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Dhlakama repeatedly stood as an unsuccessful presidential candidate in elections, despite alleging electoral fraud.
“I appear as the spokesman for the poor,” he told AFP before losing the 2014 poll. “People believe that I can set in motion a democratic change of government.”
Mozambique will hold presidential, legislative and provincial elections in October 2019, with observers saying Renamo had recently increased its public support.
Frelimo has ruled the country since independence from Portugal in 1975.
– Restive legacy of civil war –
Nyusi said he had tried to fly Dhlakama abroad for emergency medical treatment after hearing he was ill just one day before he died.
“The weight for me is worse than for everyone,” Nyusi said. “I tried to transfer him but I could not because he was in a place where I could not help.
“I’m very depressed because I should have been able to transfer him.”
Low-level violence erupted between government troops and Renamo (Mozambique National Resistance) from 2013 to 2016, with the discovery of mass graves of victims fuelling fears that the country was heading back to war.
The fighting often centred on the country’s main roads, with Renamo — which also holds seats in parliament — attacking government convoys and civilian vehicles, and soldiers accused of ruthlessly targeting suspected rebels.
The violence forced thousands of people to flee to government-run camps or across the border to Malawi and Zimbabwe.
Renamo alleges that the Frelimo elite has enriched itself at the expense of the country, with the once-booming economy badly hit in recent years by a massive hidden debt scandal.
“Sustainable peace in Mozambique still what everyone is hoping and working for,” Joanna Kuenssberg, the British High Commissioner to Mozambique, said on Twitter as she expressed her condolences.
