1. Our reasoning to this work:

This work is intended to share thoughts and experiences with our fellow compatriots mainly the young born after independence, in the hope that mistakes committed and setbacks suffered yesterday, during our walk in search of freedoms, are not repeated today and tomorrow. Mistakes are made by the human being, here and there. But the extraordinary thing with the human specie is its capability of learning from its errors and those from the others and its ability to take steps forward, transforming, for better, the “world” in which she/he lives. Indeed, this is what differentiates us, human beings, from other non-rational animals: our power of learning existing in the brain. Our brain has a powerful system of storing, coding and decoding the experiences, recalling them from time to time when necessary in support to a decision-making process, sometimes trying to replicate lost things that rarely can be retrieved as for them the actors of the success stories have gone and for good. But the recalling of an experience shall be important asset, as knowledge, guiding and helping society to avoid repeating the errors of the past, as well as empower citizens to advancing, finding alternative ways of progressively improving the discoveries of yesterday. All this comes to the light of the current political mood we are experiencing in the country.

2. Review of Machel’s legacy: a brief of Mozambique’s post-independence experience.

Our “world” in which we happened to be born and decided to live in is Mozambique. Yet some of us were at the age of 15 when we did witness with joy, glory and hope, the declaration of our country independence. Unlike those of our grannies and parents, we had hoped that our days have soon come and they would be plentiful of endowments and entitlements. The colonial masters have harshly oppressed the Mozambican people, denying them the basic rights and disenfranchising them from the human kind.

However, very soon, our shining heydays waned and vanished. Our fellow countrymen who fought against the Portuguese occupation in the land and to whom the colonial power handed over the reigns of the emerging state, our “heroes”, very early turned themselves into villains. They ought not to replace the white by a black oppressor but, unfortunately, for the disappointment of many of us, they did so.

The country became independent but with no freedoms for its people. We became a property of one man and its party, the yesterday’s liberation movement, contrary to its genealogy. We continued being denied free political, economic and social rights. No free speech and no free movement within the country, which were only permitted with special authorisation (guias de marcha) passed by the local party cells (grupos dinamizadores). The state became the sole producer and distributor of all goods in the country and privately owned shops were empty and food and other stapler goods were rationed in state created cooperatives and citizens has to bear long hours in the queue, just to get 2Kgs of maize for one month. The peasantry were forced into collective farming. The African traditions and the religious activity were demonised and some of their leaders were publicly humiliated. We lived in a police state, with dissent voices being perused and executed and, sometimes, in public gatherings in front of children and pregnant women.

As a result, a civil war settled in. Though the Machel administration succeeded in convincing the World that the war weighted against Mozambique was done by the minority governments of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa later, six years after his death, the truth came to be realised. When president Chissano and the then rebel Renamo leader Afonso Dhakama decided to end the war, by signing the Peace Accords in Rome in 1992, it did end and for good. Contrary to some sceptics who did not believe the negotiations with Renamo would lead to the end of the civil war in part, as pointed earlier, due to the concerted campaign of disinformation of the World about what was really in conflict here, including the commissioned Gersony report, the fact is that since then the fighting did stop and the government has, pleasing the donors, reformed the economy, which is said to be growing in an average figure of 8 percent p.a. though abject poverty in the rural areas still remains.

3. Where are we now? - Risk and uncertainty to the future:

On the political side, apart from the ex-rebel Renamo and other parties being allowed in with regular elections taking place, the country has not made effort to root in democracy. Mozambique still faces one of its biggest challenges, of managing the political change from the practices of one party-state to multiparty democratic governance. The present order, called “multi-party democracy”, where citizens experience daily the hurdles of a ruling party extending and deepening its interference in the whole public sphere, is a total lie and betrayal to the citizens of the country. The current governance practice of one party-state, due to its discriminatory nature against citizens according to their political colours is becoming unbearable and can not be sustained in the long run, without the recourse of violence against the people! The Constitution of our Republic is being subverted, with Mozambican citizens who do not belong to the ruling party being stripped off their citizenship rights. They are not considered Mozambicans in their own country.

Up to now the prevailing democratic institutions if anything they are simple mirages. The rule of law and state institutions are an illusion. The role of checks and balances cannot be exercised since the ruling party, who has been in power more than 30 years, possesses total control of all the branches of the government including the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. Judges and all other public service officials are appointed on the basis of party loyalty and not on professional test. From reading the signs up to date spelt out, the current administration’s political strategic intent is to hunt down all dissenting voices and “bring back” the late Machel’s dream of building one party totalitarian regime.

The above scenario cautions the local civil society reforming forces who were enthusiastic with the idea of contributing to the building of a plural democratic and accountable government, as well as places a great challenge to public policy development to the future country’s direction and the responses to be made.

Empirical readings point us to two possible scenarios: First is that it will be impossible to root in democracy, to emancipate the state and effectively curb the endemic corruption in the state sector with the current ruling party in office. However, the ruling war veterans have enough reasons and will do all it takes to keep the power. Their arguments have to do more with their own security than pure obsession to power. As many have been unjustly harmed, research has informed us that our yesterday “heroes” fear that the loss of power may mean being brought to Justice for the crimes perpetrated against the very citizens of their own people on one hand, and on the other for the plundering of state resources. Second is that while the ruling elite can succeed in holding the power, however, unless it smoothes its hard-lining approach in the conduct of the political business and engages constructively with all actors in society, including non-pro-Frelimo and dissenting voices, stops the practice of harassment and exclusion against all those who do not belong to its party, and treats all citizens according to the Law, the seed for more one civil war is being sown in day-after-day and there is a real danger of igniting in a conflict. Clearly this is an undesirable proposition for all of us. Thus, let us hope that the centre of the state power understands these concerns, has the vision and wisdom, and will act in an appropriate manner to the best of our collective interest and indeed that of our nation.

4. What we think our country leadership should be doing?

Very simple: embracing and following the letters and spirit of the Constitution of the Republic, we have hoped our country leadership playing a progressive role, as “change agent”, leading from the top a reform process envisaging to the building of a government of law: a democratic and an accountable state. As the World Bank (2005) also reiterates the need of building an effective state forging engaged society, here, we have hoped a catalyst and all forces mobilising leadership to the combat of our collective enemy: The Poverty. The above endeavour implies taking decisions aiming to emancipate the Mozambican State from the society and treating all citizens according to the Law. Insulating the state from special interest groups of the society, including decommissioning all party arms from the state institutions is critical to the building of a democratic state. The persistent maintenance and extension of the party cells and political activities in the state institutions interferes negatively with the efficient and effective provision of the public services to all citizens. In our view, there is a critical and fundamental need for the removal of the party from the state institutions, for the following arguments:

• For the democratic imperative: for the democratic game to be considered competitively fair, all participating teams must enjoy equal treatment in the use of state resources. The ruling party uses every day and whenever it suits it premises, vehicles, petrol, office stationery, employees and allowances of the state for the development of its political activity. Conversely, the other parties cannot, as they have no access to such resources.
• For the building of a professional Public Administration: The Public Sector Reform Program includes the production of a professional civil service which, lets not foul ourselves, with the current practices of political partisanship in the sector, positive results cannot be achieved, since the main incentives the state workers have ahead is not the demonstration of professional acumen but taking up party membership card and showing loyalty to it;
• For the sake of citizens’ rights: the extortion of freedoms and conscience of citizens who are forced to take up the ruling party membership card in order for them to secure their jobs in the public sector is a contravention of nr.2 of article 53 of the Constitution of the Republic. The practice according to which the Mozambican State belongs to Frelimo party and is meant to serve only its members and clients is wrong and dangerous as it subverts our Constitution, threatens the peace and the young democracy, and jeopardizes the unity and the national cohesion. Citizens must not be harassed and forced into Frelimo membership just for their very survival. This country belongs to all of us and, then, every citizen should be let to enjoy it, on the basis of what each one is capable of contributing with, and not on what political ideologies she/he believes in.
• For effective fight against corruption: corrupt managers and public agents escape and are allowed free from prosecution, just because they are “comrades”. These individuals, who have robbed the state and destroyed many jobs of our fellow compatriots, are the real enemies of our economic freedom. The Frelimo membership card has, since independence, meant carte blanche for predatory behaviour, valid against all in the country. If those in the state power are committed to the building of a government of law, they should not allow the above to continue!

Building an effective state to deliver public services efficiently to all its citizens encompasses also emancipating the sate from all special interest groups in society including the political parties. And GDI will try and contribute, with ideas, to the construction of such state!

Benjamin Pequenino.

Chief Executive.