POVERTY: Mozambique riots underline persistent poverty

Sep 2, 2010
Johannes Myburgh,
Hundreds of commuters briskly walk the streets of Mafalala, an impoverished neighbourhood on the outskirts of the Mozambican capital, trying to get to work before police and protesters clash again.
Police patrol during riots in Mozambique's capital Maputo September 1, 2010. Police fired rubber bullets and teargas as they clashed with demonstrators who burned tyres and blocked roads in protests on Wednesday against rising prices in the capital of impoverished Mozambique, witnesses said. Domestic worker Mercela Manuel, 34, talks with a friend as they cross the road together, glancing furtively about.
The street has been cleared of the burnt tyres that protesters used to block the road Wednesday, but remnants of the charred debris remain on the sidewalk.
Protesters staged a second day of strikes and demonstrations Thursday over food price increases in Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world.
The violence has so far left seven people dead and 288 wounded, the government says.
But Manuel says she still has to go to work so she can feed her three children.
"The cost of life is expensive. Very expensive. It’s difficult to live," she says.
Her wage of 54 dollars (42 euros) already makes it difficult to afford the 12 dollars (9 euros) she pays for the family’s bread each month.
Manuel's husband sends extra money from his job at a mine in South Africa, she says: but it is not enough.
Clashes between police and protesters broke out Wednesday and Thursday, as crowds in impoverished neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Maputo took to the streets.
They were protesting a 17-percent increase in the price of bread, as well as fuel, water and electricity rises.
Protesters looted 23 shops and damaged 12 buses, completely destroying one, government spokesman Alberto Nkutumula told journalists after an emergency cabinet meeting Wednesday.
Despite posting impressive economic growth figures since the end of a 16-year civil war in 1992 Mozambique still has a per capita income of just 794 dollars (620 euros) a year.
Yet there is little the government can do about inflation: prices in the import-dependent country have risen on the back of a South African rand whose value has appreciated 43 percent against the Mozambican metical since this time last year.
The protests represent a crisis for the government of President Armando Guebuza.
Guebuza was swept into a second term with a 75-percent victory in elections last year, as his Frelimo party increased its overall majority.
But they have been unable to stop the currency's slide or the steep rise in prices.
And a household survey due later this year is expected to show that poverty has not been reduced, Marcelo Mosse, head of the Centre for Public Integrity, told AFP.
"The survey still has not been published because authorities are supposedly massaging the figures," he said.
"Most Mozambicans know that external factors influence the price increases, but they do not see a change in the government's behaviour of spending patterns," he said.
"What we need now is a political gesture from government to reduce expenditures." “It is very important and I sincerely hope that such support and contribution will continue for the peace and security in the region. The peace and security of Darfur and Sudan has very important implications for peace and security in the region,” he told reporters in Vienna.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/africa/article638154.ece/Mozambique-riots-underline-persistent-poverty