ANTI-CORRUPTION FORUM
ABOLISHED

At the demand of the Renamo opposition, President Armando Guebuza has abolished the joint government-civil society anti-corruption Forum. Donors pushed Mozambique to establish three bodies – a civil service commission, and a legality and justice council, and a joint anti-corruption forum – and government docilely did as the donors told it. But donors simply applied models from elsewhere, without looking at Mozambican law, and all three turned out to be unconstitutional.

Renamo opposed the forum on narrow constitutional grounds, and has not called for an alternative.

The Centre for Public Integrity (CIP) criticised the Constitutional Council for taking an excessively narrow view of what is permitted. But it went on to say that there should be a much broader debate about reform. Something like the anti-corruption forum is needed, CIP says, but the trouble with the Forum was that it was dominated by “cadres of the central, provincial and district governments and members of the ruling party”; figures from civil society, which included CIP head Marcelo Mosse, were “merely decorative”, CIP said.

45,000 MINERS IN
SOUTH AFRICA, SENDING
BACK $93 MILLION

South African mines recruited 45,000 Mozambicans last year, slightly down on 46,000 in 2006. Of the 45,000, nearly 37,000 were renewing contracts and 8000 were experienced miners with new contracts. Only 227 had no mining experience.

TEBA, the mineworkers recruitment agency, says that miners remitted 655 mn Rand ($93 mn) to Mozambique last year, up from 475 mn Rand (then $79 mn) in 2006 and only R 315 mn (then $30 mn) in 2002.

But the number of Mozambicans trying to work in South Africa is very much larger. In December alone, 83,000 Mozambicans were expelled from South Africa for trying to enter and work illegally.