Beira Houses - Simango Rejects Frelimo Claims

The mayor of the central Mozambican city of Beira, Daviz Simango, has again insisted that the Beira City Council is the rightful owner of 15 buildings from which it risks being evicted by order of the Sofala provincial court.

There were 17 buildings in dispute, and the court has ordered the Council to vacate 15 of them this week.

The buildings house neighbourhood secretariats, the lowest rung in the City Council structure. Their function was much the same prior to 2003, when the opposition won control of the Council in the year's municipal elections. There were neighbourhood secretariats in the building when the Council was run by the ruling Frelimo Party, and the neighbourhood secretariats are there now.

But in 2004, after losing the Beira election, Frelimo claimed that the houses were not municipal property, but were registered in its name. The Council, under its previous leadership, had been paying rent to Frelimo, it said.

A court case ensued, and the Sofala Court found in favour of Frelimo in December 2004. Simango appealed to the Supreme Court. In 2008, however, the Sofala Court demanded that the City Council pay a deposit to ensure that its ruling was suspended while the appeal went ahead.

The Council paid - but last week the Presiding Judge of the Sofala Court, Hermenegildo Jone, announced that the deposit was not enough. The Council had paid 160,795 meticais (about 4,640 US dollars, at current exchange rates), but the Court wanted 795,502 meticais.

Thus, it took the court two years to tell Simango that the deposit was not large enough. There could hardly be a better example of the lethargy that cripples the court system and brings Mozambican justice into disrepute.

Simango has now shown reporters documents which, he claims, prove that the buildings do not belong to Frelimo. After the 1976 nationalisation of rented housing, the buildings supposedly passed into the hands of the state housing body, APIE, with Frelimo as the tenant. Frelimo then exercised its right to buy the houses from APIE.

But some of the houses, Simango claims, never belonged to APIE. The one in Mecuti neighbourhood, for instance, was only built in 2002 - and with funds from the City Council. The Mayor said that can be proved from the 2002 Beira City Investment Budget.

Similarly, the building used by the Matadouro neighbourhood secretariat was never an APIE building. It had once been used as a work yard for an urban rehabilitation project, and when the contractor abandoned it, the Council took it over.

As for the Ponta Gea neighbourhood, Simango said the building cited by Frelimo is not used by the neighbourhood secretariat at all, but by the Sofala Civil Identification Directorate.

The Mayor said that the confusion of addresses continues for some of the other buildings claimed by Frelimo. Cited in Tuesday's issue of the independent daily "O Pais", Simango claimed that Frelimo had been in such a hurry "to forge documents" that it had got the addresses wrong.

As for the contract presented to the court showing that Frelimo had been an APIE tenant, this was dated 7 January 2001, but many of the buildings had housed neighbourhood secretariats since 1998, the year that Beira attained municipal status.

Frelimo's announcement that it intended to buy the buildings from APIE did not come until 23 December 2004 (this, like all sales of APIE property was a public announcement, and was published in the Beira daily paper "Diario de Mocambique"). By this time, Simango was mayor, and the Council wrote to the Minister of Public Works and Housing, urging him not to allow the sale.

Although some of the buildings were still in APIE's name, Frelimo started charging the Council rent on them as from 22 January 2003. The rent contract was signed by Simango's predecessor, Chivavice Muchangage. The total rent paid was slightly less than 51,200 meticais.

Since Frelimo was a tenant of APIE at the time, this deal with Muchangage was sub-letting, which is a practice specifically outlawed under the rent law.

On Tuesday morning Simango met with Jone, and with representatives of Frelimo. The outcome is uncertain. Several of the buildings are still occupied by Simango's supporters, who have pledged not to allow the bailiffs or the police to evict the Council.

Source: allafrica - 2010.07.20

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