A Portuguese language assessment, due to be completed in the first quarter of 2023, has been annulled by the Education Sector in Inhambane province, for allegedly damaging the "good image" of the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi.

The grade 12 exam was held last Monday at Massinga Secondary School, and Inhambane Education claims that the content of the text presented also hurts the teaching and learning process.

According to the NewsThe school board had two versions of the test prepared by the Portuguese subject group to assess the students and none of them were distributed.

On his own initiative, the subject delegate allegedly prepared a third statement with satirical textual references to the President of the Republic and his government and distributed it to the students, supposedly in absentia.

It is known that the Portuguese teacher is a prominent member of the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), the second largest political party in the country and the main opponent of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), chaired by Filipe Nyusi. According to our source, this leads us to believe that the teacher took advantage of his power and status at the school to make political use of it and "denigrate the image of the President of the Republic".

A local team from the education inspectorate and the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) was on the ground, listening to the teacher accused of drawing up the statement in question and the school's management.

As MZNews has noted, the text, which you can read in full below, is entitled "Once again for what, Excellency"? In some sentences, it refers anaphorically to Filipe Nyusi by "god", with the initials in lower case, as in "[N]othing is impossible for god, he can certainly achieve it. What's the point of a third term?" And when he does refer to divine entities, he uses capital letters, as in "His counterpart God Jehovah".