Between 30,000 and 40,000 people flocked on Friday to Macaneta beach in Marracuene district, about forty kilometres north of Maputo. The public holiday marks Armed Forces Day and the launch of the armed liberation struggle on 25 September 1964. The celebrations still ended in mourning. Two people died, and local authorities spent the weekend denying rumours of a far worse toll.
On social media, people were talking about some twenty drownings. Shafee Sidat, president of the Marracuene Municipal Council, rejected that figure outright. « As stated, two people died, but outside the beach, » he told reporters. According to the authorities, there were no drownings.
Jornal Domingo pieced together the last hours of one of the victims, a resident of the Patrice Lumumba neighbourhood in Matola. According to his girlfriend, he had been drinking for two days straight. Around 4 p.m. he was taken ill in the water. She called for help, and rescuers brought him back to the sand. He then stayed with friends in the rest area, where he died at about 11 p.m. The exact cause of death has not yet been established. No information about the second victim has been made public.
Rescuers were busy all day. Lifeguard Elias Nobel counted some thirty interventions for swimmers in distress, all of them successful. Those numbers show how much depended on the lifeguards when faced with a crowd that size, much of it drinking.
The roads had their share of trouble too. Around 9 a.m., a car veered off the road just past the bridge over the Incomáti River, on the route from Marracuene to Macaneta. Its five occupants walked away unhurt, and the damage was limited to the vehicle. Later, two passengers on a motorcycle heading back from the beach suffered minor injuries in a separate accident.
Petty crime spread through the crowd, above all mobile phone theft. The next morning, cleaning crews found a scene of devastation. Empty bottles and shards of glass covered the beach and its access roads.
Faced with this toll, the municipality acknowledges that its arrangements fell short. It promises tighter security for future peak days. Every year people pour into Macaneta for the sea, and the question now facing the town is how to welcome tens of thousands of visitors without the party turning into tragedy.