Inocencio Manjique, 34, lost his left eye when he was hit by a rubber bullet during a police crackdown on a march honoring Mozambican rapper Azagaya in Maputo three months ago on Sunday.
His case stood out as one of the voices of protest, heightened by street interviews that were televised on one of the busiest days in recent years in the Mozambican capital.
Since then, Inocencio Manjica’s life has been turned upside down between the hospital, anonymous threats, deprivation and the “life” of the “revolution” on social networks, but without any help from the state, which he regrets. what it achieves, classify it as a “failed state”.
“I had to suffer [nova] surgery, I have very severe headaches on my left side, which bother me a lot,” he tells Luce at his home in the Katembe area, on the south coast of Maputo Bay.
Iveta, a woman, hands him an eye prosthesis, which she inserts into his eye socket.
When it gets dark and you have to remove the prosthesis, “the mind seems to turn off” and “the brain has to adapt to a dark place.”
It’s very difficult to see with one eye, he says, wearing a white T-shirt with his caricature, which features a scarf covering his left eye.
He regrets that he was not able to read the latest work offered to him, Uria Simango: Um Homem, Uma Causa, a biographical book of the dissident leader of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), a deadly victim of the repression that shook the independence movement, which at that time was led by the current ruling the consignment.
He also complains about not being able to read Nikech, A History of Polygamy, the next book he wanted to buy, by Mozambican writer Paulina Chisian, winner of the 2021 Camões Prize, because he can’t get past two pages, such is the effort. it has to do with the view you left.
He regrets not being able to see his favorite “rapper”, the Portuguese Valete, who will be in Maputo for a concert dedicated to Azagaya, because the concert will be at night, and Inocencio Manjique no longer has a “nightlife”.
Manhik says he has received help from many people and private institutions, but not from the state, instructing a lawyer to seek compensation for injuries and damages.
Now he has no money because of the cost of treatment in the hospital, which his profession – an unofficial second-hand clothing seller – cannot afford.
Inocencio Manjique claims he was threatened because unknown people interrogated him several times to stop criticizing the government.
“Stop filming ‘live broadcasts’, otherwise we will tear off your second eye,” one of the anonymous authors of the threats said.
But Manhik emphasizes that he lost his left sight at the hands of the authorities, and this only increased his civic activism and commitment to the “revolution” until “changes in the country” took place.
“It faked another person,” he emphasizes: “It is clear that the routine of the day is not going to accept a different mindset,” so it is necessary to continue to protest.
The woman says she is afraid.
“I’m not as brave as he is, but I support what he does, even if sometimes I don’t agree with some things,” Ivete says, thinking of her husband and the couple’s three children: two girls and a boy.
Manhik was one of several people who were raped by the police on 18 March.
José Ioanis, 56, a former “majerman” worker from the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), says he suffers from severe headaches after his forehead was torn open by a tear gas capsule and he received seven stitches.
“I want compensation, but so far no one has helped me with money to find a lawyer. What little I had was for medicine,” he tells Luce.
An artist by profession, he says he stopped working because of the pain and lives like “an ant or a bird” who “picks up the crumbs so as not to starve to death.”
He insists that he is hurt by the government’s lack of attention to victims of police violence.
Joaniss knows what she’s talking about: for more than 33 years, she has been participating every Wednesday in the march of former Mozambican workers in the GDR demanding old compensation, and such violence has never occurred.
When he was shot down three months ago, “he wasn’t even marching for Azagaya,” he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, standing on the pavement near the Alto Mae garden.
On March 18, chaos reigned in the center of Maputo.
Mozambican police claimed they had an “order from superiors”, never specified, to disperse groups that were allowed to hold a peaceful march in honor of “rapper” Azagaya, who had died of illness nine days earlier.
Azagaya was known for his lyrics of political opposition, and his funeral, which brought Maputo to the streets, has already aroused strong feelings among the security forces and the population.
In an annual report on the state of justice in the country, Attorney General of the Republic Beatrice Bucili said that the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case against agents involved in the clashes on March 18, but since then nothing is known about further developments. .
As a general rule, the Mozambican police prevent peaceful protests, despite voices such as the Attorney General of the Republic herself, who recall the law to emphasize that the right to demonstrate is enshrined in the Constitution and does not require permission.
Lusa has contacted the President of the Republic, the Attorney General’s Office and the General Police Command of the Republic of Mozambique, but has not yet received clarification regarding the situation of the victims.