Mozambique: Street vendors in Maputo return to streets after clashes with police

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Mozambique: Street vendors in Maputo return to streets after clashes with police

1:57 CAT | 17 Mar 2020

Photo: O País

Street vendors in downtown Maputo returned to the streets after riots and clashes with the police on Friday in protest at the measure forcing vendors to leave the sidewalks.

“We have no other alternative. If we are here it is because there are no jobs and we are fighting for survival,” Atanásio Mário, a vendor on Avenida Guerra Popular in downtown Maputo for 10 years told Lusa.

The Maputo City Council’s measure obliging vendors to leave the streets of the Mozambican capital came into force on Friday, having generated confrontations between sellers and the police forces, who were trying to stop them.

Wielding posters with messages of repudiation against the measure imposed by the municipality, the traders placed barricades on the roads and burned tires, and the police responded at times with violence, shooting rubber bullets and using tear gas.

The municipality of Maputo wants traders to occupy the more than 4,700 stalls available in the markets of the Mozambican capital, but the sellers consider the options that exist are too far away from the city centre.

“They are talking about an option in the Laulane district, but that place is far away. I do not know it myself I wonder if you are going to sell something there,” said Cristiano Hugo, owner of a small legalised establishment on the same avenue.

“Dropping these young people is not the solution,” Cristiano Hugo stressed, pointing out that these are young people who have not found employment opportunities, but nevertheless try to earn an honest living.

Lusa contacted the Municipality of Maputo City, which promised an official statement in the coming days, but assured that there is no deal possible without the exit of the vendors.

In Friday’s protests, there were records of injured people and others still detained in unknown numbers, and traffic was stopped on the avenue and shops closed due to unrest.

Watch below a report by TV Miramar on the protests in Maputo on Friday.