Will this trigger middle class worries?

By Joseph Hanlon

One of Frelimo's essential successes has been to keep the Maputo middle class satisfied, and thus able to ignore the war in Cabo Delgado, greed and poverty. The middle class sends their children to private schools and uses private health facilities, and has cars (even if only second hand imported Japanese ones) and water tanks to cover water rationing, as well as generators in case of electricity cuts - thus able to pump water into the tanks. So the Maputo middle class is not affected by declining quality of education or the increasing water shortages.

But in the past week the number of Covid-19 cases hospitalised in Maputo city has jumped from 120 to 192, with 51 people admitted to hospital in Maputo in the 24 hours to this morning. Both private and public hospitals are now full. Maputo central hospital has to put up tents for Covid-19 patients.

"Have you noticed that elites, including political leaders, are being ravaged by Covid 19? That these elites cannot find beds in private sector clinics? That these clinics are charging astronomical sums in deposits, up front (another deregulated jungle, this one)?," asks Marcelo Mosse, editor of Carta de Mocambique.

Will the Maputo middle classes suddenly notice that in a pandemic their health and survival depends on a public sector, which they have allowed to be run down, assuming only the poor would suffer. jh