My stay in Mozambique ended with lunch with my Congolese colleague, Serge Lwamba Mzee, at the Manjardos Deuses (Food for the God) restaurant in down town Maputo at the invitation of our host.
Mzee hates introducing himself as someone from the Democratic Republic of Congo. What rankles him, he says, is that democracy in the Great Lakes region is a farce. So in place of that he prefers to introduce himself as someone from Congo Kinshasa.
With us were hosting editor, Fernando Gonçalves, of the Savana newspaper stable owned by Media Coop and journalist Mercedes Sayagues, a Knight Health Journalism Fellow, who speaks fluent English, Portuguese, French, Spanish and Italian.
“You came all the way from Botswana to have meat! You must be missing your country,” Gon├ºalves exclaimed when I placed my order. I could only respond that I am not really into seafood delicatessen. Talk about the lack of taste to dine and wine at restaurants serving haute cuisine menus. I am not sure if I enjoyed my steak meal or the white wine that went with it while everyone else enjoyed fish for I was dealing with a lingering curiosity to know what really led to and who was behind the murder of investigative journalist and editor of Mediafax, Carlos Cardoso, who was gunned down in a hail of bullets 10 years ago.┬á My hosts opened up and in between our meals they shared with me the story of Cardoso as they knew it.
When Cardoso was killed 10 years ago, a theory, generally believed but not legally proven, existed that businessman and late son of former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano, Nyimpine, had a hand in the murder on 22 November 2000. The hitman Anibal dos Santos Junior “Anibalzinho”, who has escaped twice from jail, was caught in Pretoria on the one occasion and in Canada on the other. He remains in prison. Ten years on, the theory about Chissano junior’s involvement is still peddled whenever the name Carlos is mentioned and both Gon├ºalves and Sayagues are alive to this. “Cardoso’s murder was not sanctioned by the regime. He wrote corruption exposes and stepped on the toes of some people along the way, though some of the exposes were not always written by him,” says Gon├ºalves. Cardoso wrote about the privatization of the Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM) in which he exposed how a well-organised criminal network siphoned about US$14 million out of the bank.
Journalist Paul Fauvet of the government owned news agency, AIM, who wrote fervently about Cardoso’s murder, has covered the BCM affair, calling for an end to the culture of impunity, and for the culprits to be brought to justice. That this was dangerous territory became clear in November 1999, when the BCM lawyer, Albano Silva, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. One cannot help but wonder whether the attacks on Silva and Cardoso are linked. And that having failed to silence their main judicial opponent, the criminal sector of the Mozambican economy has succeeded in eliminating its main enemy in the media.
“I was in Harare when I learnt about his death. His murder was the first item in the news as a developing story. I was devastated. I started phoning colleagues in Mozambique and Portugal. I did not sleep at night. I had spoken to him a few days before he was killed as he wanted me to file a story on the Zimbabwe budget,” says Gon├ºalves. Both men met in the 1980s in the early years of their journalistic careers.
Sayagues who was at the time visiting Uraguay, her native country, says the death of Cardoso has scared a lot of journalists in Mozambique. “Investigative journalism took several steps backwards since then,” she says. On hearing about the tragedy that befell her friend Cardoso, Sayagues rang the then editor of the Mail & Guardian, Philip van Niekerk crying and begging to write the obituary.
“Philip allowed me to write the obituary. I was crying as I typed it. Cardoso stood for equality and justice. He tenaciously soldiered on under difficult and trying times. He had time for everybody,” says Sayagues.
Media Coop, the brainchild of Cardoso, started the first facsimile newspaper in Africa, MediaFax, now sent by electronic mail to a significant subscriber base, and evolved to earn respect, nationally, regionally and internationally for its accuracy in news reporting.
Gonçalves says MediaFax started when there was the need for the media outlet but a shortage of money. There was nothing to buy from a country just emerging from war.
“The newspaper was born after the Constitutional amendment of 1990 which was essentially a complete change of philosophy from a one party state model,” says Gon├ºalves.
Sayagues says while she was the spokesperson for the World Food Programme in Mozambique between 1992-1994 diplomats and humanitarian agencies relied on media MediaFax for news. “It debunked things and set the agenda. The newspaper was crucial in the socio, economic and political development of Mozambique,” she says.
Mediafax started as a cooperative and was the first private media in Mozambique. Gonçalves says at the time people tended to shy away from businesses because of the capitalist connotation attached. Media Coop is now a company with shareholders.
Cardoso is remembered in Mozambique by the union of journalists in collaboration with the Dutch, the Swiss and the European Union who together have created the Carlos Cardoso award of excellence in investigative journalism, which carries a prize of 5000 euros.
