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Fighting for the right to tell the truth
Carlos Cardoso: Telling the truth in Mozambique
Paul Fauvet and Marcelo Mosse
2003
Double Storey, Cape Town
Reviewed by Richard Bartlett
In the early days of the revolution in Mozambique, when Carlos Cardoso had returned to independent Mozambique after having been expelled from South Africa for his student radicalism, journalists, as a matter of principle, did not put their names to their stories. As Mia Couto, the novelist and a former colleague of Cardoso, explains: "Not signing our articles had to do with the idea that Frelimo [the national liberation movement] was a collective voice. The word ‘I’ was suspect."
This notion is central in the biography of the journalist who was assassinated in November 2000 for his persistence in uncovering fraud within the heart of the country’s banking system. While the book tells of the life of one man it is more the story of Mozambique over the past 25 years told through the writings of one prolific journalist whose idealism and commitment to justice guided his ambitions. The story told is not just about the fate of one individual who sought to make a difference, it is about the fate of a country that sought to chart its own path, and why it is still trying to do so.
One of the remarkable aspects of the aftermath of Cardoso’s murder was the national outpouring of grief, the monthly candlelight vigils held at the place where he died, the vast funeral, and even the arrest of one of his murderers on a bus, with the bus driver dropping the party off at the nearest police station. It is remarkable because a journalist was given the status of a national hero. He was a constant thorn in the side of Frelimo, because he believed in their idealism, and it is sadly ironic that the respect in which he was held by the highest offices of the state, and at all levels of society, has led to his killers being brought to justice.
Cardoso’s story is that of a free Mozambique told from the inside. What makes it unique is the personality of Cardoso. He believed in the idealism of Frelimo and expected all Frelimo members and government officials to do the same. He never tired of exposing the injustices and bureaucracy and inefficiency and ineptitude that all too often occurred as idealism mingled with the reality of opportunism.
But to describe Mozambique as such, to fall into the trap of prejudice, to present it as a story of tarnished ideals and broken hopes, is to do both Cardoso and the country an injustice. This book does as the title suggests, "tell the truth", and in doing so it lays bare the socialist bureaucrats, the rampant corruption of kleptocracy and the political intrigues. The long list of stories which Cardoso covered, which he refused to let go of, which he pursued until the government acted, or reacted, bear testimony to his excellence. They are also stories of national importance, those which paint a picture of a country ravaged by corruption and a self-aggrandising state. Above all the biography gives an idea of how journalists, and this one in particular, contributed to the development of the socialist state of Mozambique, and later became a means of counter-balancing and exposing the injustices of the state, as well as the errors made and the difficulties a poor, independent country faced.
"It lays bare the socialist bureaucrats, the rampant corruption of kleptocracy and the political intrigues"
Cardoso’s professional career as a journalist began in October 1975, just three months after Mozambique became independent, and a month after the apartheid authorities ended his university studies and role as student politician at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
He was born in 1951 in the central Mozambican city of Beira, but grew up in Lourenço Marques, as Maputo was then known, and after twice failing his third year of high school, thanks to too much football, he was sent to a boys-only boarding school in South Africa. In 1983 he wrote of his experiences of apartheid’s Christian National version of education in a series of columns, titled ‘The Natural Order of Things’, for Noticias, the daily newspaper based in Maputo. His university career was cut short just as the apartheid state was beginning to come to grips with having a socialist, majority ruled, independent country on its eastern flank.
Explaining his position as a young, idealistic journalist in the light of revolution Cardoso, writing in 1990, said:
"There was no ‘me’ the journalist and ‘them’ the leaders. At the centre of the strongest feeling in the initial post-independence years there was the idea…that journalists, party cadres and leaders were all comrades at their various posts, each responsible to the others in the struggle for the elimination of misery in Mozambique. They are years that will never be repeated…now that today’s accelerated stratification will certainly open breaches in the ideological fabric that was previously more or less homogenous."
That written at the time the country was ditching it socialist constitution and changing its name to abandon the trappings of socialism and embrace the ideology of the free market. Over the previous 15 years Cardoso had been working first at Tempo, a weekly national magazine, and then for the Mozambique News Agency, where he was director. During this time he wrote not just about his own country, but also kept his country up to date on events in the region, and ensured that the press in South Africa heard a voice different to that promulgated by apartheid. Thus he wrote on the 1976 riots in Soweto, profusely on the Zimbabwean war of liberation and independence, on the war in Angola and South Africa’s defeat at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1987.
But what makes this far more than a history of the region is how Cardoso reported on, and lived through, the changes in Mozambique. He willingly gave up his family’s large home when property was nationalised in 1977 and moved into a one-bedroom flat. He fought vehemently against intervention by political leaders in the day to day running of the press. He spoke out against the forced removals undertaken over zealously by petty bureaucrats in the name of re-education, he raised difficult questions when the South Africans tried to wash their hands of Samora Machel’s death in an air crash in 1986. At the same time, he pointed a finger at the generals in the Mozambican state who were anxious to avoid a severe dressing down by their commander in chief.
Implicating Mozambicans in the death of the leader, who was becoming isolated as too much of an idealist, Cardoso wrote:
"I am tempted, in moments of bitterness, to think that Samora’s death was a game of silences. From their side, without a word being said, the question would have come ‘Can we?’ And from our side, without anybody saying anything, the answer went ‘You can.’
In other words, perhaps the deed was done on the other side of the border, but today I think that on this side there were people who secretly cracked open the champagne."
With the adoption of a new constitution in 1990, there was much debate in press circles about the issue of press freedom. Cardoso and his colleagues began to push for this to be included in the new constitution. Thanks to their drive, and the role of Cardoso, Mozambique now has one of the most progressive press regimes in Africa, but at the time it was written Cardoso had given up on journalism. He was tired and frustrated and announced that he was to be an artist. This lasted until he was persuaded to join an independent media organisation being set up in 1992, Mediacoop. He went on to establish Mediafax, a daily fax newsheet, which grew rapidly while his colleagues in Mediacoop were struggling to launch a weekly newspaper Savana.
The success of Mediafax was not just the novelty of the idea in a country of limited resources, but it was also thanks to Cardoso’s approach to journalism. This was the time of the Rome peace process where the government was negotiating with Renamo to end the war and in anticipation of eventual elections. Unlike most of the other media, Cardoso sought out those views that had not been aired until then. He gave a platform to Renamo, and was as critical of them as he was of any other politician, while he remained a Frelimo faithful until the very end.
After the elections of 1994 and the return of peace to the country, after the departure of the United Nations force, and the proliferation of newspapers in the capital, Cardoso turned to what had largely been ignored in the press until then, the economy. With the same persistence and tenacity that he applied to politics, he approached the economic changes the country was experiencing, and it was here that he made a difference, and made enemies.
The first major economic issue he took on was that of liberalisation of the cashew nut industry. This was not so much of government doing, but more the result of insistence by the International Monetary Fund, which tied future aid to the reduction of tariffs on cashews. The tariffs, by discouraging the export of raw cashew nuts, ensured the survival of the cashew processing factories. The IMF claimed the cancellation of tariffs would benefit the peasant farmers who harvested the cashews. At the insistence of the IMF the government dropped tariffs by more than half, the cashew nut processing factories shut their doors as the nuts were exported, and when the world price of cashews fell even peasants were put out of business. Cardoso fought long and hard to raise awareness of this and while he did not succeed in saving the industry, which is only now beginning to re-emerge, he did achieve a retreat by the IMF, which belatedly admitted that its approach might not have been the correct one.
It was another economic issue, the privatisation of the country’s banks, that eventually led to Cardoso’s death on November 22, 2000. He constantly raised difficult questions about who was benefiting from the privatisation, why the privatisation was done in such a rush and why the state had to keep using taxpayers’ money to keep the new shareholders happy. But his murder was provoked by his investigation of bank fraud at one branch on the eve of privatisation. He uncovered a loss of US$14 million, and followed a trail which led from prominent families to the core of the state, including police and courts in the pay of organised crime. The criminals silenced the critic.
There was more to Cardoso than an idealistic journalist. He had his quirks and applied his mind to ideas that were not always taken seriously. In the days of shortages in the shops and endless queues for basic necessities, he came up with an idea to encourage youngsters to grow papaya trees in exchange for marbles – plant a tree, harvest the papaya, earn marbles as a reward. His connections in embassies and aid organisations got him thousands of marbles and the project began, but too many other pressing issues, and the theft of the marbles made it a short lived programme. There was also his suggestion that the growing of cannabis be legalised – not for smoking, but for the fibre that could be used in clothing.
This biography is a fitting tribute, not just to the man who spent his working life for the improvement of his country, but to the country as well which inspired his idealism, and his frustration. Marcelo Mosse, one of Cardoso’s colleagues and author of this book, writes of the news of Cardoso’s death:
"Tears dampened my face. I switched on the computers, and began to write the saddest story of my life. What words would suffice to announce the death of our editor? Or rather, not just this stark death, but the life and the man, his struggles and his passions?
….
I had no strength to write. Machado da Graça [fellow journalist] arrived, and I asked him to work my notes into an obituary. He did so, and our short text declared that, though they had murdered Cardoso, his pen would not fall. I was afraid. What now? How could we preserve his work?"
Fauvet and Mosse continue to work in Mozambique as journalists – this book is a fitting tribute to their friend and colleague, and their country. But even more fitting a tribute is that the critical, investigative journalism that Cardoso fostered for the betterment of his country is being continued, and is making a difference. He has become inspiration.
Richard Bartlett is the co-editor of the African Review of Books.
