Mozambique: Professional Corruption and Donor Flight

By Lenny Hannah

When Mozambique recently hosted the Portuguese President (Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa) she was informed that the donors would cut her aid - around 30% of the nation's total income - because she debt financed herself without informing the proper international entities. This behaviour, on the part of the Mozambican authorities, would make me question their lack of ethics if this question wouldn't run deeper than the meer lack of understanding of the principle of honesty.

Whenever we, i.e. those who were born in Africa, talk about the Mother Land we let ourselves be enveloped by a mix of hatred, love and passion. In one of those conversations with my friends, the spirits got so heated that the usual topics came up:

• The Black Americans were lucky to be sold as slaves
• "The Dictatorship of the proletariat is the supreme form of democracy"
• "Indeed, how do you say future?"  (in Mar me quer by Mia Couto)

Black Americans

Francis, a Nigerian refugee in the States, told us that the Black Americans should feel grateful for having been sold as slaves. Before our surprise, he concluded his thesis by saying "those people wouldn't have lasted in Africa; that is, they would've been captured or killed by rival tribes, since only prisioners, crooks and those viewed as inferior and so on were sold as commodities". Although they were inhumanely treated, the life of the so-called Afro-Americans is still much better than that of black Africans', because the black Americans are protected by the fundamental human rights; whereas in Africa people are still tortured and killed just for being a dissident. Yes, in Africa, negroes are shackled by a small set of crooks supported by the "internationale socialist" crowd.


"The Dictatorship of the proletariat is the supreme form of democracy"

When I think of Mozambique, I recall that, after the independence, I read on one of the walls of the São Francisco Xavier Cemetery the following inscription "The dictatorship of the proletariat is the supreme form of democracy". As back then, I still believe that Mozambique's development has been arrested by that statement carved by a leftist fascist ideologist.

When I expressed my opinion on the above matter to a friend, an Egyptian professor, he explained me that the statement made sense if we'd stick to the conception of the communist ideal, which defends that democracy is the people's voice/government and if the proletariat is an integral and significant part of it, then...Moreover, Engels wrote more or less that if the capitalist system (created by the reactionary bourgeoisie) is to be destroyed then the government of the proletariat has to take extreme measures till the consolidation of the new system: a time when the property and the means of production are transferred from the government to the revolutionary class. But alas, what indeed happened, in some African countries especially in Ethiopia and Mozambique, was not only extreme but also brutal and inhumane since the ideology overrode the needs of the people, thus ruining their future.

"Indeed, how do you say future?"

Raju, an Asian friend of mine, disagreed and answered: what future? In the the short story, Mar me quer by Mia Couto, Zé Perpétuo says "Indeed, how do you say future? You don't, in African language. Yes, because future is something that while being never is" therefore, we may assume that in Mozambique each leader that gets in office does not think in the people's future welfare; he only thinks of his own children, relatives, friends and of the opportunists who gravitate around his mandate obtained via "democratic" means.

I remember the Mozambican President's speech, at the United Nations General Assembly, who did not think of his country's future, since he lost the opportunity to, before that international platform, announce the end of the hostilities between Frelimo and Renamo in order to create peace in his country once and for all, in order to guarantee the tomorrow of future Mozambicans. Filipe Nyusi, instead, preferred to play the "I'm the third world poor sod" card and shamelessly stretched his hand to beg for more donations.

So, my dear readers, no act of Mozambican perfidy still surprises me:

• They killed a journalist just because he dared to question
• The UN funds intended to hire retired nurses to help fighting AIDS disappeared
• The fake acquisition of tuna fishing boats - the Ematum affair
• The Frelimo officials' association with internationally Wanted drug dealers
• Extorsion of all sorts, including forcing investor to have a Mozambican partner - i.e. from Frelimo
• The maintenance of an unnecessary war with Renamo
• The secret debt raised to buy weapons, in order to continue supporting the efforts of a nefarious war with a twist: huge fees paid to the Frelimo party
• Donations are synonymous of humiliation and mockery of the Mozambican people and illicit enrichment of the Frelimo memebers and their acolytes.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, and so goes Mozambique: a beautiful word, a beautiful country, with a rotten leadership.

Until Next Time

[The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dissecting Society]