Meanwhile, in Quelimane, the provincial capital of Zambezia, reporter Luís Simindila, from Radio Zambezia FM, was attacked in the middle of a live broadcast by a police officer, who then snatched his microphone and cellphone. Many of the safety challenges faced by journalists during 2023 were related to the electoral process with several of them attacked on the day of voting. The policeman was trying to prevent him from interviewing a Renamo delegate, who had gone to a police station to report an incident where he had found 11 ballot papers out of the ballot boxes. In Beira, the provincial capital of Sofala, on 11 October, Academic Television reporter, Leonardo Limane, was assaulted by agents of the Rapid Intervention Unit (UIR), after filming a group of citizens who refused to go home, allegedly because they wanted to control the vote counting process at Macombe Primary School, in Munhava. In a separate incident in Quelimane, a reporter from Nova Rádio Paz was prevented from covering the vote count by an officer at one of the polling stations at the Coalane Primary School. On the same day, in the capital Maputo, a team from TV Sucesso was banned from covering the vote count at EPC Polana Caniço B. Gabriel Júnior, the chairman of TV Sucesso’s board of directors — a station noted for revealing discrepancies in the 2023 municipal elections spoke of receiving death threats. When the members of the polling station noticed the arrival of reporter Coutinho Macanandze in the room, they closed the door, with the reporter inside, preventing his cameraperson, Valdo Massingue, from entering the room. On his November 12, 2023, broadcast of “Mozambique in Concert”, Júnior stated, “I think it’s time to ask you to pray for me because for the last two weeks I’ve been receiving death threats. I thought it was temporary, but with each passing day, the pressure of threats begins to be greater.” In fact, shortly before closing the door on the cameraperson, a polling station member tried to take the reporter’s camera. Inside the room, reporter Macanandze was shoved around and assaulted. He described the distress of living under In what can only be described as an intimidatory tactic, an armoured police car parked outside Televisão Sucesso 57 STATE OF PRESS FREEDOM IN SOUTHERN AFRICA 2023