Relatives, friends and colleagues of murdered Mozambican journalist Carlos Cardoso gathered at the site of his assassination on Monday evening, on the tenth anniversary of his death, to remember the life and work of the most outstanding investigative journalist the country has yet produced.The crime scene has now been turned into a monument to Cardoso. Under the supervision of theatre director Manuela Soeiro, a simple structure of wood and stone has been erected, in front of a wall bearing the simple slogan “Carlos Cardoso lives!”On a large stone is painted the phrase from one of Cardoso’s poems, which came to epitomize his attitude to journalism: “In the pursuit of truth, it is forbidden to put words in handcuffs”.Addressing the crowd, Cardoso’s widow, Nina Berg, declared “We are here to mark, not the death of Carlos Cardoso, but his life, his work, his courage. For us, this is the most important thing to commemorate. I hope that his work will be an inspiration for Mozambican journalists”.She stressed that for Cardoso journalism had never been just a job – instead, it was a means to the end of securing justice for Mozambique and its people. Cardoso had never pretended to be politically neutral, and Berg defended his decision, controversial at the time, to stand for Maputo Municipal Assembly in the local elections of 1998 on the slate of the independent civic group “Juntos pela Cidade” (JPC – Together for the City). Cardoso’s close friend, the writer Mia Couto, declared “Cardoso was a man who loved the truth and hated lies”.The celebrations were also marked by readings from Cardoso’s poems, and by music and song performed by his son, the 21 year old Ibo. At a trial in 2002-03, six people were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for the murder. Those who ordered it were former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, loan shark Momad Assife Abdul Satar (“Nini”), and his brother Ayob Abdul Satar, owner of the now defunct foreign exchange bureau Unicambios. Ramaya and members of the Abdul Satar family were the key figures in the huge bank fraud that siphoned the equivalent of 14 million US dollars out of the country’s largest commercial bank, the BCM, on the eve of its privatization in 1996.Cardoso had persistently written on the fraud, naming Ramaya and the Satars in his paper, the independent newsheet “Metical”, and campaigning against the corruption in the Attorney-General’s Office that provided the shield granting apparent impunity to those who defrauded the BCM. The Maputo City Court found, and the Supreme Court eventually agreed, that the BCM case had been the motive for the assassination The Satars and Ramaya paid a car thief with good police connections, Anibal dos Santos Junior (“Anibalzinho”), to organise the murder. He in turn recruited the man who fired the fatal shots, army deserter Carlitos Rachid and the third member of the death squad, the look-out, Manuel Fernandes. All are now serving lengthy prison sentences.But other cases remain unsolved. Among those standing with Nina Berg at the commemoration was Aquina Siba-Siba, widow of the murdered economist Antonio Siba-Siba Macuacua. The Bank of Mozambique appointed Siba-Siba as chairman of the privatised Austral Bank after systematic looting had brought it to the brink of collapse, and its private owners, a Malaysian-Mozambican consortium, had handed their shares back to the state. Siba-Siba made a vigorous attempt to pursue all those who owed money to Austral, and on 11 August 2001, his lifeless body was discovered at the bottom of te stairwell at Austral headquarters.The sporadic investigations into the Siba-Siba murder have petered out, and no-one has yet stood trial for the assassination or for the associated looting of the bank.Among the loose ends from the Cardoso trial is the question of compensation. So far the Satars and their accomplices have not paid a penny of the compensation awarded by the court to Cardoso’s children, and to his driver, Carlos Manjate, who was seriously injured in the attack.
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