Considering Mozambique’s background, which includes centuries of colonialism followed by a civil war, the country’s transformation into a democracy has been quite successful. Since the end of the conflict, the country has delighted its (tiny) audience: the World Bank has praised it as figuring among the region’s top business reformers, real GDP has grown by an impressive annual average of 8% since the end of armed conflict in 1992, inflation has stabilized at around 10% per year, and enthusiastic donors have poured billions of dollars in foreign aid into the country. However, this economic progress has only slowly translated into improvements in governance and civil liberties. While Mozambique is peaceful and stable by African standards, its democracy remains immature and its institutions weak.
After independence from Portugal in 1975 and resolution of the internal conflict in 1992, President Joaquim Chissano and his Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO) governed the country for more than 18 years. Despite a length of tenure reminiscent of some of Africa’s worst leaders, Chissano’s administration introduced major democratic and economic reforms, thereby opening the country to the rest of the world. When the winner of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Prize for Achievement in African Leadership finally stepped down in 2005, he was succeeded by his partisan, Armando Guebuza, who will remain in office until the next national elections in 2009. Although this transfer of power did not mark a change in Mozambique’s increasingly “predominant party” system -- in which FRELIMO is seen as the natural governing party -- it signaled a major transition in other terms: Mr. Guebuza, or “Mr. Gue-business” as some people call him, and his cabinet are mainly focused on improving the business and investment climate. This has led to legal reforms that have, to take one key example, shortened the time necessary to enforce a contract by 280 days. Nonetheless, a lack of funding and well-trained staff means that courts are still far from able to process the entire volume of new cases each year.
The scale and speed of reforms are critical: economic growth continues to be driven by aid and foreign investment and rarely trickles down to the two-thirds of Mozambicans that sustain a livelihood from agriculture. Mozambique’s poor human development is reflected in the UNDP’s Human Development Index, which ranked Mozambique 172nd out of 177 states in 2005.
In addition to the slothful pace of governance reforms, the Mozambican state is still the major violator of human rights. The Mozambican Human Rights League (LDH - website in Portuguese) reported five cases of torture and 15 cases of probable summary executions this year as of mid-September, with at least 7 of the latter being carried out by the police. One bright spot is prison conditions, which have improved despite continued overcrowding and poor dietary standards.
Abuse of state power does not only include the neglect of human rights, but also corruption and a lack of transparency, which still occupy a prominent place in Mozambique’s political and economic landscape. Transparency International’s 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranked Mozambique 126th out of 180 countries surveyed, which is a downgrade in both relative and absolute terms. Despite government commitments to solve the problems, progress remains slow due to bureaucratic inefficiency and a lack of judicial capacity. Although journalists are generally not censored, isolated incidents of harassment, unlawful detention, and violence against members of the press still occur; the media are especially vulnerable when reporting on corruption by governmental officials. Foreign donor agencies might be able to push for reforms in those areas, as they have gained considerable influence over the State. However, this is not an easy task in a country where the governing party marginalizes public opinion and where the internal culture of political parties is such that the opposition leader declares that he must be a dictator in order to preserve democracy.
The list of items on Mozambique’s governance improvement agenda is extremely lengthy. If it hopes to translate economic development into political progress, continued legal reforms must be near the top. Ideally this would involve better funding and training for the courts in order to strengthen their independence. However, knowing the difficulties most developing countries encounter when attempting judicial reform, at least improving the speed and quality of proceedings in order to diminish the level of human rights abuses would be a healthy start. After all, while lasting governance improvements take many years, merely being humane doesn’t have to take nearly so long.
Photo Credit: Flickr user mtlp
