Mozambican women are faced with with a rising cost of living as they work to provide for their families. (Photo Courtesy David Gough/IRIN)

Maputo — Rioting against price rises continued for a second day on Thursday, in parts of Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola.

The motorway from Maputo to South Africa was again obstructed with improvised barricades in some of the stretches that run through Matola municipality. There were repetitions of Wednesday's scenes, with piles of tyres and tree trunks set alight in the middle of the road, particularly in the neighbourhood of Malhampswene.

Over night the barricades had been removed, and so traffic flowed normally in the early hours of Thursday morning. But as from about 10.00, the situation deteriorated again.

AIM reporters saw the police fire into the air in an attempt to disperse the protestors. Police also escorted vehicles across the most dangerous areas.

Early in the morning youths continued to throw stones at passing vehicles on Joaquim Chissano Avenue, in central Maputo, but by midday this had died down. Elsewhere in the city, sporadic shots indicated that the police were still clashing with groups of rioters.

The riots have closed down much of the city. Schools, banks and most shops remained closed on Thursday, and traffic in the streets was very light. There was no sign of the mini-buses (known as "chapas") that provide much of the city's passenger transport.

Maputo International Airport, however, is open, and South African Airways (SAA) resumed its normal flights between Johannesburg and Maputo. SAA used a much larger plane than normal for its morning flight, to accommodate passengers who had been stranded overnight in Johannesburg, after SAA cancelled both its Wednesday fights to Maputo.

SAA panicked on Wednesday, and told outright lies to its passengers, claiming that there was "political violence" in Maputo, and that it was impossible to travel from the airport to the city centre. In fact, the airport did not close, and Mozambique Airlines (LAM) operated all its flights.

SAA's contempt for passengers flying to Maputo was brutally evident, as unsympathetic staff announced that there was no way the airline would pay for any accommodation for those stranded in Johannesburg, in violation of internationally recognised passenger rights. For the hours that they were kept waiting in Johannesburg airport, the passengers were not even offered a sip of water.

Just as with the last serious bout of rioting, on 5 February 2008, there is no evidence of anybody coordinating the violence. Protestors were called onto the streets by text messages sent by mobile phones.

On 5 February 2008, there was a simple demand - that the government cancel the increase (of up to 50 per cent) in "chapa" fares that was to take effect that day. The government was able to meet that demand by introducing a scheme to subsidise the fuel used by the chapas.

But this time, there is no list of demands - just an angry protest against rising prices, particularly of foodstuffs. This week, the price of bread has risen - the result of increases in the price of wheat, caused by such factors as the catastrophic fires in Russia. Despite a government drive to increase domestic wheat production, most of the country's wheat is still imported.

But there has been a relentless rise in the price of many other foodstuffs, due to the depreciation of the Mozambican currency, the metical, particular against the South African rand. The strong rand hits Mozambique hard, because so much food is imported from South Africa.

In late 2008, there were about 2.5 meticais to the rand. Today it takes around five meticais to buy one rand.