Incomplete Disarmament 241. In interactive sessions with stakeholders, the CRM was informed that RENAMO has an unspecified number of armed ex-combatants serving as guards for its leaders. The existence of such armed men, who are identified with a particular political party, is a source of much apprehension and potent danger to members of other political parties, especially during elections. Not only is it a perpetual reminder of the divisions that existed before the war, it is also an admission of the inconclusiveness of the peace and integration process. The existence of people bearing arms outside the official armed forces is an anomaly that violates the full expression of sovereignty by the state. Although the GPA (Protocol V, Section III, par. 8) states that RENAMO shall be responsible for the immediate personal security of its top leaders and that the government shall grant police status to the members of RENAMO assigned such a security function, the conversion has not happened. These persons should have been disarmed and integrated into the police or national defence force a long time ago. 242. On the other hand, RENAMO leaders complained that the government has reneged on the commitment made in the GPA that its armed men would be demobilised and absorbed into the armed forces and other security agencies under similar conditions as FRELIMO’s soldiers. Instead, they are being systematically weeded out of the army and other security agencies. 243. While the leaders and members of RENAMO are generally socially integrated, at the political level they are viewed with thinly disguised suspicion and hostility. In terms of popular perception, FRELIMO is projected as the party of liberation, having claimed victory in the campaign to terminate Portuguese colonial domination in 1975. RENAMO, on the other hand, is projected as the party of destabilisation that interrupted the consolidation of independence by launching a counter-revolutionary war. However, the self-image of RENAMO is that of a party which fought for democracy in Mozambique. 244. Reconciliation and reintegration have not gone far enough to erase from people’s consciousness the dichotomous classification of Mozambican leaders and their political parties as “freedom fighters” and “rebels”. Failure to deal with this socio-psychological aspect of reconciliation is making it difficult for reconciliation to penetrate to the roots of society. Besides, the people’s growing perception of politics as the continuation of war by other means is reinforced when leaders of political parties shun each other and refuse to share the same public platform, and thereby symbolically reject national unity and solidarity. The first meeting arranged for the CRM to meet all political parties was shunned by both FRELIMO and RENAMO. At various validation workshops arranged for the CRM, FRELIMO members were reluctant to even mention RENAMO by name, often preferring to refer to it as “the other party”. 101