Mozambique: Child Trafficking Story Was a Fiction

Maputo - Investigations by a Maputo paper into the alleged incident of child trafficking which led to mob violence against the home of the woman supposedly involved lead to the conclusion that the whole story was an invention.

A 13 year old boy, Alberto Nhatsave, who lives in the Liberdade neighbourhood in the southern city of Matola, claimed that he had been abducted in June, and taken into South Africa. He managed to escape and spent a month in the home of a friendly wood cutter who found him wandering in the bush. He then caught a bus back to Mozambique on 17 July.

That day the boy's mother, Maria Madelena, accused a neighbour, Estrela Mabunda, of organizing her son's kidnapping. At short notice a mob assembled and trashed Mabunda's house, stealing most of her possessions.

Mabunda's misfortune is that she is a fairly prosperous cross-border trader. The accusation of child trafficking gave her neighbours an excuse to attack someone who is much better off than the average Liberdade resident.

The police intervened belatedly to protect what remained of Mabunda's house. Some of her stolen property has been recovered, and several of the ringleaders in the mob violence are under arrest.

The boy's kidnap story never made much sense. In one version, he claimed that he escaped while his captor was answering a call on his cell-phone somewhere in Johannesburg. The boy then supposedly walked for three hours into the bush somewhere near Malelane. But Malelane is about 400 kilometres from Johannesburg.

There is no explanation as to why the woodcutter who supposedly rescued Nhatsave kept him in his home for a month, instead of immediately contacting the police. Catching a bus from South Africa to Mozambique is certainly possible - but only if the passengers have passports, unlikely in the case of a child supposedly abducted while playing in the street.

The independent daily "O Pais" sent a reporter to the Ressano Garcia border post and found that the police there had a very different version of events. They told the paper that, far from being trafficked to South Africa, Alberto Nhatsave (known as "Beto"), was trying to enter South Africa, where his father lives.

Beto disappeared from Liberdade at about 10.30 on 15 June. At about 16.00 that same day, a man named Sebastiao Antonio found him in the streets of Ressano Garcia. Beto claimed that he was a South African citizen who had come to Mozambique with an uncle to attend a funeral.

The uncle had then left him at the border while he went to have their passports stamped, and never returned. So Antonio took him to the Ressano Garcia police who registered him as "an abandoned minor".

At first, the police took his story at face value and tried to take him over the border. But the South African police were more suspicious. They began to ask him some basic questions about South Africa and found that, despite his ability to speak in English and Zulu, he knew next to nothing about the country. The real giveaway, however, was the vaccination mark on his upper arm, characteristic of almost all Mozambican children, but not of South African ones.

The truth eventually came out. Beto had intentionally traveled from Liberdade to Ressano Garcia, with every intention of making his way to Johannesburg, where his father lives.

Once it was discovered that Beto is Mozambican, the police sent him to the Women's Affairs and Social Welfare office in Ressano Garcia. The official in charge of the office, Rute Alexandre, looked after him for a week, and during this time he continued to pretend he was a South African.

The Ressano Garcia police records seem conclusive. Beto was not kidnapped, but attempted to reach South Africa voluntarily. The tale of child trafficking is a later invention, something that the boy was apparently persuaded to say on his return to Liberdade in order to provide an excuse for looting the home of a relatively well off citizen.

Estrela Mabunda's lawyer is none other than Alice Mabota, who is also chairperson of the Mozambican Human Rights League. She has promised to seek the arrest of Beto's mother, and has promised to be "implacable" if it turns out that Beto was used as an instrument of greedy neighbours, envious of Mabunda's relative wealth.

Original Source:
Original date published: 30 July 2010

Source Url: http://allafrica.com/stories/201007300912.html?viewall=1

Posted By: News Poster
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