A violent election in Mozambique threatens a hard-won peace
Oct 10th 2019ON OCTOBER 7TH Anastácio Matavele left a training session for election observers in Xai-Xai, the capital of Gaza province in southern Mozambique. Matavele, an experienced observer, was chased in his car by men allegedly belonging to a specialist police unit, who then shot and killed him. Authorities were already struggling to explain how the electoral roll in Gaza, a stronghold of FRELIMO, the ruling party, came to have 300,000 more names on it than there are adults in the province. Now they must explain whether the state murdered a warden of Mozambican democracy.Matavele’s death is just the latest cause for concern ahead of elections on October 15th. These are the sixth presidential and parliamentary votes since the end of the civil war, which ran from 1977 to 1992. They will be among the most violent, says Zenaida Machado of Human Rights Watch, an NGO. Campaigning is taking place against the backdrop of two conflicts: one old, the other relatively new.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address