Good afternoon. On Saturday, police fired tear gas to stop members and supporters of Anamola marching through Quelimane after a rally marking the party’s first anniversary. The marchers were gathered at the Sagrada Família football pitch and meant to walk through the city after the speeches. Police deployed along the main avenues made sure they did not.
On Monday, the Zambezia police command gave its account, in a statement carried by the broadcaster Miramar. It said Quelimane is midway through a ten-day carnival, and that the authorities had agreed with Anamola beforehand to hold only a static rally, not a march. When the rally ended, and people tried to form a marching column, the police say they ignored orders to disperse, threw stones and broke a police windscreen, and that the gas, lasting about five minutes, contained that.
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The account answers one question and opens several. Under Mozambican law, a march can be restricted, but by the civil authorities, in writing, not by the police on the day, and the command has shown no such order. Its version also runs against the weekend footage, which shows a crowd preparing to move off with no disorder before the gas, and against Anamola's account that it had notified the route. The city's own mayor called the response muscled and disproportionate, hard to square with a claim that all sides had agreed to the terms. Whether stones came before or after the gas is what an independent inquiry is for. A public-order power is not a blank cheque to be cashed after the event.
That is why the context matters. The gas went off a day after Ben Saul, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, ended a ten-day visit with a statement listing extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and excessive force by the security services. His subject was Cabo Delgado, not opposition rallies, but the thread is the same: a security apparatus that answers to no one. And it lands a week before Frelimo gathers its cadres in Chimoio, from 21 to 23 August, for a conference the party is selling as its own renewal. A show of strength by Mondlane, in a city the opposition already governs, was never going to be welcome that week.
