13 December 2007
Maputo — "Crime frustrates our efforts to fight against poverty, and weakens the image and dignity of the state", declared Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Thursday, during his annual State of the Nation address to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic.
Speaking in a week in which two banks in Maputo have been robbed on consecutive days, Guebuza warned "We cannot do deals with crime, All of us must strongly repudiate it, and fight against it vigorously".
But there must be no lynchings and vigilante justice against alleged criminals, he added. "We must discourage any form of people taking the law into their own hands", said Guebuza. "The task of judging and sentencing belongs to the state through the bodies of the administration of justice. These must improve their performance in order to ensure that justice is speedy".
The state was responsible for public order and safety, he added, but it counted on cooperation from citizens. "All of know that the criminal lives in a family and is part of a community. The criminal is the parent, son, brother, friend or acquaintance of somebody in society. His acts are therefore known, and should be denounced to the authorities", said Guebuza.
He was optimistic that the Community Police Councils, established throughout the country, "are bodies through which the police are consolidating their alliance with our people, thereby strengthening their ability to maintain security and order".
Turning to the explosions at a military arsenal in the Maputo neighbourhood of Malhazine on 22 March, in which over 100 people lost their lives, Guebuza stressed that the government had provided medical care, pensions and invalidity benefits for the victims, and rebuilt the homes damaged by the munitions flung out of the blazing arsenal.
It had also removed and destroyed obsolete weaponry and transferred arsenal out of cities to areas where they would pose no threat to life.
But Guebuza did not mention the findings of the commission of inquiry which he had set up. In April this commission reported that the warehouse where the explosions began had no roof, that there were no manuals for the obsolete, Soviet-era weaponry, and that only the most perfunctory of inspections had been undertaken. These findings were an indictment of gross negligence - yet, as far as the public is aware, there have been no disciplinary, let alone criminal, proceedings against any o the officers in charge of the arsenal.
In January and February there had been serious flooding in central Mozambique, particularly in the Zambezi Valley, followed by cyclone Favio, which hit Inhambane and Sofala provinces. Guebuza said that 163,045 people had been affected by the floods, and 133,670 by the cyclone.
These disasters "put to the test our people's capacity to respond to the fury of nature", and the government's response both through early warning systems and through mobilizing resources to mitigate the impacts of the floods and the cyclone "favoured the establishment of conditions for a speedy normalization of life in the areas affected".
Guebuza said the government also used the resettlement plan as "an opportunity for development. The resettlement areas are being endowed with better living conditions and our fellow countrymen are being taught new agricultural techniques, new building materials, practices and personal and collective hygiene, and new forms of managing the environment and using the resources surrounding them".
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