Only Anibalzinho still free

Samito (Samuel Januario Nhare), one of the three murderers who escaped from the cells of the Maputo City Police on 7 December, was arrested Wednesday in Caia, Sofala, as he stepped off a ferry. Anibalzinho (Anibal dos Santos Junior), convicted of murdering journalist Carlos Cardoso, was allowed to escape with Samito and is still at large.


The third escapee, Todinho (Luis de Jesus Tomas), was shot and killed in Maputo last week under unclear circumstances. Police say he was injured in a shoot-out and dumped, dead or dying, by his accomplices. But others stories claim he was executed by the police or by other gang members. Samito and Todinho were both linked to, and protected by, highly placed criminal elements in the police, who would not have wanted them to go on trial as had been planned, and would have been anxious to stop them talking.


Samito is a right-hand man of Mozambique’s most wanted criminal, Agostinho Chauque. Chauque’s gang was responsible for a series of bank robberies and murders of police officers, and seems to avoid arrest with ease. Samito himself is accused of involvement in ten murders.


Cholera hits 15,000
with 170 dead


Cholera is now present in most of Mozambique, and there have been 15,000 cases notified since the outbreak began in October 2007. So far, 170 people have died. This is a mortality rate of 1.1%, which is considered low.


The spokesperson of the Health Ministry, Martinho Djedje, said “We are not in a catastrophic epidemic, but new cases are registered every day in almost all provinces”. The number of cases is increasing, almost surely due to the heavy rains, which cause local flooding, mud, and sanitation problems. The Ministry of Health is working with UNICEF, WHO, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the Mozambican Red Cross Society to combat the outbreak.


The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says there are no major problems “because the cholera outbreak is consistent with previous years and agencies had pre-positioned supplies”. The text of OCHA Regional Update No 3, 9 Jan, is attached. The full report with maps is available on:
http://ochaonline.un.org/OchaLinkClick.aspx?link=ocha&docId=110


Cholera is present throughout southern Africa but OCHA sees no evidence of spread from Zimbabwe to Mozambique. OCHA estimates that in Zimbabwe there have been more than 35,000 cases since 15 August 2008 and more than 1700 deaths, a 5% mortality rate, which is quite high.


Attacks on cholera centres
in Cabo Delgado


Protestors attacked a cholera treatment centre and a prevention team in Cabo Delgado province in the north last weekend, according to the daily Notícias. In the provincial capital Pemba, local people burned down three tents which had been set as a treatment centre. And in Mecúfi, south of Pemba, an anti-cholera team was attacked; a nurse, a driver, and six others were beaten and accused of spreading the disease rather than treating it. (Clippings attached.)


This is a repeat of incidents in coastal Nampula seven years ago, in which brigades putting chlorine in wells were instead accused of putting cholera in the wells, and were attacked. Those protests were studied by Carlos Serra and a team from Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, and published in 2003 in an excellent small book Cólera e catarse. (The full book, in Portuguese, is posted on my website: http://www.tinyurl.com/mozamb. My preface, in English and Portuguese, is attached to this report.)


The shocking finding of the study was that poor people strongly believed that the rich and powerful wanted to kill them. In a climate of distrust and disempowerment, the poor responded violently against outsiders who they assumed were putting cholera in their water to eliminate them.


The study also found that the campaign against chlorine in the water was not a campaign against the state or against modernising, but rather just the opposite. It was a protest against a state which had become distanced from the people, which only appeared before elections, and which increasingly failed to provide services and a better standard of living. It was not against modernity, but against the failure to provide the fruits of development.


And it is notable that the Noticias article on a meeting in Pemba after the tents were burned, there were strong criticisms of the city authorities.


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