CREDIT: Ben Botha Protesters outside a Maputo bank where employees and Province reporter Elaine O'Connor were holed up during rioting in the Mozambique capital on Tuesday.

MAPUTO - The capital of Mozambique exploded into violence on Tuesday as citizens rioted in protest against increased bus prices.

All across the large southern city, impromptu roadblocks of burning tires and overturned dumpsters were set up at the main bus depots. Men wielding rocks and clubs stopped traffic cold and attacked cars that dared try to pass.

The price of fuel in the region has risen rapidly in the past month, from 29 Meticals per litre to 35 Meticals per litre (about $1.21 to $1.47 Cdn), and the bus and taxi drivers were demanding the government dramatically increase fares to compensate, up to a 15 Meticals increase.

As a compromise, the government increased fares on short routes from 5 to 7.5 Meticals and from 7.5 on long routes to 10. Those fares went into effect Tuesday.

The trouble began in the morning as a simple bus strike - with the minibuses called chapas that are the mainstay of local traffic, staying off the roads - leaving people to walk to work.

But by mid-morning, the strike had transformed into a violent protest. Groups of men were setting up roadblocks at half a dozen points in the city.

Police opened fire crowds with rubber bullets throughout the day. But in at least one case, resorted to live ammunition. One person was reported killed as of 4:30 p.m. local time.

Thousands of people joined the protests across the city, and calls to the local television station from protesters threatened to escalate rioting and violence if the government failed to lower fares. By afternoon, thick acrid clouds of smoke rose above the capital's highrises.

The country's largest trade union, OTM, stated that the average Mozambican worker spends 35 per cent of their wages on transportation. UN data reports that  40 per cent of Mozambicans live on less than US $1 a day, making even a few cents increase in chapa fares a great hardship.

This year in the southern African country, fuel prices have been on a tear: gas is up almost 46 per cent and diesel 90 per cent.

At one primary school in downtown Maputo, the Escola Primaria 3 de Fevereiro, the 2,300 students were panicked and being kept on the grounds as volleys of gunfire rang out around the city. Police shot into the air to scatter the protesters and allow traffic through, but only periodically.

By noon, traffic on the main routes was at a standstill.

Outside the Opportunity International Bank (Banco Opportunidade de Mocambique) on Avenida 24 de Julho, dozens of men gathered and set tires alight and beat back cars.

The bank had closed at 10 a.m. after the U.S. Embassy in Maputo issued a security alert citing widespread rioting in the city and some violence involving fires and car vandalism. By 1 p.m. the area became impassable, and riot police were called in. Several ambulances drove into the crowd. Shots rang out.

"This is pretty extraordinary, this is pretty violent," said bank director Trudi Schwartz.

Protests after price increases are common - about once a year - but they rarely take such a turn.

And, as Schwartz recalls, as her bank employees peer out the windows at the crowds, at least this time their windows remained intact.

Last year, after a munitions plant exploded, some of the bank's windows blew just as the CEO was on a conference call with the Gates Foundation.

It is, she points out, just a part of doing business in this part of Africa.

- Province reporter Elaine O'Connor is in Rwanda and Mozambique this month reporting on B.C. residents who are working for change in Africa. She is the recipient of a CIDA-Jack Webster Foundation Seeing the World Through New Eyes Fellowship. Her reports will appear periodically online and in The Province.