"Maputo, as it was more than 10 years... " a Maputo Travel Page by lichinga

I'm biased when I talk about Maputo and Mozambique in general, because I spent there a few wonderful years! Maputo appears with a modern skyline, if you happen to arrive there by the sea, let's say when you come from the island of Inhaca, the opposite side of the bay. Its upper part lies on a 100 metres high rocky hill which dominates the bay and its long avenues decline gently towards the Green Zones, surrounding the city.
As a matter of fact, Maputo (former Lourenço Marques) was intended for 500,000 inhabitants, but its population increased beyond any control due to a couple of reasons. The first is the Government of the new independent state of Mozambique (independent since 1975) promised wider access to public services (school, water, electricity, health...) to everybody, but those happened to be available just in the major cities: many people came in from the countryside in order to benefit from those, but.... there was no money to enlarge what was originally intended for a limited amount of Portuguese settlers and infrastructure fell under the unbearable pressure. The second reason is that the "bandos armados" in the Eighties were a real danger for families living as they used to: scattered in the country, or concentrated in small villages. The people was attacked, injured and shot dead because there were no more economic targets to be destroyed, but still Mozambique resisted; so that the only way to make pressure upon the international community was to make life impossible for normal people, women and children. Fleeding in the cities granted people a horrible way of life, but, at least, it was life against death.