Once again, the Sofala Provincial Court in central Mozambique is threatening to evict Beira City Council from 15 buildings, and hand them over to the ruling Frelimo Party.
According to a report in Monday's issue of the independent daily "O Pais", the 15 buildings will be handed over in three instalments on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The provincial court is acting with remarkable haste, since the appeal by the City Council against the eviction order has not yet been heard by the Supreme Court.
The dispute over the buildings dates back to the opposition victory in the Beira municipal election of 2003. On taking office, the new mayor, Daviz Simango, assumed that the buildings where neighbourhood secretariats, the lowest rung in the municipal structure, were operating belonged to the City Council.
Frelimo, however, said that it was the owner of the houses, and that the previous City Council, run by Frelimo, had paid rent. Simango took the issue to court, but, in December 2004, the court found in favour of Frelimo. The City Council appealed, and such is the sluggishness of the Mozambican judicial system that the appeal has not yet been heard by the Supreme Court.
Up until July of this year, nothing happened. The neighbourhood secretariats continued to operate out of the buildings, and there was no sign of any ruling from the Supreme Court.
But on 5 July, the Sofala Court ordered the Council to vacate the buildings. According to the presiding judge of the provincial court, Hermenegildo Jone, the appeal to the Supreme Court only suspends the original court ruling, if the correct deposit is paid. Since it had not been paid, the Council would have to leave the buildings, even though its appeal was still pending.
Simango had no difficulty in proving that a deposit had been paid in 2008. The sum which the City Council had deposited then was 160,575.6 meticais (about 4,500 US dollars, at current exchange rates). Jone then issued a press release recognising that this money was paid, but claiming that it was not enough. The Court said that the deposit should have been 795,502 meticais.
Simango reacted immediately, saying that the deposit made by the Council was based on the value of the houses as assessed, not by the Council, but by Frelimo itself. The Court's figure of 792,502 meticais was not the value of the houses, but the compensation which Frelimo was demanding for its inability to use the houses, or receive rent on them. Simango said that previously the court had not demanded this sum from the Council.
The evictions threatened in July did not happen, because supporters of Simango and of the party he heads, the Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), occupied the buildings, and promised not to let bailiffs or the police seize them.
Furthermore, Simango pointed out that the court had the wrong addresses for several of the neighbourhood secretariats. He also produced documents throwing doubt on Frelimo's claim to own the buildings. That claim rests on Frelimo exercising its right, as a tenant, to buy the building from the state housing agency, APIE. But Simango showed reporters document which, he claimed, proved that some of the buildings had never belonged to APIE in the first place.
Faced with the new threat of eviction, Simango, cited in Monday's issue of the pro-MDM newsheet "Canal de Mocambique", accused the provincial court of taking orders from Frelimo "which wants to use these buildings to install a parallel government in Beira".
The latest dispatch from the Sofala court, issued by a judge named Luis Malauene, said that the City Council had not given any grounds for its appeal against the July eviction order within the eight days available, and so the evictions would now go ahead. The fact that the matter is still before the Supreme Court did not seem to bother Malauene.
He also turned down a request from the Council to appoint an expert who could, given the confusion over the addresses, help identify precisely which buildings the Court was talking about.
Simango claimed that the court action was aimed against him. It showed, he said, "that our court remains under political party influence with the clear objective of trying, at all costs, to eliminate a politician, Daviz Simango, on the pretext that he is disobeying the court".
The court was well aware that the case was full of irregularities, he added, as was the provincial attorney's office, which had taken no position. Instead, the court "is favouring a private organisation, Frelimo, at the expense of the population which needs public services".
He also criticized the silence of the Supreme Court, pointing out that about half a million people in Beira use the services provided by the neighbourhood secretariats operating out of the 15 buildings.
Frelimo, Simango accused, was trying to regain control of Beira "even if this implies a bloodbath or depriving the population of basic public services, which are provided by the neighbourhood secretariats".
Frelimo was acting in this way, he added, because it knew it could not win elections in Beira.
The renewed crisis over the 15 houses may lead Simango to cancel a visit to Germany, where he is due to speak on Tuesday at a conference in Frankfurt on "Value-based Development and Cooperation".
Simango declined to say whether he would obey the eviction order or not.
Source: Allafrica - 2010.11.15
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