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Mozambique survives against the odds
Mozambique and the Great Flood of 2000
Frances Christie and Joseph Hanlon
James Currey, Oxford and Indiana University Press
2000
Review by Richard Bartlett
Rosita Pedro has been described as the icon of an African disaster. She and her mother were plucked from a tree by a South African airforce helicopter moments after she had been born in a tree. Now ordinary Mozambicans are making money through the physical representation of that icon.
Rosita has become not just an icon of the great floods of 2000, but also a symbol of the creativity of Mozambicans, and their ability to adapt to needs of the market economy.
The new Rosita, that which the tourists admire, is a wood carving. The carving is a scene from the floods, a column of people up to their waists in water with their possessions balanced on their heads. In front of the semi-submerged Mozambicans is a Red Cross helicopter, and rising above them, perched on the branch of a tree is a Madonna-like figure holding Rosita in swaddling clothes.
Not quite the way it happened, but the little sign on the carved scene gives a clue "Cheias – Nascimento da Rosita" (Floods – The birth of Rosita).
The floods returned in 2003, but the media was not present, and thankfully, the floods were not as bad.
Yet at the time, in 2000, it was headline news around the world for more than
a month, now it is a non-story. So how does one justify buying a book about something that’s been solved by global generosity?
"It is a about why one of the world's poorest countries was able to prevent widespread death, and about arrogance of international proportions"
It is not about the acts of heroism, or the heart-wrenching stories of babies born in trees. It’s about the lessons learnt, about why one of the world’s poorest countries was able to prevent widespread death and disease from spreading out of control, and it is about arrogance of international proportions.
If you are looking for a chronology of events that culminated in the departure of the international aid brigade and the TV cameras in May 2000, then you will not find it here. Hanlon and Christie set about debunking myths and addressing the debates that raged at the time of the floods.
Just because Mozambique is poor does not mean it does not have the ability to manage its own crises. And just because it is poor and flood-ravaged does not mean it has to accept donations that are more trouble than they are worth. There is also the frustration of workers being stymied by bureaucracy.
The authors do deal with the build-up and they list the series of floods that came down the Limpopo river in February and March of 2000, but the value of the book lies in the analysis of the management of the crisis.
One of the most pointed questions at the time was whether or not more lives could have been saved if the international community had paid attention to what was happening in Mozambique earlier?
South Africa was the first country to respond and its assistance, followed by that of other countries, ensured that the loss of life was minimal.
It is unlikely that more lives could have been saved. Not because the international response was too slow, but because no-one, not even international meteorological and environmental experts were able to predict the extent of the floods.
Was the media too slow? In some senses Mozambique was lucky. There were no other major international stories at the time; no wars worth covering, no other natural catastrophes, no revolutions. This meant the media flooded in, and with the media came the outpouring of generosity by people and agencies around the world.
But was all this useful? Some of it could still be sitting in a warehouse somewhere in Mozambique.
This is not because Mozambique in inefficient, but because the rich people do not listen to the needs and requirements of the poor.
Canned foods and second hand clothing, which the South African public donated in large quantities, is impractical, too expensive to transport and there’s enough of it in the country anyway.
The authors tell of an appeal by Jessie Duarte, the South African High Commissioner in Mozambique, who said there was a need for fresh water in the refugee camps. So a plane full of bottled water arrived from the neighbours.
What is most surprising is the smoothness and efficiency with which the entire crisis was managed. The diseases usually associated with such camps were kept under control with no serious outbreaks of cholera or other water-borne diseases.
There was only one accidental death in a refugee camp. That was the result of one church which refused to adhere to government rules for the distribution of aid. Panic set in when the workers on the truck were swamped by refugees and the truck driver drove off in too much of a hurry.
There were also many disappointed and upset would-be heroes who arrived (mostly from South Africa) as conquering heroes and were told their services were rather redundant.
If anything the story of the great flood is one of heroics. Not just by those in the forefront of the media circus, but those millions of ordinary Mozambicans who are still putting their lives together after it was swept into the Indian Ocean.
This is not just a study of management of a great flood. It is a story of relationships: between rich and poor, between aid and independence, between efficiency and bureaucracy, and between peoples and governments.
It is a case study, of immense proportions, of the way in which countries can work together for mutual benefit. It deserves to be read, if only because the world needs to know that "poor is not the same as stupid", as Hanlon put it in a subsequent article.
Richard Bartlett is the co-editor of the African Review of Books.
