Mozambique opposition chief says he escaped assassination attempt
Mozambique's leading opposition politician, Venancio Mondlane, claimed in a video this Monday to have escaped an attempted assassination in South Africa where he had taken refuge after last month's disputed elections.
Mondlane rejects the results of the 9 October elections that the electoral authority says were won by the candidate of the Frelimo party, in power since 1975.
He claims he won and has used social media to call for protests and strikes.
"When I was in South Africa, assassins were at my door to kill me," Mondlane said in the video on Facebook. "I had to jump out the back door, slip out through a hair salon and run with my bags and my family."
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He said he had been staying in Johannesburg's upmarket Sandton area and had since left the country. He did not say when the alleged assassination attempt was meant to have occurred.
South Africa's foreign ministry told French news agency AFP it had no knowledge of Mondlane being in the country and that such a matter should have been reported to the police.
After his lawyer and another associate were gunned down on 19 October as they prepared to challenge the results in court, Mondlane said they were assassinated and he could be next.
Police used tear gas Monday to disperse more than a dozen demonstrators on a main road in Maputo, according to AFP reporters in the capital.
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