance movement was formed by the name of RENAMO, the Mozambique Resistance Movement. This force was formed to counter the FRELIMO government and to disrupt the logistical flow of goods to neighboring Rhodesia. Once Zimbabwe became independent, South Africa then became RENAMO's chief sponsor. RENAMO is a shady organization. What makes this organization remarkable among insurgencies is not only its level of violence but its total unconcern for politics or winning popular support. It makes no effort to preach a political program, to provide services or to set up an alternative government in the parts of Mozambique it controls. People are compelled to work long hours without pay on farms, to serve as porters on forced marches without food, and to service the sexual needs of RENAMO warriors. The "Gersony Report" submitted on April 1988, reported that refugees provided eyewitness or other credible accounts about killings (from RENAMO) which included shooting executions, knife/axe/bayonet killings, burning alive, beating to death, forced asphyxiation, forced starvation, and random shooting at civilians in villages during attacks.*
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The FRELIMO government of Mozambique signed a non-aggression pact with South Africa in 1985, known as the Nkomati accord. In return, Pretoria promised to sever economic assistance in exchange for FRELIMO's commitment to prevent the African National Congress (ANC) from using Mozambique as a sanctuary to pursue its campaign to overthrow white minority rule in South Africa.(9:1313) The volume of direct South African Government support for RENAMO diminished after the Nkomati accord, but documents discovered during the capture of RENAMO headquarters at Gorongosa in central Mozambique in August 1985 revealed continuing South African Government communications along with military support for RENAMO.* 
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In 1990 RENAMO was estimated to have 15,000 to 20,000 combatants. Mozambican civilians have been RENAMO's principal targets in the civil war, although the insurgents have also attacked government installations and the economic infrastructure. Between 1986 and mid-1988, some 100,000 civilians are believed to have been murdered by RENAMO, and about 1 million others fled to neighboring countries. Foreign relief organizations estimate that a total of 3.2 million people were totally dependent on food aid in 1990, while about the same number require some assistance.*
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In November of 1990 a new constitution adopted by the legislature had guaranteed the right of all Mozambicans, including rebels trying to overthrow his government, to organize and compete in democratic, multi-party elections. The new constitution addresses RENAMO's main political demands for direct elections by secret ballot in a multi-party democracy, a free enterprise economy and freedom of religion. The following month RENAMO agreed to a partial cease fire along the Beira and Limpopo corridors. A ten-nation Joint Verification Commission, which includes the U.S.A., had been established in Maputo to monitor that agreement.*