Mozambicans recount ordeal of having their vehicles torched in South Africa – O País | Watch

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Mozambicans recount ordeal of having their vehicles torched in South Africa – O País | Watch

6:26 CAT | 31 Jan 2023

Photo: O País

Newspaper ‘O País’ has heard the stories of some of the Mozambicans who survived the torching of their vehicles in South Africa. The victims recount the moments of terror at the hands of armed criminals who said that their actions were a message to the government – without specifying which government

Couple Mamad David and Suneia Habibo and their three children were returning to Mozambique in their Toyota Prado on the 28th of January, after visiting Durban on work and on holiday. On the way, they were chased by gun-toting criminals in two vehicles.

“For my part, what happened was a chase of 20 kilometres before the village of Sodwana and I kept driving and I did warn my wife that this car with no registration plate had suddenly entered the road and was following me, but I did not take it seriously. I was on the move and, suddenly, the car passed us at good speed, so I thought my intuition was wrong,” said Mamad David.

But Mamad ‘s intuition turned out to be right. His car was torched by 12 thieves, all of them armed.

“Right after, they took me out of the car, made me turn off the car and poured gasoline in it and set the whole car on fire,” Mamad said. “They didn’t have any compassion; their aim was just to burn the cars. To the last, I asked him not to do it, but he pushed me and showed me a firearm and that’s when he set the car on fire, put the gasoline directly on it, set it on fire and they waited for about five minutes until there was nothing that could be saved.”

And the gunmen left a message: “This is a government problem. It’s nothing to do with you. Government problem,” – but without specifying which government.

It was a moment of panic and pain. Suneia, David’s wife, saw all the belongings acquired in South Africa consumed by fire without being able to do anything. Her children are traumatised.

“It is very sad what has happened to us since this event,” she says. “We begged, we pleaded, I offered phones, I even told them to remove everything that was in the car so that they would let us go, but they had no compassion towards us, including the children who were around eight. They didn’t want to know, they were rough, they were animals, I can say, South Africans have nothing to do with Mozambicans.”

Ayman Calu was travelling with his family in a borrowed Nissan Patrol vehicle that ended up being torched after a long chase and even surviving the shots fired by the criminals.

“And when they saw that I wasn’t giving in, they started shooting at my car. In that moment of distress, I heard seven to eight bullets hitting us. I was paying attention to the road and the rear-view mirror and I saw that he took another magazine out of his waistband and loaded the gun again and went back to shooting seven or eight bullets, that’s what I managed to count and one of the bullets went through the door, it was the bullet that probably hit the right front tire of my car.”

The families are particularly sensitive to the Mozambican government’s apparent absence in the face of this tragedy. “Our government must step up and protect us. If something similar had happened to South Africans [in Mozambique], the South African government would do everything to make its citizens feel comfortable. Thank God we didn’t lose our lives, but our government must protect us and must make the South African government understand that it must compensate us.”

In all, six cars were stopped by the criminals. Two managed to escape, while four ended up in flames, leaving scars on these families which time may perhaps erase.

Watch the Miramar report.