The deadly food riots in Mozambique reflect public anger at the ruling party’s failure to curb poverty and create more jobs since coming to power in 1975, analysts say.
Support for the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which led the liberation struggle against Portugal has weakened over the years, as poverty continues to plague the nation.
On Wednesday, violent demonstrations erupted in the capital Maputo and surrounding slums over the rising prices of food and fuel.
The unrest claimed 10 lives, left hundreds injured and paralyzed the country, but the government said the price hikes were “irreversible.”
When Mozambique’s 16-year civil war ended in 1992, Frelimo encouraged internal debate and tolerated political foes but this was no longer the case, said Richard Cornwell, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria.
“It seems now [President Armando] Guebuza is moving towards an authoritarian state, where the state is inflexible and opposition parties have little room to maneuver,” Cornwell said.
Last year, Guebuza was re-elected with 75 percent of the vote but his party’s support fell, especially in Maputo.
“Although FRELIMO won with an overwhelming majority, they did so with manipulation and intimidation,” Cornwell said.
The price hikes implemented on Sept. 1 are unpopular in a country where over half the population survives on less than US$1 a day.
“The government ... thought the poor would just accept this decision. They were caught off guard,” Cornwell said.
Paulo Gorjao, director of the Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security said Mozambique’s failure to push back poverty levels was partly due to pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“It would be difficult to subsidize prices, as in 2008, because the government is under pressure from the IMF to control debt and has little options,” Gorjao told the Diario de Noticias, a Lisbon-based daily.
“The IMF constraints take away the government’s ability to cushion the price increases by spreading them out gradually over time,” Gorjao said.
In 2008, six people were killed in protests against a public transport fare increase. Mozambique, which lies on the Indian Ocean coast, relies on neighboring South Africa for trade but the value of its currency, the metical, has slumped significantly against the rand.
The country’s main exports are seafood and cotton.
Joseph Hanlon, the editor of Mozambique Bulletin, also said the government had failed to create jobs despite making significant strides in health and education.
“The development model pushed by the IMF and World Bank has generated growth but few jobs and caused the informal sector to swell,” Hanlon said.
“At some point people will start to say, wait a minute, where is all this growth that we’ve seen. It has not filtering down to the bottom,” he said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS