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Mozambique: Blasts Kill Dozens in Maputo
Photo by Alfredo Mueche, in “Domingo” weekly - March 25, 2007

Mozambique’s capital Maputo is mourning the victims of a tragedy that could have been prevented, local bloggers say. Dozens were killed instantly when a series of bombs, mines and rounds of ammunition in the country’s largest arms depot exploded late Thursday and descended on nearby poor neighborhoods, triggering fires and causing residents to flee in panic. Several hundred people were injured when shells and shrapnel were thrown into the air, as the initial blasts caused further detonations, in what can be considered the country’s worst man made disaster outside a war zone . Officials blamed the high summer temperatures for the explosions, but bloggers are not happy with the explanation and want to elucidate the possible occurrence of negligence by the military. Citizens don’t seem to trust the media to find out the thruth about the tragedy. 
The explosions at the arms depot on Thursday killed 96 and wounded more than 400, according to a count made by the South African Press Association. The city of Matola, 12 km from Maputo, also received the shelling, registering eight deaths and dozens of destroyed houses. There is already an independent inquiry committee established to determine the causes of the blasts, and it may present the findings in two weeks. There were almost twenty tons of military equipment in the arsenal when the blasts occurred. The flames reached the residential zone around the depot and the blasts destroyed many houses. The population is blaming the government for the disaster, as another depot with obsolete equipment had already exploded in January.

Explosions in an arsenal in Maputo also reached the city of Matola - Moçambique para todos
On this Saturday, March 25, we’ve made a little inspection around the Mozambican capital, city of Maputo, at the places reached by the blasts at the largest arms depot in the country - Malhazine’s arsenal. According to the latest information, the explosion caused 100 deaths and more than 450 wounded (19 people died while being treated at Maputo’s Central Hospital, as reported by the Mozambican public television TVM). The Infulene Psychiatric Hospital was reached by the blasts and also many factories, warehouses, churches and residencies located near the impact zone. Portuguese television, RTP, surprised negatively for not showing absolutely anything about the Maputo situation on the News Show at 20:00 hs., but [instead] presenting the Modern university, FCP, DR Congo, Iraq, football — in sum, everything but the situation in our “brother country”. And they will afterwards talk about the “special relationship with the Lusophone Africa”…

Explosion in Maputo - Ucrânia em África
I had to call there in order to know about the terrible dimension of the tragedy. The horror and the fear. The anguish of finding yourself, and your family and friends, and your kids, abandoned to their own destiny, and all they can do is keep the children at home and far from the windows while the shells fly, the corpses appears, the ruble accumulates, and the explosions go on and on. It’s like being in Iraq. (Un)comprehensible the (un)acquaintance and the (un)reporting about the issue in the Portuguese media. Unacceptable. 

Fear, Death and Destruction in Maputo - Lida Insana

While soldiers are still going through the neighborhoods near the depot to collect the munitions that had not exploded, the government declared three days of mourning and set up a commission of inquiry into the accident. The 20 tons of obsolete arms and munitions dating from the country’s civil war, from 1976 to 1992, had been stockpiled in a depot set to be destroyed, and it was the second time in less than two months that the aging explosives in the arsenal have detonated. Bloggers want to know what made the military wait so long to take action and prevent the tragedy.
Even if there were no bad intentions, this case shows that the military must be motivated to be be careful, rigorous and inflexible with their equipment, and all the aspects involving security. These are such sensitive and dangerous things that they do not tolerate negligence. It is one more aspect that should lead our governors not to treat them as ordinary public servants. They have specific circumstances that should be taken into account and should be duly acknowledged, because we are not living a historical time which condones slavery. [Unfortunately,] each second of their effort and sacrifice is followed by more restriction on their rights and guarantees.

The military and their missions’ specificities -  Do Mirante
What the Renamo has never achieved in 16 years of war, the Ministry of Defense has done without no enemy around. With the aggravation of having destroyed the energy transmission lines to the provinces of Gaza and Inhambane, which were left in the dark. What happened in Maputo was not a unpredictable natural catastrophe. What happened in Maputo had already happened before, either in Maputo or in Beira. It has happened in Maputo to a much smaller degree less than two months ago. But beyond the conventional talking nobody did anything about it, which resulted in this giant Russian roulette where the shells were launched through the air uncontrolled, with no one knowing where they would land. The worst is to be informed by the Minister of Defense that the ammunition could reach any place in a 30 kilometer radius. In the morning news, on Mozambique radio on March 23, I was astonished to hear the same minister saying that all that homicidal material was in the open, suffering from the action of sun and rains.

War against the people - Idéias para Debate
According to the Ministry of Defense the blasts occurred because of failures in the electrical system — more precisely, due to a short-circuit. But, according to information obtained in Maputo, the place doesn’t have any electric energy. More serious indeed is the fact that this arsenal is in a situation of total exclusion since the time of the colonial army’s withdrawal, keeping equipment there from that time and also from the time that the Frelimo had it’s army. If the information is true, this is a case of serious negligence.

Maputo’s Arsenal Explodes Again - Pululu
Mozambique already has a considerable contingent of young people who already know how to count, read newspapers and surf the Internet. Besides, the simple and humble people they are not always stupid, and they keep gaining a better awareness of the dark sides of power and they are starting to make their heads count. They make it in their heads, but they can count. That’s why Guebuza [Mozambique’s President] will have to apply what he has supposedly learned from the colonizers. To order the opening of a rigorous inquiry and leave all as it is. Or ordering the opening of a rigorous inquiry to really find out what happened and explain how more than 100 people died because it was too hot, or because of a short-circuit nobody knows about…

Pum - Espumadamente

Mozambicans are still counting the casualties, and it seems that Lusophone bloggers will follow closely the reports, the inquiries and the coverage presented by the media on the developments in Maputo’s arms depot blasts. On the other side of the network, new kinds of audiences are being formed.
The tragedy has already occurred, now is the time of the numbers. How many deaths, how many funerals, how many Frelimo brigades on the site, how many food kits to deliver tomorrow, how many lost children. I’ve heard on Moazambique Radio, the Clinical Director of Maputo’s Central Hospital affirmed that up to now there were 101 dead. A senior state official said there were 200 children still missing. We have now the time of ‘fait divers’, of the spectacle, of the numbers, of desensitizing. 

Estatísticas, fait divers, espectáculo - Diário de Um Sociólogo
We certainly live in an age of information overload, and with so much access it is interesting to note what things we do pay attention to and whose cries we have ears to hear. We have all heard the recent cries of Britney Spears (if you shop at a grocery store you have not been able to escape them), but how many of us have heard those of our brothers and sisters in Kinshasa or Mozambique?

Ears to Hear - The Margins

A last search on the Blogosphere brought some footage of the blasts, and an indication of a Google Earth link to a better visualization of the place.


Mozambique weapons depot explosion caught on cam killing 72
See the Malhazine’s arsenal through Google Earth. With a zoom it’s possible to verify the existence of the two buildings (or, it seems that way) that disappeared. We believe that many other warehouses still exist.
 Malhazine’s Arsenal through Google Earth -  Diário de um sociólogo