Mozambique’s faded hotel squatters hope for change after polls

In the sprawling slum of the once-glorious Grande Hotel in Mozambique’s Beira city, around 4,000 people living in squalor hope this month’s election will bring change.

Most of the scattered election posters on the blackened walls of the gutted beachfront building call for votes for the long-ruling socialist Frelimo party for the polls that took place last week.

A few back the opposition centre-right Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM), which has controlled the Beira municipality for the past 20 years.

Results are due later this month and expected to keep Frelimo in charge of the impoverished southern African nation, which it has governed since the end of Portuguese rule half a century ago.

The hotel, with sweeping views of the Indian Ocean, mirrors the desperation of Mozambique, where around 75 percent of the 33 million people live in poverty and the wounds of a 16-year civil war are still raw.

The hotel’s crumbling walls are scrawled with graffiti. Its furniture, windows and fixtures are long gone, while grass grows in its Olympic-sized swimming pool just steps from the sea. The people squatting here are desperate for a better life.

“We live in the shadow of what this place once was,” said Toris Anselmo, in his 30s, who has lived in the ruins of the hotel for most of his life. “We’ve been waiting for change for years. I hope this election brings better opportunities for us all.”

The hotel and its grand staircase were built in the Art Deco style in the 1950s when Mozambique was still a colony of Portugal. It was abandoned by its owners in 1974 as the Portuguese left following 10 years of war led by Frelimo.