Our life is made of subsidies. A few years ago, when the bakeries decided to put more baking powder, Royal, in the price of bread, we all went out to be bakers in the streets of Maputo: we put trays of tires baking on the roads, we stopped the whole city and others, like authentic hatters, diverted the route of the demonstrations and invaded stores and filled their backs with sacks of rice. And the government came out, always in its tailor's finery, measured the demonstration and rushed to sew a small patch of subsidy.

When Xiquelene's huge garbage building engulfed several families who were then, one by one, exhumed by tractors, gathered into coffins, the government picked up the machine and made a small patch of subsidy for the support of the families...

The military in Cabo Delgado were also injected with courage with a small patch of subsidy. It is true that there are so many who to this day fall in the bush without having seen that subsidy. I was saying that there was a sheet metal strike in Maputo and a small patch of subsidy was cut and sewn into the problem. And so our government goes on patching up old problems with subsidy handkerchiefs.
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And tomorrow it will be the hungry people in the suburbs taking to the streets to protest against hunger with empty pots and spoons full of hunger stains, tomorrow it will be the unemployed with flyers in the streets, tomorrow it will be the graduates and doctors making exemplary careers in job interviews taking to the streets, and tomorrow it will be the people.
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And our good government will gather, take a tape measure, measure the cloths of these problems, and in the end take a pair of scissors and smooth out, as usual, patches of subsidies and life goes on. Honor, my friends, to that good government that spends more time sewing subsidy patches. And tomorrow? What will the tailors do?