Savane beach community is unaware of any illegal entry there

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Savane beach community is unaware of any illegal entry there

3:21 CAT | 21 Jul 2020

Photo: O País

Last week, the president of the Provincial Assembly of Sofala, Antónia Charre, said during a weekly public health meeting that foreign nationals were entering the country via the beach in Savane, specifically in the region called “Casa Partida ” (“Broken House”- named after a tourist resort there which was destroyed by coastal erosion).

Charre said she collected this information during meetings he held with the local community, about 40 kilometres from Beira.

This Monday, ‘O País’ went to the administrative post in Nhangau to verify matters. The local community said they were surprised at the information, which they had been following in the media and in meetings led by local leaders, and were concerned.

Sixty-year-old Francisca Saíde, who has lived in Savane since her childhood, said that this is nothing more than a rumour, that had “unfortunately sown fear in our communities”.

“We have never seen unknown individuals, national or foreign, entering our territory from the sea. We were surprised by the information in the media, and, in the following days, there were several local meetings to clarify this information, and we came to the conclusion that this is just a rumour,” he added.
Neighbourhood secretary Basílio Augusto said that nobody in the place the information supposedly came from knew “where these people came from, when they came, or who saw them. So everything indicates that it is a rumour”.

The police, who set up a police post in Savane after the Provincial Assembly president’s claims, where previously only ad-hoc patrols had been taking place, said that the investigation carried out shortly afterwards concluded that there was no entry of illegal aliens in Beira or throughout the province of Sofala.

“What we found is that the believers of a church called Zione Church had been going to the beaches of Savane to offer prayers. In fact, eight believers from this church, wearing religious robes, were arrested last Wednesday while praying in the area. This was a clear breach of presidential decree, and they were released later. So there is currently no entry of illegal aliens into our country via the coast of Sofala province,” Director of Order and Public Security in Sofala, Marinho Muchanga, explained.