Killed while livestreaming: the blogger who exposed Mozambique's toxic chromium corridor
Forbidden Stories' investigation links law enforcement to the death of Albino Sibia, known as Mano Shottas, shot while filming a protest over chromium trucks in Ressano Garcia; and finds the dumping he documented still going on.
Published 27 October 2026 · 22:25 GMT
The summary
Forbidden Stories' investigation links law enforcement to the death of Albino Sibia, known as Mano Shottas, shot while filming a protest over chromium trucks in Ressano Garcia; and finds the dumping he documented still going on. Albino Sibia, 30, known online as Mano Shottas, was shot on 12 December 2024 while livestreaming a protest in Ressano Garcia, on Mozambique's border with South Africa, and died hours later. Forbidden Stories' analysis of open-source material and footage filmed at the protest site demonstrated the involvement of law enforcement in Sibia's death.
The three lenses
- WestThe Western lens reads this as a press-freedom case about impunity.
- EastThe Eastern lens in this story is structural rather than editorial.
- Global SouthThe Southern lens is the one that lived the story.
Key facts
- Albino Sibia, 30, known online as Mano Shottas, was shot on 12 December 2024 while livestreaming a protest in Ressano Garcia, on Mozambique's border with South Africa, and died hours later. Daily Maverick (Oct 27, 2026)
- Forbidden Stories' analysis of open-source material and footage filmed at the protest site demonstrated the involvement of law enforcement in Sibia's death. Daily Maverick (Oct 27, 2026)
- Residents had blocked the road after learning that trucks loaded with chromite ore were once again driving through Ressano Garcia toward the Port of Maputo, after the traffic had been halted for about two months over contamination complaints. Committee to Protect Journalists (2025)
- More than 1,000 trucks a day carry chromium and other minerals from South Africa through Ressano Garcia to the Port of Maputo, less than 100 kilometres away, according to a South African expert cited in the investigation. Daily Maverick (Oct 27, 2026)
- On 30 December 2024, the Mozambican human rights group Centro para Democracia e Direitos Humanos filed a complaint in administrative court to hold the state civilly liable for Sibia's death; no investigation has been announced, and the justice and interior ministries did not answer Forbidden Stories' questions. Daily Maverick (Oct 27, 2026)
- Customs data shared by The Counter, a research service of the NGO Soma, show more than €800-million worth of chromite and ferrochrome from South Africa left the Port of Maputo between January 2025 and May 2026; 2.6 million metric tons, most of it shipped to Asia for stainless steel production. Daily Maverick (Oct 27, 2026)
What did the livestream show on 12 December 2024?
On 12 December 2024, Albino Sibia, a 30-year-old blogger and musician from Ressano Garcia known online as Mano Shottas, was filming a protest in his border town when gunfire rang out. His phone kept recording. Less than a minute after being wounded, he turned the camera toward himself and said, in a flat voice: “I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot, and they keep shooting.” His death was confirmed a few hours later. Forbidden Stories has now recovered a two-minute, 24-second clip from that day’s video, and its investigation, published on 27 October 2026, reconstructs the shooting from open-source material and protest-site footage.
The protest itself was about trucks. Residents of Ressano Garcia had blocked the road after learning that lorries loaded with chromite ore were once again driving through their town toward the Port of Maputo, less than 100 kilometres away. The traffic had been halted about two months earlier after locals complained it was contaminating their water.
What do the videos and the witnesses establish?
Two accounts, from two different angles, line up. Protester Josué Chilenge told the Committee to Protect Journalists that he was standing about two metres from Sibia when an officer told the blogger to stop filming, “because there could be no record of what was going to happen next.” Sibia kept recording. “When the officer realized Shottas continued to film, he shot him once, and a second time after he had already fallen,” Chilenge said. A second video, filmed after the livestream ended, shows Sibia lying on the asphalt while police stand several dozen metres away. No one comes to his aid.
An acquaintance who watched the livestream, named Isabel in the investigation to protect her, said she phoned Sibia right after the first shot. He told her they would not let anyone help him or move him. “When he rang me, I remember they shot him a second time,” she said. “He just wanted a better Mozambique.” Sibia received first aid at a local clinic and died about four hours later on the way to hospital in Moamba, about 48 kilometres east. He had spent the previous 18 months covering protests, local news and water pollution on Facebook, and had been detained in January 2024 before 50,000 meticais, about R13,000, was paid to secure his release.
What remains unproven about the shooting and the pollution?
The most important gap is the official one: there is no official account. Neither the Mozambican justice ministry nor the Ministry of the Interior responded to Forbidden Stories’ questions despite repeated follow-ups, and no investigation has been announced. Who fired, and on whose orders, is therefore established only by witness testimony and video analysis, not by any state inquiry.
The pollution claims carry their own limits. Residents attribute dead fish, dead plants and dead animals to ore dumped near the border, and studies cited in the investigation describe chromium exposure as highly toxic, with possible effects including cancer, respiratory disease and reduced crop yields. But no finding in the published material proves that a specific illness in Komatipoort or Ressano Garcia was caused by a specific deposit. South Africa’s environment department told Forbidden Stories it had issued directives to four trucking companies, but the investigation stalled for lack of evidence of an environmental crime. The department said it is still examining incidents that happen at night or in the early morning to avoid detection.
Why does a border-town blogger’s death reach beyond Mozambique?
Sibia was filming during a national crackdown. Mozambique was in social unrest after its October 2024 general elections, which were marred by widespread fraud claims and contested by the opposition; the crackdown that followed left more than 300 people dead, according to the investigation and press-freedom monitors. Sibia’s death is one case inside that larger pattern; and the pattern did not stop at his funeral. On 14 December, police opened fire at the cemetery and in his family’s neighbourhood, and two people were shot dead in the chaos, according to his widow and media reports cited by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Reporter Pedro Júnior, covering the funeral, was shot in the hand, and a young man helping him to safety was killed. Another journalist, editor Arlindo Chissale, went missing on 7 January 2025.
The case also tests whether a killing captured on a livestream can still go uninvestigated. The footage exists. The witnesses spoke. The civil complaint was filed. What has not happened, nearly two years on, is a criminal investigation; the absence that gives this story its weight, and for readers who follow Mozambique in our Factbook.
How does a two-minute clip become an accountability case?
Forbidden Stories did what Sibia could no longer do: it picked up his work. Its team checked, in Komatipoort, the South African border town opposite Ressano Garcia, whether soil contamination along the Komati River persisted; carrying on, as the investigation puts it, the work that cost Sibia his life. It matched video from the protest site against open-source material, and it followed the paper trail: a purchase document showing chromium transported from the Sefateng Chrome Mine in South Africa’s Limpopo region to the Port of Maputo, and customs data showing the corridor’s scale.
The corridor’s opacity is part of the story: several intermediaries can stand between a mine and the truck that spills its load, and the mine did not respond to questions. The transport company said it has systems and controls designed to prevent unauthorised off-loading. What the documents do establish is the route, the volume and the destination; and, with them, the fact that the trade Sibia filmed is not marginal. It is a pillar of a sector the investigation values at more than €3-billion, running through one of the world’s poorest countries.
What does the chromium corridor do to the people living beside it?
For the towns on the route, the corridor is daily life. About 1,000 dump trucks a day unload chromium, coal or magnetite from South Africa onto ships at the Port of Maputo, and the road haul is preferred to rail because it is considered more reliable. South Africa extracts around 75% to 80% of the world’s chrome ore, according to Luke Nickels, an analyst with the Signal Group; in 2022, Maputo was the origin pool for around 57% to 60% of the chrome ore exports his firm tracks, and almost 85% of those exports went to China.
The dumping happens on the return leg. Empty trucks pass back through the border with their tarps removed for inspection, then stop on the South African side to have the tarps refitted; a job done by young men waiting behind the guardrails for about R10 a truck. It is during that refitting that containers tip and mineral powders spill. Black and grey deposits multiply along the road, and the wind sweeps the glittering ore toward the adjacent Komati River. One Komatipoort resident who alerted the authorities in 2023 with water and soil analyses says she received only anonymous threats in return.
What would have to happen for this case to move?
Three tracks are open, and all three are slow. The first is the civil complaint filed by the Centro para Democracia e Direitos Humanos on 30 December 2024, seeking to hold the Mozambican state civilly liable for Sibia’s death; since then, the investigation reports, the authorities have turned a deaf ear. The second is South Africa’s environmental track, where the department says it continues to examine night-time dumping even though its company investigation stalled. The third is public pressure: press-freedom groups are demanding accountability.
What readers should watch is simple: any response at all from Mozambique’s justice or interior ministries; any movement in the civil case; and whether the dumping beside the Komati River stops or continues. Until one of those changes, the corridor keeps running and the file stays open; a story our World Barometer and archive will keep tracking.
The three lenses
West Lens:
The Western lens reads this as a press-freedom case about impunity. Forbidden Stories, the Paris-based consortium behind the investigation, frames Sibia’s final moments as haunting “a regime accustomed to impunity”, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, in New York, has demanded accountability for the murder, the attack on Pedro Júnior and the disappearance of Arlindo Chissale.
East Lens:
The Eastern lens in this story is structural rather than editorial. Almost 85% of the chrome ore exports tracked through Maputo go to China, where the metal becomes ferrochrome and then stainless steel for the automotive, cosmetics and construction industries worldwide.
South Lens:
The Southern lens is the one that lived the story. South Africa’s Daily Maverick carries the investigation, and the voices in it are Mozambican and South African: the residents of Ressano Garcia, the Mozambican rights group that filed the civil complaint, the Komatipoort farmer and resident who spoke only anonymously after threats, and the South African NGO AfriForum, whose February 2024 complaint to Pretoria produced only a confirmation letter.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What we agree on: Albino Sibia, known as Mano Shottas, was shot on 12 December 2024 while livestreaming a protest in Ressano Garcia against trucks carrying chromite ore, and died hours later; Forbidden Stories' video and open-source analysis links law enforcement to his death; and no official investigation has been announced.
- What we don't agree on
- What we disagree on: whether Sibia was deliberately targeted for filming. Witnesses told the Committee to Protect Journalists that an officer ordered him to stop filming before shooting him; the Mozambican authorities have offered no account at all, so the question stands unanswered rather than contested between two versions.
- What we know
- What we know: the date, place and livestreamed circumstances of the shooting; the scale of the chromium traffic through Ressano Garcia; the February 2024 complaint by AfriForum and the stalled South African inquiry; and the civil complaint filed by the Centro para Democracia e Direitos Humanos on 30 December 2024.
- What we don't know yet
- What we do not know: who fired the shots and on whose orders; whether the mineral deposits beside the Komati River caused any specific illness; what became of the South African department's continuing inquiries; and how the civil complaint will be decided.
- What we expect
- What we expect: the civil case to remain the only live legal track; continued pressure from press-freedom groups for a criminal investigation; and the dumping question to stay open as long as the trucks keep rolling through Ressano Garcia.
Questions, answered
Who was Mano Shottas?
Mano Shottas was the online name of Albino Sibia, a 30-year-old Mozambican blogger and musician from Ressano Garcia. For about 18 months he livestreamed protests, local news and water pollution on Facebook, building tens of thousands of followers. He was shot on 12 December 2024 while filming a protest against chromium trucks, and died hours later.
What was the protest in Ressano Garcia about?
Residents blocked the road after learning that trucks loaded with chromite ore were again driving through their town toward the Port of Maputo. The traffic had been halted about two months earlier after locals complained it contaminated their water. More than 1,000 trucks a day now carry chromium and other minerals along the route, according to a South African expert.
What did Forbidden Stories find?
Forbidden Stories analysed open-source material and video filmed at the protest site and demonstrated the involvement of law enforcement in Sibia's death. Its team also travelled to Komatipoort, across the border in South Africa, and verified that soil contamination along the Komati River persists. It traced chromium from the Sefateng Chrome Mine to the Port of Maputo.
Has anyone been held accountable for Sibia's death?
No. No criminal investigation has been announced, and Mozambique's justice and interior ministries did not answer Forbidden Stories' questions. The only live legal track is a civil complaint filed on 30 December 2024 by the Centro para Democracia e Direitos Humanos, seeking to hold the state civilly liable. Press-freedom groups continue to demand a full investigation.
Sources
- Daily Maverick (Oct 27, 2026)
- Committee to Protect Journalists (2025)