Long food queues in Maputo as calm returns

Maputo, Friday

Long queues for food and fuel formed in the streets of Mozambique’s capital yesterday as shops reopened after two days of violent protests over rising prices that left seven dead and hundreds wounded.

Calm returned to the capital following two days of protests over food and fuel prices.

The city’s largest hospital said the stream of patients injured in the violence had stopped by midnight Thursday, after fresh clashes between police and demonstrators erupted on Thursday evening.

“By 9:00 pm it was quiet,” Maputo Central Hospital emergency director Antonio Assis da Costa said yesterday morning.
“Later, some patients arrived. Maybe the last case would be by midnight,” he added.

Da Costa said 32 patients treated at the hospital on Thursday had been hit by rubber bullets fired by police.

Maputo residents left hungry after two days of store closures formed 20-metre queues outside bakeries but complained they could barely afford to buy bread after a 17 per cent price increase.

Visibly angry

“People don’t have money to buy food,” domestic worker Elisa Aldino said, visibly angry as she queued for bread. “They don’t have enough. If they don’t have money, they sleep without eating.”

Long queues of cars had also formed at petrol stations.

By yesterday morning, police had reopened major roads and highways closed on Wednesday and Thursday by protesters.

Heavy police patrols continued throughout the city as vendors reopened their stalls and small trucks took people and produce to markets.

Municipal buses had resumed service, though few of the mini-bus taxis that provide transportation for most of the city’s poor were on the roads.

Residents voiced uncertainty whether the calm would remain. “For now we don’t know if life has returned to normal,” a resident of Xiquelene, an impoverished neighbourhood on the outskirts of Maputo that saw some of the worst clashes between police and rioters, told private broadcaster STV.

The government said on Thursday that the unrest had left seven people dead and 288 wounded. Police denied reports from witnesses and doctors that they had fired live ammunition at protesters, insisting only rubber bullets had been used.

Government spokesman Alberto Nkutumula said the unrest had cost the economy 122 million meticals ($3.3 million).

Prices in the import-dependent country have risen on the back of a South African rand whose value has appreciated 43 per cent against the metical since this time last year.

The price of bread rose 17 per cent, increasing pressure on struggling households in a country with a per-capita income of just $794 a year.

The violence is the worst since 2008, when six people died in protests against a public transport fare increase. (AFP)