« 'We Can Never Cover Up This Point' | Main | Scenes Behind the Scenes »
March 14, 2005
Crossing to Safety
When you walk in front of Armando Guebuza's place here in Maputo, you have to cross to the other side of the street. Mozambique's new president occupies what locals call an "office" but is really a walled compound. You can't see much inside, particularly from the opposite sidewalk, but the wall goes on for several blocks. When you get to the end, you're standing in front of Nelson Mandela's. He, too, has an impenetrable wall around his property. (Mandela is married to Graca Machel, the widow of Mozambique's first president, Samora Machel.)
Guebuza won a peaceful election last December, taking over for the twice-elected Joaquim Chissano. Chissano pulled a rarity in sub-Saharan Africa when he announced he would voluntarily step down and hand over power in the 2005 election. Guebuza and Chissano both come from the majority Frelimo party, whose origins lie in the armed conflict for independence from Portugal.
Guebuza is already shaking things up. He's appointed new ministers to nearly every cabinet post. Many of them seem to be reform-minded. The minister of health, for example, is showing up randomly at hospitals in disguise and berating the workers who are drunk or disorderly. The minister also has an autocratic streak. He's made some discombobulating noises at the ministry's five-year plan to fight AIDS, over which it slaved with donors and NGOs. The plan gets high praise all around, but the new minister, years out of medicine, could undermine its approach. "If it's perceived as a vertical program, the minister will withdraw support," said one official.
Guebuza could be ready to exhume another political skeleton with the trial of an alleged assassin. Anibalzinho, as he is known, purportedly helped gun down investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso as Cardoso was homing in on a high-level embezzlement case. Chissano's son was questioned as part of the investigation, but never charged. Despite their war days together, Chissano and Guebuza apparently never got along. Trying Anibalzinho is a chance to poke a finger at Chissano and send a message to the world that the country is not soft on corruption. (Folks say Mozambique is plagued by low-level corruption, but nothing along the lines of some of its neighbors.)
Posted by Adam Graham-Silverman at March 14, 2005 05:24 PM