Washington, DC — President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique was in Washington, at the end of February for a mini-summit of southern African leaders and President George W. Bush, and gave allAfrica.com an interview.
Following the end of a prolonged civil war in 1992 and the elections in '94, in which Frelimo defeated its long-running military foe, Renamo, Mozambique has struggled to rebuild, attempting to reverse profound economic decline and poverty, and wrestling with natural disasters like the massive floods of early 2000 which displaced a quarter of the population and destroyed infrastructure. Despite being heavily reliant on aid and debt relief, the country has attracted significant foreign investment and achieved impressive growth, projecting annual rates of 7-10% for the next 5 years.
Relations with Renamo, have improved since tensions boiled over in November 2000 and led to violent opposition demonstrations to protest against alleged fraud in the December 1999 presidential and legislative elections.
In its first years of independence, in the latter half of the 70s, despite fighting its own bitter civil war, Mozambique under the rule of Frelimo gave critically important assistance to the Zimbabwean liberation forces of Robert Mugabe's Zanu and his Zanla fighters, allowing them to use Mozambique as a launch-pad for their attacks across the long frontier with Zimbabwe.
In this second part of the interview, President Chissano - the country's president since 1986 - talks about the prospects for peace in its fellow lusophone nation in southern Africa, Angola, following the killing of Jonas Savimbi; whether he intends to run again for president in 2004; and about the situation in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where President Mugabe is facing his biggest ever challenge from the Movement for Democratic Change and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.
No country in southern Africa paid a higher price for the liberation of Zimbabwe than Mozambique in the 1970s; what are your thoughts on the crisis in Zimbabwe today?
Well, all that I can say is that it's a pity that the world could not follow what was happening in Zimbabwe. Now the world is reacting to the after-effects of the problems that were piled up in Zimbabwe, particularly in what concerns the land issue.
We know that Zimbabwe was championing the causes that it is now accused of not attending to; I remember that it was President Mugabe who was in the forefront of the issue of human rights and democracy in Nigeria against Abacha.
But now, when Zimbabwe comes to this problem of land, nobody speaks any more about land. It's regrettable that this aspect is being neglected. Now, there's talk about lack of democracy, persecution against the press and whatnot, but all these things are the reaction, the result of not attending to the causes of this in the beginning.
Now we're going to have these elections. I'm not going to say, "well, there's no violence in Zimbabwe"; there's violence here and there today, but I don't know whether we can say it's organized by the government or even by the party in power.
What is important for me is that these elections should take place, should be given a chance to take place and then the comments on them can come later; but there's a wave of comments about the outcome of the elections before they take place. People are deciding who's going to win, people are saying if their side is going to be defeated it is because there was fraud by the other side... so the results are already there!
And the sanctions being put against the one side are decreasing the freedom of the electorate to choose, because it means people from outside are already saying 'this group is bad, therefore you should not elect them'; it's not good for democracy in my opinion. I think that if elections had taken place and then people reacted to what happened by imposing sanctions, then I would have less reason to discuss or be displeased about it.
Well the United States imposed sanctions; did you tell President Bush your view?
I didn't tell him, but I told other members of the government here who asked me the question because they wanted to know my opinion. President Bush didn't ask me the question.
I don't have to say that what they did was wrong; but I can voice my opinion and my opinion is that the Europeans should have stayed to observe the elections and then they would have much more of a role of commenting on the outcomes of elections. Maybe they would have been a deterrent, by their presence, of further violence; but they chose to leave. I think it's unfortunate because they were there to observe. It can't be that without that one man chosen to lead them, they would lose the capacity of observing. So I say that they should have stayed, it would have been better, even if, at the end, they had taken a tough position against the winner or loser.
If one of the candidates has been charged with treason two weeks before the vote it's going to be pretty difficult for him to operate freely. And we interviewed a university professor from the University of Zimbabwe the other day who said that the campaign machine for ZANU-PF had an enormous amount of military input. He said 18,000 soldiers were involved in the campaigning. So things may not be quite as straightforward as you suggest.
No, I don't suggest anything. But from the reports when we met with the government of Zimbabwe, with President Mugabe himself, when he explained to us about all this question of soldiers and whatnot, he explained that it is a machinery put there in order to keep the peace, decrease the cases of violence and - in case there is violence - to deal with the people who are causing it.
He said that the police is there but all have sworn to work to bring more peace to the election, so there was civic education for these people, it is part of the organization of these elections.
If there was some cooperation from the opposition, maybe this could be better understood; but what happens is that there are lots of bits of information which come out from Zimbabwe in small pieces and not comprehensive; then they are broadcast everywhere and people start commenting on things without knowing the real situation.
For instance, this issue of the police, it's true that there are police, which are not meant to campaign, but to keep order - which Zimbabwe was accused of not keeping when they were not using these police in the farms. Now the government says, OK, let us use the police to keep order and they are being blamed again!
The other example is this; all radios are saying Zimbabwe expelled the leader of the European Union team. It sounds like a perfect statement. But the Zimbabweans did not allow a Swedish citizen to be an observer of the elections, because they had ruled out the participation of Swedish citizens as election observers. No one says this outside. They see only a leader of a European Union team who has been expelled.
Second, everybody speaks about a European Union team, but the Zimbabweans did not invite the European Union, so there was no European team in the eyes of the Zimbabweans! Therefore there can be no leader of the European Union team, because the Europeans that were there were invited individually and they had accepted and been accredited individually. Yet when they decided to leave, they decided to leave as a team.
So, these are the things which do not let the world make a fair judgment. Of course, one should have hoped that both sides could be flexible and find a middle solution, but the atmosphere has been so spoiled that all that comes out sounds like a campaign by one side against the other. We have tried to mediate, ourselves, in the SADC, we tried to moderate and 'intermediate', but things came to this point.
Can we ask about the forthcoming meeting in June of your party, Frelimo? Is it true that you've decided not to run for president again?
Well, it's true that I have decided not to run in 2004. My party has agreed with my desire but the Congress in June has got nothing to do with that.
But isn't that where you elect a new party president and pick the candidate for 2004, a presidential candidate?
I can't say anything about what is going to happen in the Congress now. It is too early for me to know, because people are still busy discussing the theses of the Congress.
We hear various names, as you might imagine; one of the more interesting names of potential presidential candidates that has surfaced is Graca Machel.
Well, in our party, we've never discussed this issue of succession. Even at the highest level, the political committee, we have not discussed this issue. I, myself, I asked my colleagues if I could trigger the discussion on this and they said "No, it's too soon, we don't want to discuss it now." So, anything which is said about names is mere speculation. It is unfortunate actually, because people are starting to voice names and it is confusing public opinion and even the militants of the party are getting confused about something which was not discussed yet; I've never discussed this with anybody.
Relations between you and Renamo seem to be less confrontational now. Are you expecting that in forthcoming months, and next year, that you'll have a cooperative and loyal opposition, as opposed to the tensions there have been in the past?
Well, we hope so - we all make mistakes. We are working with the civil society where members who are sympathetic and members of Renamo are participating to create a vision, a long-term vision, for some 20, 23, 24 years to come, so that the whole society may adhere to one objective and pursue one objective in development - economic development, social development, cultural development, and the development of democracy and so forth. We have one line, the way of obtaining the objective may vary from government to government, but the main line will be followed by all of us and therefore this will enable all of us, whoever will be in opposition, to be a loyal opposition.
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A quick question about Angola - Do you feel that the chances for peace are greater now that Savimbi is dead?
Yes, President dos Santos is optimistic about it. Myself, I think that people are tired of war. We may have our surprises, but in general, I think that Savimbi who had self-pride and who would not bow, is gone now and the people who remain, maybe they have more space to be flexible; and maybe they will have less ability to reorganize an already weak guerilla force to be able to fight on.
Is the way Mozambique has addressed Renamo any kind of model for Angola?
We proposed negotiations with Renamo and Renamo accepted and then after the signing of the agreement, Renamo complied with the agreement, although there were some problems, which we could solve.
That was not the case of Angola. Unita wanted to renegotiate an agreement instead of implementing this agreement. Actually they started implementing and they stopped halfway and even the implementation that they made was not fully in accordance with the agreement. So, it's very different.
Now, the Angolan government has shown patience for a long time, but they came to a point when they said, no, enough is enough, we are now going to [fight] up to the end. Now it's up to the other side to change and take a positive attitude. Unfortunately, Savimbi allowed himself to end in this manner. Now, let us hope that those who remain will not act the same way as Savimbi because if they do, I'm afraid that they may end up the same way.
Is the Lusaka protocol a good basis for talking?
No, the protocol of Lusaka is not a basis for talking, the protocol is a ready-made protocol which has to be implemented. There's nothing to be talked about in this protocol. It has to be implemented.
But the civil society groups disagree with that. They say "we were left out last time. It's time for us to be involved now".
But that would not be the Lusaka Accord. This will be a new accord because you can discuss issues every year and for the whole of life, but you don't change a protocol because someone was not born when the protocol was written down. They have to implement the protocol.
