Venancio Mondlane questioned in libel case – AIM

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Venancio Mondlane questioned in libel case – AIM

8:35 CAT | 22 Aug 2018

Photo: Canalmoz

The Maputo city branch of the Mozambican Public Prosecutor’s Office on Monday questioned Venancio Mondlane, the mayoral candidate for Maputo of the main opposition party, Renamo, in connection with a libel suit filed by Lourenco Vilanculos, city councillor for Kambukwane municipal district.

Vilanculo alleges that Mondlane accused him and other municipal officials of receiving three million US dollars from the illegal sale of the Khodamo football field, which lies between the 25th June and Bagamoyo neighbourhoods.

Mondlane argues that the accusation comes from local people. He says he presented the attorneys with documentary evidence including the minutes of a meeting of residents in which the buyer (the company Mocambique Terra Mar Ltd) stated that it made this payment to the municipal authorities.

Mondlane says that, in June 2017, he was contacted by residents of 25th June, Bagamoyo and three adjacent neighbourhoods asking for his assistance in blocking the sale. By this time the company had fenced the field, destroyed the goalposts, and dug craters – it seemed that a community asset was well on the way to being wiped from the map of Maputo.

At the time, Mondlane was the rapporteur for the parliamentary group of the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM) – it was a year later that he defected from the MDM to Renamo.

Mondlane claims that it was thanks to his intervention that, within 48 hours, the Maputo Municipal Council retreated, cancelled the sale and announced the return of the football field to the community field.

After the two hour interrogation by the prosecutors, Mondlane told reporters he felt stronger and more committed to denouncing those municipal officials he regarded as “corrupt, bandits and scoundrels”.

Cited in Tuesday’s issue of the independent newsheet “Mediafax”, Mondlane noted that, if the libel complaint was serious proceedings should have begun in 2017. Instead the prosecutors were only acting now, shortly after Renamo had announced he was its mayoral candidate in Maputo for the municipal elections scheduled for 10 October.

“Proceedings in a defamation case don’t take a year”, he said, “but during a year they did absolutely nothing. But it was enough for Renamo to appoint me a candidate for the case to start rolling”.

“We’re going to clean up Maputo, and that’s the problem”, he said. “They’re afraid. They know it’s all over. This city belongs to the inhabitants of Maputo. They know it’s the end of the regime. They’re not going to sell the city any more as if it were slices of a cake”.

Vilanculos is demanding six million dollars in damages from Mondlane – but Mondlane said that, even if he owned as much as six million dollars, he would use it to return Maputo to a state of beauty, including the green spaces, and the areas for sport and recreation, which he claimed are being sold off bit by bit.

Source: AIM