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.
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