London — When Frelimo's 'president-select' Armando Guebuza met diplomats last week their main query was regarding crime. They also wanted to know his views on political pluralism, freedom of expression, and relations between Frelimo and other political parties.
Guebuza, probably the wealthiest businessmen in the Frelimo elite (SouthScan v17/13), told them that the fight against crime must involve strengthening the capacities of the police force and of the courts. Yet this response is unlikely to even scratch the surface of the problem.
Local analysts say the level of crime and corruption in Mozambique, while kept off the public agenda of the major donors, or the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, may threaten economic development in Mozambique and in the rest of the Southern African Development Community. In addition the proceeds of crime cast doubt on Mozambique's much-vaunted growth figures, they say.
The ambassadors made no call for a public campaign like that now being directed by Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa - who on Friday ordered the arrest for corruption of his ambassador to the US, and who has sacked ministers and generals (SouthScan v17/13).
Whatever his parallel political agenda, on this score the Zambian president has the public backing of outside donors and the International Monetary Fund. But while Mozambique's crime record is massively larger that Zambia's it is still regarded as the star pupil of the IMF because of its zooming growth figures and adherence to structural reform. It has been rewarded by increased aid and over the last year, Russia, China, Britain and the US have wiped off most of the country's bilateral debt.
Analysts say that Mozambique is now very close to becoming a criminalised state. At an April seminar organised by South Africa's Institute of Security Studies, Mozambican journalist Marcelo Mosse and the ISS' Peter Gastrow warned of a slide towards criminal networks, involving top political and government figures, becoming a routine part of governance in Mozambique.
The perception is growing that the state mainly serves a minority of political supporters who benefit from its resources, they warn. "The expansion of the so-called 'national bourgeoisie' in Mozambique is being helped along through the accumulation of capital often derived from commissions that supporters of political parties and their relatives receive as a result of having cultivated influence, often through corruption," they say.
They also say that the real state of the Mozambican economy may be skewed by massive flows of drug money, laundered through local banks and appearing as increases in production and commercial exchange. In fact this drug traffic may be Mozambique's largest business, with a value more than all the rest of the country's external trade.
Capturing the state
The Mosse and Gastrow paper was based on the study of organised crime and related corruption in Mozambique and they commend Mozambican attorney-general Joaquim Madeira's massively critical report to the Mozambique parliament on the failures of the police and judiciary. They also refer to a danger of "state capture", in which firms "shape the laws, policies, and regulations of the state to their own advantage by providing illicit private gains to public officials."
Unlike Russia and some of the former states of the Soviet Union, Mozambique did not enter its economic transition with powerful oligarchs in place who could manipulate the state to their own advantage. "The Mozambican 'oligarchs' appear to be the wealthy organised criminal networks that have secured political protection and that operate parallel to the state with relative impunity."
In addition to undermining the accountability and transparency of state structures, organised criminal networks in Mozambique have also successfully penetrated sectors of commerce and trade.
They show that the legal system has collapsed and court rulings are available to the highest bidder. Money laundering is common, and Mozambique has become an important drug warehousing and transit centre, with senior figures involved.
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Other analysts agree. They show that in two major bank scandals, which brought the level of crime to international attention, at least $400 million was stolen, partly by senior figures in Frelimo. Two people who tried to investigate the bank frauds, newspaper editor Carlos Cardoso and the government's head of banking supervision, Siba-Siba Macuacua, were both publicly assassinated and the investigations of the killings blocked at high level, according to academic Joseph Hanlon.
However, donor support continues to grow. At its donor Consultative Group meeting in October 2001, just two months after the murder of Siba-Siba Macuacua, Mozambique asked for $600m in aid and was given $722m.
For more detail on Mozambique's drug trade, money laundering and organised assassinations see the rest of this report on SouthScan, Vol. 17, No. 14, 12 July 2002 [www.southscan.net]
