Mozambique News Agency
AIM Reports
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No.227, 14th March 2002
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CONTENTS
Drought hits Mozambique
President Chissano speaks on globalisation
Renamo demands that Attorney-General names names
Electoral laws must be updated
Legal system has huge backlog
World Bank support for higher education
Zimbabwe pays off Cahora Bassa debt
Pilot project with Nevirapine
Mayor of Xai-Xai shot
Aga Khan Fund acquires Polana Hotel
Significant growth in tobacco production
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Drought hits Mozambique
At least 113,000 Mozambican families (about 565,000 people), in the southern
and central regions of the country, are said to be facing serious food
shortages over the next few months because of drought.
According to preliminary reports, there are drought stricken areas in parts
of Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane provinces, in the south, and Sofala, Tete and
Zambezia in the centre.
"We have serious indications of drought, and that is why an assessment is
being made from the agro-meteorological point of view", said the director of
the National Disasters Management Institute (IGNC), Silvano Langa.
He said the Mozambican authorities are monitoring the drought situation,
which is related to the "El-Nino" weather phenomenon that is causing very
low levels of the rivers in these regions.
Langa said that at least 100,000 hectares of assorted crops, mostly maize,
have been lost to drought in the first planting season.
"The agricultural campaign is still on. We will see what will become of the
second sowing season. If there are conditions for planting we will make a
timely distribution of seeds, particularly for drought-resistant crops".
Italian food aid
The Italian government has announced a donation of 5,000 tonnes of rice,
worth about two million Euros (about $1.72 million), to add to the existing
stocks in the country to assist needy populations who are running short of
food.
The first two consignments, totalling 1,900 tonnes, are expected to arrive
in Beira on 18 and 20 March. As for the 3,000 tones of grain for the
southern region, deliveries will be in April and May.
Silvano Langa, said that other organisations, such as the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID), and the World Food Programme
(WFP) have also pledged food assistance.
The Mozambican Red Cross is also prepared to make available for the victims
of drought a few thousand kits that had been prepared in case of any repeat
of the floods that had hit the country in the two previous years. This time,
there were no floods, but parts of Inhambane, Gaza and Maputo provinces in
the south, and Tete, Sofala and Zambezia in the centre, suffered inadequate
rainfall. More than half a million people are said to be affected.
Langa said that about 6,000 tonnes of assorted foodstuffs are in stock:
these are sufficient to cater for about 450,000 people for a two month
period. He said that his institution is not waiting for the completion of
the reports into the seriousness of the drought conditions, but is already
distributing food relief.
"We have contacted our partners in order to have the food that had been made
available for possible floods or cyclones to be used to cater for the
victims of drought", he said.
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President Chissano speaks on globalisation
President Joaquim Chissano said in Washington on 27 February that
globalisation runs the risk of becoming something akin to slavery for the
majority of the world's peoples, unless new rules of the game are adopted
that ensure equal rights for all in a globalised economy.
Addressing a conference in the Woodrow Wilson Centre, on the final day of
his official visit to the United States, President Chissano said it has
become imperative, not only to accept that the current methods of
international cooperation are unjust, but to correct them in practice, in
particular so that international trade becomes a "win-win" process.
President Chissano argued that the slave trade, which brought Africans to
the Americas, "was a form of globalisation". Nowadays the nature of the
trade has changed, in that it is merchandise and not human beings that are
bought and sold - nonetheless, the President insisted, the exchanges are
unequal, with the poor gaining precious little from the sweat of their brows
or their countries resources.
President Chissano was in Washington to meet with US President George W Bush
at the White House on 26 February. The meeting took place along with
Presidents Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, and Festus Mogae of Botswana.
President meets with mining company
President Chissano on 6 March visited Perth, Australia, at the invitation of
the local government and the Western Mining Company Ltd, which has been
undertaking geological studies on Chibuto mineral sands in the province of
Gaza.
Speaking to journalists accompanying him on his visit to Australia, where he
took part in the Commonwealth Summit that ended on 5 March, President
Chissano said that geological work and the negotiations with the company are
in an advanced stage, and may be finished by the end of the year.
The main mineral in the Chibuto sands is ilemite, from which metals of the
platinum group, such as titanium can be extracted.
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Renamo demands that Attorney-General names names
Deputies from the opposition Renamo-Electoral Union coalition on 7 March
tried to sabotage the debate on the report presented to the country's
parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, the previous day by
Attorney-General Joaquim Madeira.
As soon as Assembly chairman Eduardo Mulembue tried to start the debate, he
was interrupted by Renamo deputy Luis Boavida who claimed there was a "prior
question" to be resolved. He demanded, as a condition for starting the
debate, that Madeira produce a list of names of people under investigation
for all the crimes he had mentioned in his report (ranging from embezzlement
through to murder).
Renamo was furious that Madeira had spoken of their party's leader, Afonso
Dhlakama, in connection with the highly public beatings and kidnappings
carried out by his bodyguards last year.
Madeira had explained how he had attempted to arrange a meeting with
Dhlakama but that Renamo had changed the date twice, and then failed to come
back to him with a definitive date.
Boavida demanded that, if Dhlakama's name had been mentioned, then so should
the name of everyone else under investigation.
Deputies of the majority Frelimo Party regarded this as no more than a
delaying tactic. Ali Dauto pointed out that the Attorney-General reported to
parliament, because he had a constitutional and legal obligation to do so.
But the constitution put no conditions on discussing this report.
"You can ask questions of the Attorney-General during the debate, and he
will reply", Dauto said.
Boavida insisted that a list of names of suspects should have formed part of
Madeira's report, and accused Frelimo deputies of trying to protect
themselves.
"Perhaps many of the names of the suspects belong to the Frelimo
parliamentary group", jeered Francisco Machambisse, while a third Renamo
deputy, Dionisio Quelhas, told Madeira "you're either with god or with the
devil, It's up to you".
"Raising "prior questions" is just an excuse used by the Renamo group to
avoid debate", accused Frelimo deputy Teodato Hunguana. "You want an excuse
to walk out of the room. Why are you afraid of starting the debate.".
"I am not opposed to the Attorney-General giving more names", added
Hunguana. "He can give more names - including my own. I'm not afraid of the
debate. But it's up to the Attorney General to decide whether he will
release more names".
Mulembue had every opportunity to rule the Renamo "prior question" out of
order - but he refused to do so and called for a vote. Renamo demanded a
five minute interval before the vote - which stretched out into about 20
minutes. Despite the modernisation of the Assembly building last year,
voting and counting procedures are still entirely manual - which meant that
more time was lost before Mulembue could announce the inevitable result.
With its comfortable parliamentary majority Frelimo beat off the Renamo
demand by 132 votes to 105.
In all Renamo succeeded in wasting about 70 minutes of the assembly's time
with its "prior question". Later in the morning, Madeira told the deputies
that it would be improper for him to give names of suspects while
investigations were still under way. To noisy heckling from the Renamo
benches, he said that releasing a list of names before charges had even been
laid would be prejudicing the constitutional principle of the presumption of
innocence.
As for Dhlakama, to date he was not a suspect in any case. (The people who
had been summoned to answer questions concerning crimes were among the
Renamo security force supposedly guarding Dhlakama - and Madeira had not
mentioned any of them by name).
Madeira added that, though he was not legally obliged to meet with Dhlakama,
he thought it desirable that the Attorney- General should hold meetings with
political and religious leaders to hear their opinions and any suggestions
they might have for improving the workings of the legal system.
Public not complicit in crime
The Mozambican public are not complicit with crime, but victims of it,
declared Teodato Hunguana.
Hunguana sharply disagreed with the claim made by Attorney- General Joaquim
Madeira the previous day that Mozambican society "passively connives" with
violent crime. Madeira had noted the frequency with which citizens are
mugged in broad daylight, women have jewellery ripped from them, or mobile
phones are stolen, and nobody else in the vicinity lifts a finger to stop
the crime.
Hunguana politely told Madeira to stop blaming the victims.
The real problem was that the institutions of justice were not working
properly. "As a result of the inadequacies shown by those directly involved
in the fight against crimes (the Interior Ministry, the Justice Ministry,
the courts and the attorneys) crime is growing in front of the apparent
impotence of those who should put an end to it", said Hunguana.
Under these conditions society felt abandoned, he added. And when people
tried to deal with criminals their own way "you come down on them and say
it's a crime to take the law into your own hands.".
So if people shrugged their shoulders, and did not intervene to stop crimes,
it was because they felt defenceless. "This isn't connivance", said
Hunguana. "It's despair and powerlessness. So we can't accuse the public,
the victims of crime, of conniving with crime. The connivance is elsewhere".
Hunguana praised Madeira for opening his office to the public, and
encouraging all citizens and institutions to denounce crimes.
Contributions to the debate made by deputies from the Renamo-Electoral Union
opposition coalition were often lists of alleged abuses and complaints that
Madeira's office had done nothing about them. Thus David Alone claimed a
young Renamo supporter named Trindade, in the western province of Tete, had
been beaten so badly by local officials that he had lost the use of his
arms. "Trindade's only crime is that he's a member of Renamo", exclaimed
Alone.
Some of the Renamo allegations were promptly denied by Frelimo deputies.
Cornelio Quivela claimed there was a reign of terror in the northern
province of Cabo Delgado, with the police harassing and beating peasant
farmers in their fields. But Frelimo deputy Miguel Mussa, also from Cabo
Delgado, said this was completely fictitious.
The real problem in Cabo Delgado, he said, was that in the districts of
Namuno and Balama there were people spreading disinformation about cholera,
in order to provoke frightened people into beating up health workers who
were accused of causing the disease rather than preventing it.
The worst rioting linked to cholera happened at Nipepe, in the neighbouring
province of Niassa. Renamo deputy Hilario Waite tried to blame the violence,
which led to 54 arrests, on the "arrogance and abuse of power" of the local
administrator.
Frelimo deputy Sousa Jeque promptly denied this, and said the Nipepe riots
had been deliberately started by Renamo. He noted that among those arrested
were the Renamo district delegate and his deputy.
Frelimo deputies also noted that Renamo still keeps an armed force of its
own which refuses to obey the established authorities. Acucena Duarte noted
that, when accused of assaulting citizens, these Renamo bodyguards refuse to
obey summonses issued by the public prosecutor's office.
"This is not isolated or individual behaviour", she said. "It has the
blessing of the leadership of their party".
Duarte said it was unacceptable and repugnant that justice could be
obstructed in this way, and that "suspects could evade a summons just
because they carry guns and belong to Renamo".
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Electoral laws must be updated
Frelimo on 1 March warned that, if the opposition continues to hinder
revision of the country's electoral laws, then the 2003 local elections, and
the 2004 general elections, will take place on the basis of the existing
legislation.
Speaking at the opening session of a sitting of the Assembly of the
Republic, the head of the Frelimo parliamentary group, Armando Guebuza, said
that impasses on the ad-hoc commission discussing the electoral laws could
not be allowed to compromise the elections.
The Assembly decided in 2000 that revising the legislation governing
municipal, parliamentary and presidential elections was an urgent task, and
handed it over to an ad-hoc commission.
The commission soon slid into deadlock. The entire year of 2001 was wasted:
in over 50 meetings the commission managed to discuss just 18 of the 424
articles in the current laws, and reached agreement on only seven.
The problem is one of radically different interpretations of the remit of
the ad-hoc commission. Renamo is not trying to revise the legislation at
all: instead it wants to write something completely new. Whereas Frelimo
sees the work as one of repairing faults in what is essentially a sound
structure, Renamo wants to tear the building down and start again.
Guebuza argued that the deadlock had been deliberately created "in an
attempt to manipulate or to reverse principles that have already been
discussed and accepted".
Frelimo would not allow Renamo's behaviour on the ad-hoc commission to delay
the elections, he stressed. "In the absence of any better solution the
elections would have to take place under the current legislation, since
there is no legal vacuum", said Guebuza. He pointed out that the current
legislation had been approved by consensus (in the late 1990s) "and nobody
should ignore or pretend they don't know this".
The head of the Renamo parliamentary group, Ossufo Quitine, took the
opposite line and accused Frelimo of holding up the approval of new
electoral laws. "For merely fraudulent reasons, Frelimo is creating more and
more obstacles", he said.
He claimed that changing the electoral laws would guarantee free and fair
elections, and that the existing laws (although Renamo had voted for them)
defend Frelimo's interests. The current laws, said Quitine, "create all the
conditions for fraud in the electoral results, and for lack of transparency
in the process".
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Legal system has huge backlog
The Mozambican legal system is beginning to deal with cases more speedily,
but there remains a huge backlog, according to the report given on 1 March
by the President of the Supreme Court, Mario Mangaze.
Opening the Judicial Year, Mangaze said that in 2001 the Supreme Court
concluded 298 cases, compared with 185 in 2000 - an increase of 61.1 per
cent.
He said this was largely due to improved organisation. The Supreme Court had
set targets for each of its judges, and had restructured itself so as to
free judges from other tasks, and dedicate themselves to casework.
In some provincial courts there was a 50 per cent increase in cases dealt
with, but the overall average was an increase of just five per cent - rising
from 17,626 cases completed in 2000 to 18,514 in 2001.
But the number of cases pending is formidable. In the Supreme Court, the
number of pending cases has fallen by 4.5 per cent - from 1,179 at the start
of 2001 to 1,126 now.
In the provincial courts the decline was only 1.9 per cent - from 130,519
cases at the start of 2001, to 128,039 now. Some of these cases, Mangaze
admitted, will never be dealt with - some because the time limit has been
exceeded, and others because the parties involved have simply lost interest.
He recognised the harsh criticisms made of the legal system for its failure
to halt corruption and to defend citizens' rights. While these problems were
not exclusively the result of a shortage of money and trained staff, Mangaze
argued that the current state of the justice system "results from the lack
of attention paid to it in the past".
But now, said Mangaze, there was increasing awareness "that economic and
social development necessarily involve the existence of a strong judicial
apparatus, endowed with resources that allow it to act efficiently and
effectively".
He was pleased that today there was "an unquestionable will" on the part of
the government to strengthen the justice system, and this had led to the
drafting of the first integrated strategic plan to develop the sector, in
joint efforts by the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, the
Administrative Tribunal and the Attorney-General's Office.
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World Bank support for higher education
The Board of the World Bank has approved a $60 million credit in support of
Mozambican higher education institutions, which will be disbursed over a
five year period.
This money is particularly directed to the country's largest higher
education institution, the Eduardo Mondlane University, the Pedagogical
University (the university level teacher training institution) and the
Higher Institute for International Relations (the main task of which is to
train the country's diplomats).
Items to be funded include curriculum and academic reform, academic and
administrative staff development, financial management and efficiency
improvements, new facilities, and better use of information technology.
Part of the money will also be used to grant scholarships for higher
education.
Another objective of the project is to develop in Mozambique a Distance
Learning Network, to be operated by the existing private and public
institutions and managed by a consortium of Higher Education institutions.
Among the reforms to be funded by the World Bank is the introduction of more
courses that end in a Bachelor's Degree. Currently most university courses
take at least five years, and successful students earn a degree called a
"licenciatura" - something which has no equivalent in the English-speaking
world, and is said to be somewhere between a bachelors and a masters degree.
Swedish support
The Swedish government is to grant two million Swedish Crowns ($880,000) for
the implementation of the first stage of the Mozambican Higher Education
Strategic Plan.
The strategic plan is to conduct feasibility studies on the expansion of
higher education to the various provinces of Mozambique, and look into new
criteria for access to this level of education, ensuring equality of
opportunity for the various social groups in the different regions of the
country.
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Zimbabwe pays off Cahora Bassa debt
The Zimbabwean electricity company (ZESA) has now completely paid off its
debts to Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), the company that operates the
Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi in the province of Tete.
HCB, a company 82 per cent owned by the Portuguese state and 18 per cent by
Mozambique, supplies Zimbabwe with 500 megawatts of power. For a lengthy
period, Zimbabwe failed to pay, and ran up a debt which reached $42 million.
Although more Cahora Bassa energy is sold to the South African electricity
company, Eskom, than to Zimbabwe, it is the latter which is providing the
greater part of HCB's revenue,due to the low tariff paid by Eskom.
HCB is currently studying the possibility of building a second line from
Cahora Bassa to Zimbabwe.
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Pilot project with Nevirapine
A pilot project in the use of the anti- retroviral drug Nevirapine is to
start in the southern city of Matola later this month, according to Health
Minister Francisco Songane.
Nevirapine is used to prevent the transmission from mother to child of the
HIV virus that causes the lethal disease AIDS. Of all infant cases of AIDS,
the great majority (60-70 per cent) became infected with HIV during birth.
Songane said that the pilot project will be supported by the Italian
catholic organisation, the Santo Egidio Community.
Latest statistics indicate that about 1.1 million Mozambicans are infected
with HIV,three per cent of whom are children under the age of four.
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Mayor of Xai-Xai shot
Unknown assailants shot and severely injured the mayor of the southern city
of Xai-Xai, Fakir Bay, on 7 March.
Bay was rushed to Maputo Central Hospital with a bullet in his chest and
another in his back. He is under the care of neurologists, but is currently
paralysed from the waist down.
Bay was able to speak to Radio Mozambique, and said that he was attacked by
four armed men at a crossroads near the Xai-Xai beach. He said that he was
convinced that the motive of the attack was to steal his Toyota four wheel
drive vehicle.
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Aga Khan Fund acquires Polana Hotel
The Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development has purchased 100 per cent of the
shares in Maputo's best known hotel, the Polana.
Previously the hotel was 55 per cent owned by a foreign consortium headed by
the South African Kairos Hotels group, and 45 per cent by Mozambican
companies - the national airline, LAM, the private financial investment
company, SOCIEF, and the state- owned National Tourism Company, ENT.
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Significant growth in tobacco production
Mozambique expects to harvest over 20,000 tonnes of tobacco this year - a
growth of 25 per cent. Last year tobacco farmers produced 16,000 tonnes.
The plan to relaunch tobacco production is being undertaken initially in the
northern provinces of Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado, and in Manica, Tete
and Zambezia in the centre of the country.
The relaunching programme falls under the cash crop sector of the National
Agricultural Development Programme (PROAGRI).
Among the actions undertaken have been the introduction of varieties
resistant to pests and diseases, the multiplication of improved seeds, the
promotion of tobacco as a source of income for peasant households, and the
mechanisation of production, using appropriate technologies, in the peasant
sector.
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Mozambique News Agency,
c/o 114 Stanford Avenue,
Brighton BN1 6FE,
UK.
Tel: +44 (0) 7941890630
www.poptel.org.uk/mozambique-news
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