Africa-Press – Mozambique. Hundreds of supporters of the National Alliance for a Free and Autonomous Mozambique (Anomola), the political party set up by former presidential candidate, Venâncio Mondlane, marched peacefully through the streets of central Maputo on Saturday.
Unlike previous opposition demonstrations, the police did not attack the marchers. Instead, they merely escorted them. There was no use of tear gas, much less of live ammunition.
Mondlane himself was not in Maputo. One of his advisers, Dinis Tivane, told the crowd “This march has proved to Mozambique what we want to be and what we condemn. Anamola is the hope of the Mozambican people”.
Tivane expressed the party’s solidarity with the people of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, which has been plagued by Islamist terrorism since 2017.
The sharp change in the police attitude towards Anamola may be connected to the recent changes in the top leadership of the Interior Ministry and the police force (PRM).
But many people arrested during the unrest of late 2024 and January of this year remain incarcerated. According to data from the NGO platform “Decide”, 7,200 people were detained and 411 were shot dead. At least 2,790 people remain in detention, and 4,410 have been released, apparently without charge.
Of the dead, only 17 (4.2 per cent) were members of the defence and security forces. 20 of the dead (five per cent) were children.
78 per cent of the detentions occurred in Maputo, Nampula, Zambezia and Sofala provinces. A further 3,700 people were injured during the unrest.
The Executive Director of “Decide”, Wilker Dias, cited by the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, accused the Mozambican justice system of “inertia”.
The NGO has been providing medical assistance to victims, and has begun to work with the Bar Association (OAM) to compensate victims.
Dias lamented the refusal of the Mozambican authorities to take responsibility for the repression following the unrest.
“It is important to recover the trust of the Mozambican people”, he said, “and to bring about reconciliation”.
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