Large meetings, claiming to represent “the moslem, hindu and ismaili communities”, were held in Maputo on Friday morning and again that evening in protest against alleged police inaction in the face of a wave of kidnappings of wealthy businessmen of Asian origin, or members of their families, in recent months.
The latest kidnapping, of a 17 year old girl, occurred in a central Maputo street in Thursday evening. She is Heena Farouk Ayoob, the niece of businessman Momede Khalid Ayoob, who was assassinated outside a Maputo mosque in April. This kidnapping was the spark that led to the Friday meetings.
Although billed as meetings of three religious communities, the participants were overwhelmingly moslem. The two people who appeared most prominently in the media as spokesmen for the meetings are not business figures – one, Ismael Mussa, is a politician, a parliamentary deputy for the opposition Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), and the other, Sheikh Cassamo David, is a moslem religious leader.
The Friday meetings threatened to bring trade to a standstill, to withhold taxes, and to instruct moslems how to vote in the next municipal and general elections (i.e. to vote against the ruling Frelimo Party).
As a result, Interior Minister Alberto Mondlane went to speak to the group on Saturday. This meeting was held behind closed doors, and at its end, Mondlane told reporters that a shopkeepers’ strike was no solution to the problem of kidnappings.
“It would not be good for Mozambicans for shops to close because there is crime”, he said. Rather, commercial activities should continue as normal, allowing citizens to get on with their lives normally, “while we continue to fight crime”.
Mondlane said he had told the meeting that the police had been on the trail of the kidnappers and had arrested several of them (11, according to police reports in July). “There are people involved in the kidnappings who have been detained”, he said. “There is evidence against them. All that remains is to bring them to trial”.
Cassamo David admitted that Mondlane “gave us some information that we did not know earlier”, but he could give no answer when asked whether the strike planned for Monday would go ahead.
That answer came at around midday on Sunday, when a statement, again claiming to come from “the moslem, hindu and ismaili communities”, was sent to some of the media. In it the group declared that the strike would indeed take place on Monday, but would only last for one day, rather than the three originally threatened. In addition, demonstrations would be held in all provincial capitals as from 1 September.
But nobody elected Ismail Mussa or Cassamo David to represent shopkeepers, much less to represent all the country’s moslems (about four million, since the 2007 census gave the proportion of moslems in the population as 18 per cent). The main result of a day long strike will be that the strikers lose business, as shoppers go to establishments that are not on strike.
Frelimo has condemned what it regards as a “Machiavellian” attempt “to mix together religion, crime and race”.
Edson Macuacua, spokesperson for the Frelimo Central Committee, currently meeting in the southern city of Matola, declared on Saturday that Frelimo is in solidarity with the victims of kidnappings, and calls for dialogue and harmony in Mozambican society.
Macuacua argued that, instead of talking about strikes and demonstrations, those behind the Friday meetings should seek ways of increasing collaboration with the institutions of justice in order to solve problems.
Post published in: News