Cardoso Murder: No Middle Way, Warns Hunguana
Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
November 26, 2002
Mozambicans are either on the side of journalist Carlos Cardoso, and banker Siba-Siba
Macuacua, or on the side of those who murdered them - there is no middle way, declared
Teodato Hunguana, a prominent parliamentary deputy of the ruling Frelimo Party on Tuesday.
Speaking in the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, in "the period before the order
of the day", a period of up to an hour in which deputies may make statements on matters that are
not on the parliamentary agenda, Hunguana said that crime in Mozambique has entered a new
phase, with murders committed solely to cover up other crimes.
He cited the murders of Cardoso in 2000, and of Siba-Siba Macuacua, who was interim chairman
of the Austral Bank in 2001, the attempted murder of lawyer Albano Silva in 1999, and the
shootings and unexplained deaths of several prominent attorneys.
"These crimes are committed to make it difficult to find out who committed other crimes", he said,
and this leads to an escalation in crime.
"The situation is becoming much more complex and the struggle more problematic", Hunguana
warned. "Everything becomes relative and citizens, functionaries, and even political leaders think
twice before confronting the phenomenon, because, faced with the apparent strength and impunity
of crime, they feel unprotected".
"Carlos Cardoso is killed so that he cannot reveal the fingerprints of those who defrauded the
BCM (the country's largest bank at the time) out of millions of dollars", said Hunguana. "And
Anibalzinho is released to make it difficult to identify those who ordered the murder".
Anibalzinho is the man who recruited the death squad that assassinated Cardoso, and drove their
car. The police and Interior Minister Almerino Manhenge say he "escaped" from the top security
prison. But Hunguana had no hesitation in saying he "was released".
"Siba-Siba Macuacua is killed so that those who ruined the Austral Bank will not be held
responsible", he continued. "And in order that those who carried out, and who ordered this crime
cannot be identified, the method chosen is purely and simply not to do any investigation".
"This is the sad and tragic ladder of escalation", said Hunguana. But it could be stopped - indeed,
it was only unstoppable "If, for want of clear-sightedness, for lack of a sense of political and social
responsibility, and for lack of courage and determination, we let it become unstoppable".
There was no doubt that a society lacking these qualities "becomes a amorphous multitude, without
cohesion and purpose.
Such a society is unable to control its bandits. And a society that cannot control its bandits ends up
being controlled and governed by them".
Cardoso and Siba-Siba, Hunguana said, were precisely people who "with clear-sightedness, with
a high sense of political and social responsibility, and with courage and determination, were able to
shake off frustration and powerlessness, and broke with the conformity and fear that is tending to
become generalised amongst us".
Hunguana disliked the fashionable claim that the current trial of those charged with murdering
Cardoso is a litmus test for Mozambican justice. To suggest that one spectacular trial could repair
the entire justice system was to trivialise the problem.
What was really needed was "more examples of the courage and heroism of Carlos Cardoso and
Siba-Siba Macuacua". But for their lucidity and determination to eventually triumph over the
sacrifice and martyrdom that overcame them would require "much more from all of us and
particularly from the state".
Hunguana warned that "without the commitment and protection of the state, those citizens, officials
and leaders who do dedicate themselves to the struggle are abandoned, in an unequal combat
against the powerful and organised forces of crime in our country".
This was not just a question of institutions - since it was well-known that Mozambican institutions
are fragile. It was a question, not of speeches and guidelines, but of "strong, effective and
committed leadership at all levels".
Such leadership might create "a mobilising dynamic" that stood a chance of isolating crime and
putting it on the defensive. Hunguana suggested it was time to follow the path blazed by the
country's first President, Samora Machel, in his "Political and Organisational Offensives", that were
aimed at earlier expressions of corruption, negligence and incompetence in the Mozambican state.
"The only way to prevent the state from falling definitively into the web of crime is to unleash a war
without quarter against the mentors of organised crime, and also against those who are its
instruments", said Hunguana.
But if the police merely concentrated on the instruments, on those who pulled the triggers, while
leaving the lords of crime comfortable and untouched, "then that will leave intact the sources for the
reproduction of crime, sources that are becoming ever more powerful and capable of capturing the
state itself".
But "are we really determined to unleash this combat and follow it to its ultimate consequences ?",
Hunguana asked. "Today the choice is living with our heads held high in a society of which we can
be proud, or of kneeling before the bandits who are trying to control and govern us through
slaughter and fear".
"There is no middle way", he stressed. "We are either on the side of Carlos Cardoso and
Siba-Siba Macuacua, committed to the principles and values for which they fought, and then we
survive as a society worthy of the historic legacy of the national liberation struggle. Or we are, out
of indifference, tolerance or complicity, on the side of the bandits who killed them or ordered them
to be killed, and then we will succumb, stuck fast in the quagmire of our rottenness and our
cowardice".
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Ivinicus factus sum veritabem diceus." ( I have become an enemy for speaking the truth ) St Paul!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mitayo Potosi
_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963
