Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Political swings and roundabouts

The national presidential visit has just rounded up. Armando Gebuza and his magisterial convoy snaked their way across all of Mozambique. Fifty two cars and six helicopters hired from South Africa, although the figures I hear keep inflating. Someone said 72, and the same again for the First Lady. The helicopters are deemed essential to access remote areas and isolated communities (the majority) of Mozambique. There very few roads, you see. There are 3 crumbling train routes left by the Portuguese. The southern train (I believe there is just the one) is an extraordinary lumbering relic seemingly hailing from the Great War and takes days. We often overtake it in the car on the dirt tracks. Barring Maputo and some of the coast, the decidedly retro quality of the nation’s infrastructure boils down to – for manifold reasons - lack of funds. Or perhaps it’s a question of budget lines. Too many more important things demanding the national silver. Like helicopters?

Does anyone object to the stark asymmetry between the president’s means and those of his electorate? Since most people – around 80% of the population – live rurally, largely without electricity or access to media of any kind, and roughly half the population is illiterate, I’d say they don’t consider it. My colleagues tell me their family in rural Gaza cast their votes according to who the last president endorses (or whoever they’ve heard of/are told to vote for). So, currently in power, Frelimo are onto a winner. They are in Gaza anyway as this province is one of their strong-holds. In each urban centre there is an active Frelimo HQ, holding regular events, parties, rallies etc whereas Renamo, the opposition is invisible in these parts. In central Mozambique I’m told it’s the reverse. As I’ve written before, allegiances remain true to the two side’s support bases during the civil war. It seems then, that political support is predetermined, inherited rather than earned.

Civil society is particularly weak overall in Mozambique. The circulation of information is stunted for reasons mentioned - low levels of education, poor infrastructure etc, weakening debate and accountability. There is also an ingrained culture of hierarchy, seemingly fed both by the Portuguese Latinate legacy and the tradition of African chiefdom. Authority commands respect and often subservience. People generally don’t feel at liberty to criticise their superiors, although this depends on the institution and area. Certainly, addressing people by titles is uniform. They waver between ‘Dona’, ‘Senhora’ and ‘Doctor’ for me despite my pleas. Civil society and political accountability is subject to the yawning urban/rural divide though. Debate is, naturally, more informed and lively in urban, more ‘developed’ circles. There are a number of TV programmes, like Ponto de Vista (Point of View) and Joven (Youth) which discuss political and societal issues. The former recently discussed the threat of the institutional weakness of Renamo to Mozambican democracy and on the latter the legalisation of abortion. (Watched at my friend’s house, I don’t have a TV!). The press features op-eds, letters from the public etc and is ‘free’ from censorship, although journalists tend to steer clear of serious controversy. The murder of a top investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso 6 years ago during his exposure of corruption in elite Frelimo factions, for instance, damaged the freedom of the press in Mozambique considerably.

Regarding the exorbitant expense of the latest presidential tour, (when prompted) rather than directly slating Gebuza my colleagues muttered about the glory days of Samora Machel. He is Mozambique’s Che Guevara. People’s revolutionary to the last and first president of the new republic. It sounds like he was quite progressive in some respects, including whites in his cabinet for instance, despite the anti-colonial backlash. We never got to know if he’d slide into despotism however, due to his untimely death. He was done away with CIA-style in a ‘freak’ plane crash in 1986 thought to be sponsored by South Africa’s apartheid regime (also sponsoring then guerrilla resistance movement Renamo) with the complicity of his closest advisors. Apparently he ‘knew’ about the plot for his demise but decided to keep an appointment to visit the poor anyway. It’s thought he was found alive with two broken legs and was then shot. The plane’s black box was never found – a signature flourish in the globalised genre of left-wing leader assassinations. Machel’s honour has thus been preserved at its peak. He’s the national hero, up there with academic pioneer Eduardo Mondlane, the country’s first Doctor of medicine.

Machel’ successor and Gebuza’s predecessor, moderate Joaquim Chissano facilitated gradual reform, steering the country towards capitalism after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It seems this ‘slowly but surely’ approach did a great deal to stabilise Mozambique. It is remarkably stable and socially integrated for a country only at peace since ’94. A more militant/populist radical could have plunged the country into the corrosive pendulum effect exemplified by despots like Amin or the next-door neighbour Mugabe. Mozambique is not entirely without Machiavellian intrigue though. Colourful character and war hero General Mabote remains a bit taboo. A distinguished strategist during the Independence war, he applied the same uncompromising military gusto in politics as he did in the bush. During one parliamentary debate he frenziedly proclaimed his intention to hit/batter (one for the translators) those who contradicted him. He and Gebuza (a businessman of great wealth by the way) were both Chissano’s natural successors. The usual campaign trail was, however, apparently substituted by an unfortunately recurrent theme in African politics. Mabote drowned whilst taking a swim at Bilene – a waste-high millpond-esque lagoon in Gaza.

Transition, stabilisation, development remain ongoing. Compared to Chissano, Gebuza has been less talk, more action. He has radically diminished the bureaucracy and inefficiency of public institutions. People are happy they’re now seen to instead of ignored in hospital waiting rooms and that their visa applications take a few weeks instead of months. But this dynamism and decisiveness is yielding a darker flipside. A policy to purge Mozambique of ring-leader criminals has by all accounts led to the bypassing of the (still haphazard, often corrupt) judicial system in favour of their being systematically killed. Reported recently was the public murder by police of a civilian who pranged the president’s daughter’s car whilst leaving Maputo nightclub Coconuts. There are also reports of women wearing mini-skirts being taken off the street into custody, and whispers of a law making the wearing of below-the-knee skirts (not trousers) mandatory. How much mileage this nascent erosion of civil liberties has is questionable though. Mozambique’s current developmental momentum is buoyed by the influx of Western donor money invested on account of its liberal-democratic free-market credentials. With the historical spectre of African authoritarianism looming large, politically speaking (sovereignty aside) it would surely hurt national interest to jeopardize this with the introduction of anti-liberal policies. This said, flows of Western money do not necessarily correlate with good human rights records, controversial British-Saudi Arabia relations being a case in point.

The long-term trajectory of Gebuza’s no nonsense approach remains to be seen. From my own Western wooly liberal perspective, a lean in the direction of more equitable wealth distribution, stronger civil society and better government accountability is what’s needed rather than radical quick-fix policies and a slide towards a corrupt police state. So far, on balance, Mozambique is somewhat of a post-conflict success story. Hopefully down the line things will look even rosier, women will be wearing whatever they want and the price of pranging anyone’s car will be an insurance pay-out.