MOZAMBIQUE: Focus on corruption and donor aid

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MOZAMBIQUE: Focus on corruption and donor aid

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the
United Nations]

JOHANNESBURG, 3 July (IRIN) - Mozambique should recognise
growing corruption and act decisively to restore transparent
governance if it wishes to continue currying favour with donors,
analysts warned on Wednesday.

Since the first democratic elections in 1994 after years of
civil war, the southern African country has had a remarkable
recovery. Political stability was restored, investment returned and
the country became one of the fastest growing economies in
the world.

Today, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected
to average nine percent per year during the period
2001-2003. Impressive by any account - especially considering
Mozambique's difficult past - World Bank figures still put the country
as among the poorest in the world.

But, what has been touted as an African "success" story,
analysts cautioned, may soon begin to unravel if rising crime
and corruption in the country continue to go unchecked.

A study on the perception of corruption among the
Mozambican public, released in September 2000 at the launch of a
new anti-corruption NGO "Ethics Mozambique", revealed that key
state institutions such as the police and the courts had
lost credibility.

Forty-two percent of the sample thought the government had
no interest in tackling corruption, while 20.6 percent thought
it had a great deal of interest. The score for the police
was substantially worse — 50.5 percent thought the police had
no interest in eradicating corruption, while 15.8 percent
believed they had a great deal of interest.

Asked how many members of the government they believed
were involved in corruption, 58.8 percent of the sample
replied "many" or "most", and only 6.8 percent answered "none"
or "almost none".

The highly publicised murder of journalist Carlos Cardoso
in November 2000, who had been writing extensively about a
massive bank fraud in which US $14m was siphoned out of the
Commercial Bank of Mozambique in 1996 just before it was privatised,
threw the spotlight on corruption.

International donors, on whom the economy depends, have
since urged the government of President Joaquim Chissano to
tackle corruption as a matter of priority.

Analysts point out that the country's current problem
of escalating crime and corruption is a result of its
tumultuous political history. The country in the past has veered from
one extreme to the other. From colonial capitalism, into a
one-party socialist system and now to an aggressive open market system.

"The result of which has left individuals totally confused.
Each time a new policy is introduced, norms are disrupted,"
Peter Gastrow from the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) told
IRIN.

He added that there was scepticism over the political will
and the government's capacity to infiltrate what are seen as
deeply entrenched networks of crime and corruption.

"Both the government and donors can do more to temper and
reveal the growing problem of corruption which seriously
threatens future growth," he said.

Following several privatisation scandals, the
Norwegian government launched an investigation into Norwegian aid
to Mozambique last week, the first of its kind.

An ISS report on organised crime, corruption and governance
in the Southern African region, concluded that: "unless there
are dramatic and far reaching interventions by the government,
this slide will lead to criminal networks operating in the shadow
of the formal state administration".

The report sketched how the country's legal system had
allegedly collapsed and that court rulings were available to the
highest bidder.

"Money laundering is common, and Mozambique has become
an important drug warehousing and transit centre, with
senior figures involved," the report said.

"So anxious are donors to sell the seductive story of
Mozambican progress to their taxpayers back home that they choose to
ignore the decay within the country. Donors must take
responsibility for the disbursement of funds," Gastrow noted.

In a scathing attack on the role of donors in Mozambique,
Joseph Hanlon of the Open University in the United Kingdom,
wondered whether donors were in fact promoting corruption.

"When some donors are under pressure to increase aid to
meet international targets, while others are under pressure
from conservative governments to justify their aid budgets,
they desperately need success stories. With so few successes
in Africa, they don't want to rock the boat by questioning
the image of Mozambique," Hanlon said.

The Mozambican elites have become skilled in giving the
donors what they want - market-friendly policies, fiscal
restraint, transparency, good accounting of donor money and
obsequious praise of donor policies. Meanwhile, ordinary Mozambicans
have yet to see any real changes in their lives, Hanlon said.

This was confirmed by a public opinion survey which showed
people do not feel their standards of living are improving. In a
survey of 13,790 households undertaken by the National
Statistics Institute between October 2000 and May 2001, people were
asked to compare their situation with what it had been a year
earlier. Thirty-five percent said they were in much the same
situation, while 38 percent said they were worse off.

Both Gastrow and Hanlon warned that the Southern
African Development Comunity (SADC) should also demonstrate
the political will to combat organised crime.

What happens in Mozambique will inevitably have repercussions
for the entire region as far as economic stability,
democratic governance, and the investor confidence, they cautioned.

[ENDS]

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