Distúrbios na cidade de Maputo. Foto Paulino Checo
Maputo, 7 Nov (AIM) – Thursday was supposed to be the day of “total revolution”, according to Mozambique’s independent presidential candidate, Venancio Mondlane.
He had repeatedly stated that a huge mass demonstration would descend on Maputo and sweep away what he called “the tyranny of Frelimo”.
On Wednesday, in his nightly live broadcast over his Facebook page, Mondlane urged his followers to turn up in central Maputo at 07.00. A helpful map from the Mondlane campaign, published on social media, showed six points at which demonstrators should gather. The marches from these points would then converge at the spot on Joaquim Chissano Avenue where, on 19 October, unidentified gunmen had murdered Mondlane’s lawyer, Elvino Dias, and the election agent of the Podemos party, Paulo Guambe.
Speaking from his hideout, believed to be in South Africa, Mondlane promised to return so that on Thursday he would lead the “march on Maputo”.
He urged his supporters to “occupy the streets” of the capital and boasted that four million people would be on the streets. This number he later reduced to three million, and on Wednesday he claimed that a million people had already arrived in Maputo from the provinces.
None of this was true. At 07.00 the city was virtually deserted. Television crews drove along the main avenues encountering almost no traffic, and very few pedestrians. There was no sign of Venancio Mondlane.
There was a large police and military presence, but initially there were no clashes.
At about 09.30, the situation deteriorated. Crowds of a few hundred people appeared on Joaquim Chissano Avenue, and on the nearby Vladimir Lenin Avenue. The police fired volleys of tear gas, but to little effect.
Young demonstrators ran down alleys and side-streets, and the police fired more tear gas after them. All of this was done in full view of the television reporters, who could even film the police reloading their tear gas canisters, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to be doing in the middle of a densely populated city.
Demonstrators threw stones at the police, and any civilian vehicle driving long these main streets risked having their windows smashed.
But the main problem for the government is not sporadic clashes in central Maputo, but the destruction on Tuesday of the main customs post between Mozambique and South Africa, at Ressano Garcia. This border post is vital for normal food supplies in southern Mozambique.
On a normal day, hundreds of trucks pass through the Ressano Garcia border, many of them laden with foodstuffs. But now the border is closed, with key buildings in ruins.
According to a report carried by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), in the latest issue of its bulletin on the elections, the destruction at Ressano Garcia occurred after one of the demonstrators was shot by customs agents and members of the Frontier Guard,
The demonstrators then burnt all the vehicles of the customs and immigration staff at their homes (since Ressano Garcia is a small town, the public knows where officials live).
The crowd then went to the building where the immigration services operate. They broke all the windows and destroyed equipment, such as computers, used to issue visas.
The frontier services could no longer function, and all the staff fled across the border into South Africa. The South African authorities issued warnings that their citizens should not attempt to cross the Ressano Garcia border.
Nobody knows how long it will take to restore the border post to working order.
Meanwhile, the disturbances in central Maputo showed no sign of ending. Demonstrators who spoke to reporters said they were not intimidated by tear gas, and would stay on the streets as long as they considered necessary.
(AIM)
Pf/ (633)
