Weekly newspaper Savana - out every Friday - has a rumour column on its back page, called 'Diz-se... Diz-se' - in which it takes a sideways and often cryptic look at current events in Mozambique. It's well worth reading but can be hard to decipher. Here we translate this week's edition - and provide an explanation, where we are able, of the cryptic elements.
Despite the chauvinists not liking it, Mozambique is participating in testing a vaccine for ebola and will participate in tests for a potential cure for covid-19. Like what happens in the rest of the world, where thousands of volunteers have contributed towards the success of the first anti-corona vaccines. As the poet has said, it’s a good job the donkeys’ voices don’t reach heaven…
Plural Media: There was outrage at the idea that Africans, including Mozambicans, would be used as guinea pigs for coronavirus treatments. Savana clearly thinks that outrage was misplaced.
With the start of selection of members of civil society for the inconsequential CNE, frel’s disinformation machine also entered action. Organisations that have nothing to do with these processes were indicated as being candidates. It seems this information is produced in a laboratory situated in one of the avenues that leads from the Praca dos Herois, in Maputo, where psychological actions are planned to destabilise imaginary enemies.
PM: Nominations are underway for new members of election administration body CNE. If you control the CNE you can basically decide who wins elections in Mozambique. Political parties get to nominate some CNE members, and others come from civil society, but the political parties compete to get their favourite civil society people nominated. ‘frel’ is Frelimo – who did an effective job of inventing civil society organisations to produce thousands of election ‘observers’ last time out. Where does Savana think this laboratory is located? It’s not clear; but the Praca dos Herois is notable at least for being the location of the Ministry of Agriculture, headed by minister Celso Correia who was Frelimo’s chief election strategist in 2019. Another perhaps worth noting is that the headquarters of Frelimo’s Maputo City provincial party is on one of the roads that leads off the Praca dos Herois.
The CVs of the CNE candidates have started to arrive at the ad hoc committee of the noisy nursery school. One of the names that’s already been submitted is of the retired Anglican bishop who was in the famous 100 rounds of negotiation in the JC conference hall and who is ‘seca dominical’, Sunday after Sunday, on one of the ‘badaladas’ TVs of the marketplace. But, note, the name of his substitute is also being mentioned as a possible competitor. Some think that the prelate, should he pass, will be on the ramp to take the place of the Sheikh of bad memory. Or could it be that this time, as the secular state permits, there could be a non-religious candidate for the seat of power?
PM: The Bishop is Dom Dinis Sengulane, who was one of the attempted peace-brokers in talks between Renamo and the government in talks that took place in the Joaquim Chissano conference centre in Maputo between 2013 and 2015. The CNE is currently chaired by Sheikh Abdul Carimo, who has attracted criticism for turning a blind eye to electoral fraud – or claiming that it is beyond the CNE’s competence to act on it.
On another platform, there’s another programme, supposed to be of opinion and occupied by the three main political forces of the country, which is greyer and greyer, given that the opiners, when they don’t feel like it, don’t have an opinion. In the last episode, the ‘perdigoto’ representative, who could have had a brilliant intervention about inclusivity or lack of, declined to comment on whether the dismissed Minister of Science and Technology left because he too belonged to the same coop. Pathetic…
PM: The dismissal of minister Gabriel Salimo last week was, as ever, unexplained by the government – but it has since emerged that he is a member of Renamo, so there are strong rumours that that was the reason – though leaving him in place might’ve allowed Nyusi to look good in terms of being inclusive. The word ‘perdigoto’ presumably means pertaining to the ‘perdiz’, or partridge – the nickname for Renamo.
No less pathetic is the situation in the central zone in the fight against unbridled logging. There’s a lack of commitment from the structures and from scribes with their cakes in the place, some resort to paid-for publicity to report violations. The cry is that the tiger abandoned the pupil to her fate in the siamese ministry, he who also doesn’t manage to hold the agency to account that should be pumping the gas in Cabo Delgado. Are we going to go back to the Chinese ‘take-away’?
PM: The ‘tiger’ is generally a reference to Celso Correia, minister of agriculture who was previously minister of the environment, where he took a tough line on logging. That portfolio has since been taken over by a woman who was a civil servant under Correia. The rest of this one is a bit of a mystery…
In the province where the jihadists “do and undo”, the absence of law and order is procipitating a flux of uncontrolled logging and the circulation of ghost trucks who manage to conquer the roadblocks of the lords of war. Dona Isabel, the former combatant from Muidumbe who was caught by the law in the port of Pemba, weeps for her bad luck. But some ‘mesitos’ and Madame AT may have closed their eyes…
PM: An intriguing suggestion that illegal logging is continuing despite the war in Cabo Delgado – which is of course highly probably. Who is Dona Isabel? We don’t know. Madame AT must be Amelia Nakhare, head of the tax authority, the Autoridade Tributaria (AT).
Many years ago there was a runway in Xai-Xai that was destroyed by voracious real estate and replaced by a new free runway (so they say), out towards Chongoene. In Lumbo, the runway that serves as potential support to tourism on Ilha de Mocambique is also succumbing to the same real estate disease. Because, further on, there might be some commissions in a Chinese project. If Nampula were not the Queen province of laundering the income of the frel brand.
PM: China is financing and building a new airport at Chongoene, Xai-Xai. It will have to be paid for some day. ‘frel’ has been mentioned already, above.
At the opening of the Consultative Council of the Ministry of National Defence, the engineer from the plateau referred to organs of information which consciously or otherwise play the terrorists’ game. A veiled order to release the dogs. Which worsens the sombre situation in Mozambique…
PM: The engineer from the plateau is Nyusi – a qualified engineer who hails from the Mueda plateau in Cabo Delgado. The speech was covered by Zitamar here. A ‘sombre situation’ is a call-back to a famous pre-independence pamphlet by Frelimo dissident Uria Simango, who denounced a “Sombre situation in Frelimo”, and who was executed by the Frelimo regime after independence. (His sons Daviz and Lutero went on to form the MDM.)
The fuel marking war continues. In the first instance the TA decided to annul the competition, doing the wishing of the Swiss and their Moz buddies. But the ministry didn’t accept defeat, and decided to appeal. The procession is not yet out of the church…
PM: This is a reference to a dispute over the tender process to choose a company to ‘mark’ properly imported fuel in Mozambique. The contract up to now has been held by a Swiss company, with local partners. The TA is the administrative court, Tribunal Administrativo.
The kingdom of kickabout is in a state of shock. Not content and not accepting the sad reality of being carried along every year, they’re now pretending to be on a war footing because corona is going to annul a few of their exchanges. Might this not be a serious opportunity to reflect about the old and new normal?
PM: This seems to be talking about the Mozambican football league which survives thanks to subsidies every year, and which has struggled particularly in this year of pandemic.
On the sacred plains he must be walking on now, the journo who believed in reincarnation must be satisfied to see the living memories that were recorded this week. But on the road that bears his name, going by the TV interviews, he seems to be a complete unknown. The problem of the chamanculo stenches, however is the opposite…
PM: An apparent reference to Carlos Cardoso, a journalist who was one of the founders of Mediacoop, the publisher of Savana, who was murdered in Maputo 20 years ago last Sunday. He has a road in Polana Canico named after him – but it seems a vox pop there found few people who knew of him, presumably more preoccupied with issues that affect their day-to-day.