Forçosamente

Forcibly.

Today Maputo has been gripped by the fear that the police are forcibly rounding up young men to swell the ranks of the military needed to fight the insurgency in the north-eastern coastal corner of Cabo Delgado province, on the border with Tanzania. There appears to have been an incident related to military recruitment in the Zimpeto bairro (suburb) of Maputo, sparking panic that under-employed youths are being taken involuntarily. At the age of eighteen, Mozambicans must register for military service but only a handful are ever drafted, and it’s easy to excuse oneself if studying, working overseas or being occupied in anything else gainful. Mozambique has the pocket of instability described above, and another in a small central area involving a breakaway group of the main opposition party, but is otherwise relatively stable and non-authoritarian compared to some other African countries. Therefore I don’t believe this forced conscription could work against people’s will in the way the news was spreading around the capital today.

Even Paulo was ranting about it as he drove me to the office in his txopela. His excitement was at such an unintelligible fever pitch that he had to stop on the side of the road and send me a text message to explain the words he was trying to convey. ‘Polícia a levar jovens pra guerra’ (police are taking youth for war).

With my friend Lundula and two of his old friends we’d planned a weekend trip to Bilene in the adjacent province of Gaza. The frantic rumour mill almost scuppered our ability to travel with rumours of roadblocks, forced removal of men from cars and irrational fear. Anything is possible but the chance of a middle class Mozambican with connections being dragged from a vehicle and drafted to a remote province is almost zero. We eventually resolved the trip should go ahead as it was unlikely that by the end of 200-kilometre journey we’d be conscripted members of the Mozambican military with a vehicle impounded and put to use by the army.

The drive was still hair-raising as we were doing it through the evening, after work and the obligatory shopping for supplies. Plenty of traffic police stops, pedestrians hanging out on dark stretches of road and drivers who cannot master the headlamp dimmer switch. With sore and traumatised eyes we rolled into the sandy streets of Bilene at 11pm, had crisp sandwiches and went to bed.