Mozambique goes to the polls tomorrow. President Felipe Nyusi is running for re-election and, for the first time, provincial governors will be directly elected rather than appointed by the president. The campaign has been fraught and accusations of irregular behaviour have mounted up, primarily against the ruling party, Frelimo. Last Monday, 7 October, Anastacio Matavele was leaving a training workshop for election monitors in Xai-Xai, the capital of Gaza Province, when he was gunned down in his car. Matavele was the head of the local election observer mission, and it seems likely that his murder was linked to a voter registration scandal.

Before the cyclone, there was a drought in Zimbabwe. People prayed for rain; and then the rain came, and it was not at all what was wished for. It seems brutally unfair: to have lost so much, in so brief a time, at the ordinance of the sky.