Why Mozambicans took to the streets

@ausieview: Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal in 1974.

At the time it had food self sufficiency.

Today, 36 years later, it has no food self sufficiency. On just about every measure of living standards, it has regressed since the colonial administration was kicked out.

The government of Samora Machel chose to run a centralised command economy modeled on the failed cold war Eastern block countries, with the associated consequences.

It has large tracts of arable land, and no farmers. Zambia to its North offered attractive terms to Zimbabwean farmers seeking refuge from the illegal victimisation they suffered at the hands of Robert Mugabe, and is now a net food exporter.

Mozambique is in its predicament because of the choices of its own successive governments. And it is high time Africans stopped blaming other people for their problems, regardless that it may suit local elite classes and a foreign legion of uninformed hippies totally divorced from reality to do so.

ausieview's comment should not be dismissed out of hand - Mozambique has taken a beating at the hands of foreigners. However, it was South Africa in the 1974-90 period, and not Portugal, that almost broke the country.

What ausieview is not considering is the capacity of nations to recover from turmoil. There is not a country on earth that has not been colonized, partitioned or messed with in some way in its history, and that includes European countries.

Mozambique has key similarities with Ethiopia and Tanzania. All were one-party autocracies in recent decades with some kind of "socialist" label (however fake it was). All are non-English-speaking with relatively poor global connections. And they all have poor educational infrastructure - very low school attendance rates even for Africa and too few universities and technical colleges.

These factors have resulted in puny managerial talent pools. Whereas in Kenya you can easily find managers and entrepreneurs with up-to-date skills, a similar search in these other countries would yield practically nothing.

History is what it is. Traumatic memories are not holding back Mozambique and similar countries today. It is a want of managerial foot soldiers on the ground.

@ ausieview – I’m sorry but Mozambique is probably a typical example of the flawed perception that promised aid never materialises. Mozambique was at one stage placed in the “Least Developed Category” and received a tremendous amount of aid, to the point that the economy was basically running purely on aid. So we now had the reverse problem – creating a culture of entitlement and dependence on aid. Luckily the previous president went about weaning the country off the aid and focused on the trade part.

As for companies corrupting politicians – fair enough. However, if you travel to Mozambique you will find two theme parks that are halted in construction. According to the local press the developers had bonafide legal documents to build their theme parks. Apparently they turned down various politicians’ attempts to extort bribes. They suddenly found themselves in the most bizarre position where title deeds that they clearly show as being bonafide have been “partly” removed. The concept of a “partly removed title deed” is bizarre even by Mozambican standards. The court cases continue. In essence the question is who extorts bribary from who? Unless you have the exact facts of who approached who – best you be careful as to who you blame.

Mozambique actually has an interesting situation that has not been reported in this article. They have unbelievably high tariffs on imported goods. If you look at their neighbour, Swaziland, who has none of these issues of high bread prices and market distortions – you can then understand the situation better. The high import tariffs are a form of revenue for government, but in turn create a black market and serious market distortions. Mozambique’s biggest trading partner is South Africa who has a dramatically lower cost base than Mozambique (only because of the tariffs). So they sell cheaply to South Africa (low income) but their tariffs against South African products means they imports are expensive (high costs). Their balance of payments account has resulted in their currency slipping against the South African Rand (as noted in this article).
Mozambique needs to wean themselves out of these high tariffs and slip into the same position as Swaziland who has a healthier trading position with South Africa.

Unfortunately it appears the tariffs are also an excellent way for government officials to line their pockets. Perhaps I’m speculating here. But there is very little will from government to do the most obvious.

Africa’s only real hope is to have a group of well educated and “really patriotic” leaders come to power. It has happened in places like Botswana and Mauritius, but sadly not quite as much in other places.

christopher haslett – your statement, “….However, it was South Africa in the 1974-90 period, and not Portugal, that almost broke the country….” How so?

When Frelimo first took power in 1975 Samora had not come down to take power and all was in status quo. Within months of Samora arriving at the capital he immediately stated his position which included his clear intention to use his government resources to assist all movements that will actively de-stabilise South Africa. He also followed through with this campaign allowing for the training of full blown terrorists groups (of the time) to be based within Mozambique. These groups then used Moz as a spring board to infiltrated South Africa and literally blow up restaurants and other civilian establishments.

Samora was the first to instigate a war against South Africa. South Africa responded by assisting RENAMO (the opposition to Frelimo) and in turn de-stabilised Mozambique up until the date of the Nkomati Accord in which apartheid South Africa and the Frelimo government agreed on a truce.

Blaming South Africa for Mozambique’s ills is unfair, during that time period blame for Mozambique’s utter failure should be placed on Samora Michel and his Marxist policies along with an ill though out foreign policy.

But as a clear example of an alternative, look at the situation (then) of Zimbabwe and Swaziland (both neighbour Mozambique and SA). These countries also apposed the apartheid regime but did not actively go about destabilising the regime and more importantly did not go about implementing Marxist economic policies. Both Swaziland and Zimbabwe grew and were able to develop in relative peace through the period of 1975 to 1990.

Mozambique is just one example of the social injustice like many others, not all injustices are done by the elite of the country of today, but it is a story of past colonial injustices, of resources being riped out of the country, the rearrangement of social structures, then the inevitable war with their colonial masters to free them selves which lead to more social rearrangement that has left them in the position that they are in today.

The real shame is that those that gained the wealth out of countries that was colonized just haven't given a bugger about them since, which is most of us in the first world. In reality despite all of the backslapping about how much aid has been given to such countries, the pledged amount of aid to many countries never get much of anywhere near the pledges in the first place, so shame on you.

Another shame is that the few companies that do any sort of investment into such countries are only there for just their benefits, not give very much benefits to the population of the country that they are in, to make it worse, many companies have done deals to corrupt the politicians and others within the country to benefit the company, making the companies more corrupt than the governments that we seem to read a lot about.(Companies like individuals, are suppose to be of benefit to a country not just to themselves and few stockholders, companies do not hold any supreme rights)

So I think that if we were in the same situation of the population of countries like Mozambique and many others, I'd be angry too, some what more angry-er than say the French population that is currently angry over having their pension age lifted from 60 years old to 62, I'm 62 now and have three more years to wait for mine, but I'm not angry.

We need to think a whole lot more about the people in countries that have given, or should I say, been taken, the wealth of their nations throughout the past that all of us have benefited from right up to today.

Just don't blame them for everything that we see today.

I think the quote Columbo007 is looking for is "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres..."