
Maputo, 25 Oct (AIM) – Unrest returned to the streets of Maputo and the neighboring city of Matola on Thursday afternoon, after the announcement of the results from the 9 October general elections.
The independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane, had called for two days of “general strike” on Thursday and Friday, but initially it seemed that there would be little violence.
Many shops, banks, schools and other Maputo businesses closed on Thursday morning, and few buses or taxis were plying the streets.
But the situation changed in the late afternoon, when the National Elections Commission (CNE) announced the election results, regarded as fraudulent by Mondlane and his supporters.
Crowds of angry youths took to the streets again and paralysed traffic in parts of the city. Violence spread to the town of Ressano Garcia, on the border with South Africa, forcing the temporary closure of the border.
The police did not attack demonstrators with tear gas, as they had on Monday. But they did escort vehicles that were coming under attack as they travelled between Maputo and Matola.
By 09.00 on Friday, there were still barricades, sometimes improvised put of garbage containers, blocking Vladimir Lenin Avenue, one of Maputo’s main thoroughfares.
There were reports of serious rioting in the northern port of Nacala in which two police agents supposedly died. However, the head of public relations in the Nampula Provincial Police Command, Dercio Samuel, dismissed such reports as “lies”.
There had been a march by supporters of Podemos, the political party that supported Mondlane’s presidential bid, which ended in clashes between marchers and the police. Samuel said four people, three Podemos supporters and one policeman, were injured and treated in a Nacala hospital. 24 demonstrators were arrested.
In the provincial capital, Nampula city, there was also unrest in which a young man was injured and died on his way to hospital on Thursday afternoon. Samuel did not explain the circumstances of this tragedy.
He told reporters “we registered foci of disturbances, in Nampula and in Nacala, such as the burning of tyres in the street, the vandalizing of private vehicles, destruction of market stalls and assaults on market vendors and operators of mobile wallets”.
The police command in the southern province of Gaza, said there had been rioting on Thursday in the tourist resort of Bilene. Two shops had been looted and 18 people were arrested.
(AIM)
Pf/ (400)