Some of the residents of the historic Mafalala neighbourhood in the Mozambican capital lament the unfulfilled promises of development and the fight against unemployment and drug trafficking and consumption.
Andraxo Manuel Simango runs a small business selling digital payment services, among other stalls irregularly sown along the promenade of the iconic neighbourhood where heads of state Samora Machel and Joaquim Chissano, footballer Eusébio and poet Noémia de Sousa came from.
‘The neighbourhood has to improve. The young people here in the neighbourhood (…) are being taken away, the kids have a lot of vices, there’s a lot of banditry here in Malafala. (…) We have the police station upstairs, but nothing is improving. Young people are on drugs,’ he laments.
At a time when more than 17 million Mozambicans are being asked to choose a new president, he wants to believe that the candidate of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), the party in power since independence, can bring about the change that he firmly believes is urgent. And the one chosen to succeed Filipe Nyusi, who has reached the constitutional limit of two terms in office, could be the solution, he says, for a country that ‘is sick, in need of a cure’.
‘Malafala is a good neighbourhood, a historic neighbourhood (…) It can get better. We believe in it. Chapo’s new mandate must create jobs for young people. (…) There are no jobs in Maputo. We want Chapo to bring good conditions for young people, for everyone, whether it’s mum or grandpa, we want a good life. (…) We’re going to believe in Chapo, we’ll see, won’t we?’ he concludes.
Timóteo Matime is getting ready to enter the crossroads of alleys that give shape to the neighbourhood that shelters around 20,000 people of different ethnicities and religions and is a legacy of the country’s migratory movement and Portuguese colonial segregationism.
The houses are punctuated by cement and zinc sheets. Dirt roads wind through them. And these, in turn, are torn up by water lines that carry the inevitable evictions of the residents.
The neighbourhood is only a few kilometres from the presidential palace, but for Timóteo, it remains far from the political priorities. ‘Sometimes they say it’s the drug addicts‘ neighbourhood,’ but if there were ‘more jobs for young people, the Mafalala neighbourhood wouldn’t be what they’re talking about,’ he says, arguing that any change can only happen ‘if the party is changed,’ referring to Frelimo, in power since 1975.
After all, he argues, ‘even a person can’t eat only rice all the time, sometimes they have to stop eating rice [and] eat xima [a cornflour-based dish], to see what xima will do to them’.
Ussimane Abdul Amade, 67, stands out at the bottom of a dirt field, wearing a Sporting shirt, very close to a mural dedicated to Eusébio, in which the former footballer appears wearing the red Benfica kit and, in another image, sporting the green shirt of the then Sporting de Lourenço Marques.
His view of the neighbourhood couldn’t be more antagonistic. He guarantees that today it is safe and therefore a tourist attraction: ‘It’s a neighbourhood that any foreigner wants to visit. (…) At the moment it’s a neighbourhood with a lot of international fame.’
The Frelimo grassroots activist accepts that people talk about the insecurity of yesteryear, but emphasises that everything has changed in the meantime. ‘Everyone was afraid to come to the neighbourhood, because there was a lot of insecurity, but now it’s a quiet neighbourhood, there are no big problems, (…) you can pass here at midnight. (…) Before, even at 7pm, you were afraid to pass here,’ he admits.
‘I think the government already has a project to develop the neighbourhood, both the Mafalala and Chamanculo neighbourhoods. It’s in the programme and I think it could happen in the short term, depending on the people who are going to run the country,’ he concludes.
Gil Fernando has been with his friends on the same football pitch since the morning. He wanted to be a professional footballer, but it’s ‘secondary school, studying construction’ that he’s focusing on, hoping to get the chance to enter professional education in Portugal.
The problems of ‘young people who take drugs a lot’ don’t pass him by, but he also criticises the police for ‘a job that isn’t being done 100%’.
But despite the insecurity and drugs, as well as the unemployment and lack of opportunities, the youth that will be with him for some time to come gives him one certainty about the neighbourhood: ‘Many stars have come out of here. (…) With time, many generations will pass through here and make history.’
Today marks the last day of the electoral campaign for the general elections scheduled for Wednesday.
Running for president are Daniel Chapo, supported by Frelimo, Ossufo Momade, supported by the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the largest opposition party, Lutero Simango, supported by the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), the third party in parliament, and Venâncio Mondlane, a former Renamo member and MP, supported by the Optimistic Party for the Development of Mozambique (Podemos), which has no parliamentary representation.
Source: Lusa