Maputo, 19 Feb (AIM) – On Monday evening, a large group of saboteurs, armed with rocks and machetes, attacked and destroyed the toll gate at Costa do Sol, on the road from Maputo to the South African province of Kwazulu-Natal.
According to eye-witnesses cited by the independent television station STV, there were 40 or 50 saboteurs who arrived in three trucks at about 17.00. They sounded their horns and the terrified tollgate staff ran for their lives.
The gang smashed up the tollbooths, and destroyed some of the fencing surrounding the gate.
Police and security staff were present, but there were too few of them to intervene.
Unlike previous attacks on tollgates, the Costa do Sol installations were not set on fire. Booths were destroyed, but the computer equipment was not stolen.
If the intention of the raid was to stop the collection of the tolls, it was successful. Once the saboteurs had left, motorists drove through the gate without stopping or paying.
The tollgate is operated by the state-owned Mozambique Road Network company (Revimo), which has not yet commented on the attack.
The sabotage was well organised and financed. Obtaining three trucks and recruiting 50 people takes money. So far the authorities have not said who they believe is behind these attacks on the country’s roads which, bit by bit, are destroying the Mozambican economy.
For the second day running, there was serious rioting in the town of Chokwe, in the southern province of Gaza, supposedly because of the high cost of living, and the supposedly exorbitant sums charged by the water and electricity company.
The rioters shut the town down, threatening to burn down the shops of any traders who continued to work. They attacked, and vandalised, the Chokwe offices of the government’s water supply body, FIPAG, and set on fire the premises of the Chokwe district committee of the ruling Frelimo Party.
Some 1,200 kilometres to the north, in Zambezia province, the police clashed on Monday with the peasant militia known as Naparamas. The police killed four members of the Naparama, after they had attacked a police position in the Lioma administrative post, and burnt a police vehicle.
(AIM)
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