Mozambique Elections: Renamo office attacked in Chokwe – AIM

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Mozambique Elections: Renamo office attacked in Chokwe – AIM

7:21 CAT | 05 Oct 2023

Image: CIP

Unidentified arsonists set fire on Wednesday to the office of Mozambique’s main opposition party, Renamo, in the city of Chokwe, in the southern province of Gaza, according to the latest issue of the bulletin on the municipal elections issued by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP).

The Renamo head of logistics in Chokwe said that almost all the logistics for the election campaign, such as flags, posters and foodstuffs, were destroyed. The unidentified attackers threw petrol through the window, and set the office on fire.

The Renamo office was a small space, which burnt down easily, with all the material that was inside.

Also on Wednesday, Renamo and Frelimo supporters clashed violently in the Ntomeni market, located in the 3rd neighbourhood, the most populous neighbourhod in Chokwe. The police had to resort to force to solve the problem, and avoid worse violence.

In the northern port city of Nacala, members of the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR – the Mozambican equivalent of the riot police) were sent into action on Tuesday to separate Frelimo and Renamo supporters.

The Nacala district police commander, Sansao Sigauque, told AIM that motorcades of the two parties, coming from opposite parts of the city, faced each other at the Matibane crossroads. He said the two sides were shouting insults at each other, and he believed that the UIR intervention prevented anything worse.

“Now that we are at a crucial phase in the campaign, there is a tendency that when Party A goes to a particular place, Party B goes to the same place”, Sigauque said. That had happened at Matibane.

He said the police became aware in good time that one of the motorcades had diverted from its originally agreed route, in order to head into an area where the other party was campaigning.

“So we put the UIR between the two motorcades”, said Siguque. “We told the UIR to repel any kind of violent behavior”.

Young Frelimo and Renamo supporters, he added, had passed in front of the offices of their opponents merely to shout insults. As a result one youth (he did not say from which party) had been arrested.

There was also the case of a Renamo member who threw stones at a vehicle of a Frelimo member, damaging it. This case came speedily to trial, and the Renamo member was convicted (Sigauque gave no details of the sentence).

“There are undisciplined youths who abandon their own motorcades and chase other parties in order to cause confusion”, said Sigauque. “When we saw this situation, we urged them to abandon this kind of behavior”.

Drawing a balance of the first seven days of the election campaign in Nacala, Sigauque said the police had recorded two cases of physical confrontations in Muanona and Mucone neighbourhoods. The youths involved in these clashes, he added “acted out of emotion, since they are not even old enough to vote”.

Sigauque said children had been used to vandalise the propaganda material of opposing parties. The police had identified two case of minors under ten years of age whose parents are members of political parties (he did not say which ones) and sent them to destroy the posters of other parties.

Source: AIM