AFRICANEWS

MALAWI

Democracy under siege

Alarm bells are being sounded in Mozambique that if no action is taken against corruption, drug trafficking and land grabbing, the country's embryonic democracy could be under serious threat.

Many Mozambicans are increasingly getting concerned at the triple scourge of corruption, drug peddling and land grabbing consuming their country.

Attorney-general Sinai Nhatitima recently said corruption was dangerously eating into the country's economic and social fabric.

"Corruption is now rampant in banks, the army, the police force, customs, education and ports. And with it private cars are multiplying on the streets of Maputo (the capital city) and other towns and so too are beggars and street children," lamented Mr Nhatitima.

"Our democracy has never been so threatened and the crisis is building up every single day."

However, majority of Mozambican people are mad at the Frelimo-led government of president Joachim Chissano. They accuse it of doing precious little to arrest the scourge.

"The political powers of the day have no desire to seek justice nor do any good for the poor, the widows, the orphans and the landless of Mozambique," laments Samato Madeira, a law student at Eduardo Modlane University in Maputo.

"The political elite leads a comfortable life and are thus happy with the status quo. They ahave chosen to close their eyes to what is going on elsewhere in the country. They may from time to time shed crocodile tears but they remain uncommitted to getting rid of the structures that perpetuate socio-economic injustice suffered by the majority of Mozambicans," he adds.

Many are worried that no action has been taken against those caught in the web of corruption, drug dealing and land grabbing.

A classic case involved drugs where 10 Asians were arrested mid last year by the police for manufacturing the narcotic pills, mandrax, in Matola just outside Maputo.

Mozambicans expected the Asians to be tried and that in the ensuing court case, the truth about Mozambican drug trade would come to light. But though the police did a superb job, their efforts were put to waste by the Maputo Provincial attorney, Luis Muthisse who released the Asians who later fled the country.

Muthisse said he let the suspects go because they were not the "real owners" of laboratory.

But why, asked Mozambicans. were the suspects let off the hook so fast when they were key link to the real owners of the mandrax laboratory?

"Releasing them (Asians)sabotaged the entire mandrax investigation," explains Madeira.

A former Frelimo soldier, Peter Chocho, claims that the drug trafficking ring is ran from inside a military barracks ocupied by demobolised government soldiers.

"All these is allowed to happen because of corruption. Top officials are bribed or they fear to arrest the criminals. The police force and the magistrates are party to the corruption."

On the hand, police will trumpet their "success" in the war against drugs every time they nab a few kilogrammes of mariijuana furtively grown in the junkyard.

Says Chocho:"Peasants who have grown marijuana, just as their ancestors have done for centuries, are more likely to appear in courts than the leaders of the criminal gangs who manufacture mandrax or sell cocaine and heroine."

Land is the other thorny issue. many Mozambicans are discontented with the way governmetnofficials allocated land especially to foreigners. Land grabbing has becomming the order of the day.

Jacob Vieira, a long time farmer at Massoane, 45 kilometres from Maputo was surprised to wake up one morning to find beacons on his land: it had been sold, without his knowledge to a white farmer and he and his family had to make way.

An angry Vieira told Africanews that because he had no tittle deeds to his land, he could do little but oblige.

"I am told that since I don't have title to this land, I must move. And since the process of acquiring back my land is long, complicated and expensive, I can't do anything," a dejected Vieira said.

"The government," he added," has forgotten that that the very fact that of occupying our ancestral lands gives us the rights over them. Land is the very thing we have."

Raul Domingos of the opposition Renamo is aghast at the recent agreement signed between president Chissano and South Africa's Mandela which will give upto 1000 hactares of prime farmland to white South African farmers for upto to 50 years.

"Land should be given to rural communities. These are the main agricultural producers in the country. The samll farmer was forced into subsistence farming by colonialism and later by the war."

Without a proper land policy in the country, experts fear that a class of landless peasants will soon emerge with dire implications for social order.

Jose Negrao, a land expert at Eduardo Mondlane university warns that in the absence of a coherent national development policy, "private interests get the better land for speculative purposes while peasants are squeezed into marginal lands."

"We don't want our democracy to collapse; we don't want Mozambique to go back to war."

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