Mozambique: Mini-Bus Drivers Block Maputo-Katembe Bridge

Maputo — Traffic across the suspension bridge over the Bay of Maputo came to a halt on Monday when drivers refused to pay the toll for using the bridge.

The bridge, which links central Maputo to the outlying urban district of Katembe, is operated by the state-owned Mozambique Road Network Company (Revimo).

Rioting and destruction halted the collection of tolls in December. Rioters who claimed to be following instructions from former presidential candidate Venancio Mondlane utterly destroyed some of the tollgates.

The toll gate on the bridge was spared destruction, but no tolls were collected. Until now: - at the weekend, Revimo announced that it was resuming collection of the tolls as from Monday.

But drivers - particularly drivers of the minibus-taxis known colloquially as "chapas', which provide much of Maputo's passenger transport - refused to pay and blocked the road.

Huge traffic jams built up on both sides of the tollgate. Some angry passengers got off the buses and minibuses, and walked over the bridge into Katembe.

The toll for light vehicles is 125 meticais (about two US dollars). There are reductions for public transport and for frequent users. Motorists who complain that this toll is exorbitant have forgotten that, before the suspension bridge was built, the only way to cross the Bay was on an unreliable ferry service. The fare charged for vehicles to use the ferry was higher than the current road toll.

By midday, the police were negotiating with the minibus drivers in an attempt to persuade them to lift the blockade. At the time of writing, no consensus had been reached.

The other crucial tollgate in Maputo is on the EN4 motorway between Maputo and South Africa, operated by the South African company TRAC (Trans-African Concessions).

Here too motorists were refusing to pay the tolls, and some of them justified this by telling reporters that "the President elected by the People' has ordered that the tolls not be paid. This self-styled "President', Venancio Mondlane, claims that he won the 9 October presidential election, but has not provided the polling station results sheets that might prove this claim.

On returning from self-imposed exile, Mondlane swore himself into office and claims the legitimacy to issue government decrees.

Blocking the bridge cannot be good for the finances of the minibus drivers. While they are stationary on the bridge, they are not collecting passengers, and so are not charging fares.

At the EN4 tollgate, TRAC is using chains, which motorists cannot simply drive their vehicles through. Nonetheless the movement of traffic through the gate is agonisingly slow as Mondlane's partisans say the instructions from "our President' are that tolls must not be paid.

The toll at this gate, for light vehicles, is just 40 meticais.

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