Maputo — Informal militias have sprung up in several neighbourhoods in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola as panic-stricken residents seek to protect themselves against gangs of mysterious "homens-catana' ("machete men').
The "homens-catana' are supposedly among the over 1,500 inmates who escaped from the Maputo Central and top security prisons on Wednesday. They are alleged to be armed with knives and invade the homes of Maputo citizens.
But the police, while trying to track down the escapees, deny that there is any such phenomenon as "homens-catana'.
Yet the rumour spread rapidly throughout the outskirts of Maputo, and led to the formation of militias to hunt down the elusive "homens-catana'.
Just as in the days of the one-party state, over 30 years ago, this "people's vigilance' had some very unpleasant effects. The newly formed militias intercepted anybody they did not know, questioned them, beat them and, in extreme cases, murdered them.
A reporter from the independent television station STV, found that a young man had been seized in the Matola neighbourhood of Machava, and interrogated. His tormentors had never seen him before - so who was he, where had he come from, what was he doing? When he could not answer these questions satisfactorily, the militia beat him to death and burned the body.
It was later discovered that this man was indeed an escapee from the Maputo Central Prison. But that hardly justifies his grisly fate - after all, neither he, nor any of the other escapees, had been sentenced to death.
In his latest broadcast to his supporters, former presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane claimed that the mass breakout was the work of the police, who had unleashed potentially dangerous criminals onto the nearby communities.
The government has given two contradictory explanations for the mass escape. First, Justice Minister Helena Kida told reporters that the escape was an inside job, plotted from within the prison, and had nothing to do with the demonstrations and rioting by Mondlane's supporters.
But the following day the General Commander of the police, Bernadino Rafael, claimed that it was pro-Mondlane demonstrators who had broken into the prison and released the inmates.
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On Saturday, Deputy Justice Minister Filimao Suaze told reporters that the government has set up a Commission of Inquiry into the breakout, but he declined to say who its members are.
He said that, of the 1,534 escapees, so far 280 have returned to the prison. Some of them had been recaptured, but Suaze that many had turned themselves in voluntarily or had been handed over to the authorities by their families.
