BEIRA MAYOR SACKS COUNCILLORS

Maputo, 11 Sept (AIM) – The mayor of the central Mozambican city of Beira, Daviz Simango, has sacked three city councillors who were all senior local figures in the country’s main opposition party, the former rebel movement Renamo, reports Thursday’s issue of the daily newsheet “Diario Independente”,

Simango was elected mayor in 2003 on the Renamo ticket. His management of municipal governance was widely praised, and it was assumed that Renamo would run him for a second term of office in the local elections scheduled for 19 November. Indeed, Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama said as much on several occasions.

Until 28 August, when Dhlakama abruptly changed the Renamo position, and announced that the Renamo candidate for mayor of Beira would be Renamo parliamentarian Manuel Pereira. This, the Renamo leadership claimed, was in reaction to demands from the party’s grass roots in Beira.

But the Renamo supporters who poured onto the streets of Beira, and briefly occupied the Renamo offices, all backed Simango, not Pereira. The Renamo Sofala provincial political delegate, Fernando Mbararano, claimed that the pro-Simango demonstrations were organised by “functionaries of Beira City Council” who owed their jobs to Simango.

But it now turns out that Mbararano himself was, until Simango sacked him on Tuesday, a “functionary of Beira City Council”. For, quite unnoticed by the Mozambican media, Simango had put key Renamo figures onto the City Council, who also happened to be former officers in the Renamo guerrilla army, with no obvious qualifications for running a major city.

Doubtless providing sinecures for Renamo officers was part of the deal Simango had to accept to become the Renamo 2003 candidate.

Mbararano was councillor for the construction portfolio. The other two men sacked were Faque Inacio, councillor for civil protection and transport, who is also Beira city Renamo political delegate, and Manuel Bissopo, councillor for finance, and Renamo candidate for mayor of Dondo, 30 kilometres west of Beira.

The three men told “Diario Independente” they were not worried about losing their City council posts because they have other sources of income – notably the pension paid by the state to former military officers under the demobilization deal of 1994.

They were confident that Simango, now running as an independent candidate for mayor, would be “judged at the ballot box”.
(AIM)