Good afternoon. The latest political controversy being hotly discussed on social media in Mozambique is the transport minister João Matlombe’s decision to suspend the operations of bus company City Link, following the accident in Maputo province last week that left seven people dead.
A lot of people have argued (and the consensus among lawyers seems to be) that Matlombe does not have the power to suspend the company from running buses just because of an accident, even one as horrific as this. Is there, then, any justification for the government to act outside the law, something that happens pretty often in Mozambique anyway, and usually for the wrong motives?
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The reason why Mozambique’s roads are so dangerous (over 600 people have died in road accidents so far this year, more than from malaria, HIV/AIDS or the war in Cabo Delgado province) is not that Mozambicans are particularly irresponsible by nature or particularly bad at driving. It is that there is no safety culture, and that is partly the responsibility of bus and minibus operators, who do nothing to encourage their drivers to drive safely. Instead, what they do is make them work to exhaustion and set daily targets that force them to exceed the speed limit and overtake dangerously, which is what happened in last week’s accident. Nor do they check if their drivers have a valid licence for driving buses or if they are properly insured. And that is before we discuss the condition of their buses.
