Today, the National Alliance for a Free and Autonomous Mozambique (ANOMOLA) submitted a proposal for a new Mozambican flag to the Assembly of the Republic in Maputo.

“This Flag is exactly the result of the will of the people,” Venâncio Mondlane told the press after submitting the anti-project. He hopes that the proposal will be debated at the sessions to revise the Constitution of the Republic. 

This is a new visual presentation chosen from a number of proposals submitted for voting. The process of choosing the best proposal took place on social media. There were more than 5,000 proposals from national and international designers, and nearly 80,000 votes.

“The flag we have today [from 1983] is the result of a process of political exclusion, social exclusion, a profoundly anti-democratic process... It was a political party that, in the midst of the immensity of other parties, decided for all Mozambicans,” he argued.

The Interim President of the political group, who led the delegation, said that the country's current flag reflects an image that advocates violence and armed conflict, due to the presence of an AKM-47 weapon. This, he said, justifies the fact that the new proposal does not include images referring to any kind of aggression.

But he also considered that the hoe on the day's flag carries the message of backward agriculture, which has shown that it has not kept up with developments in the sector.

“If we're talking about feeding a nation, the idea today has to involve the technologies applied to the country's agricultural policies. That's why we've removed the short-handled hoe, which represents primitive agriculture from medieval times,” he explained.

For him, the flag in use, from 1983, is empty of contemporary meanings, so he says the party is confident of moving towards acceptance of the anti-project.  

“We're optimistic because the reasons behind the proposal are supra-partisan, they have nothing to do with anyone's private or partisan interests,” he said, stressing that the images that make up the proposal “will boost Mozambique's image across borders”.

Asked whether submitting the proposal would undermine the assumptions of the Technical Commission (COTE) for the Inclusive National Dialogue, Mondlane clarified that it was “an independent matter”, in accordance with the Commission's terms of reference.