MOZAMBICANS WILL “CLIMB THE THIRD MOUNTAIN”

Mozambican President Armando Guebuza on Sunday urged Mozambicans to remain firm in “climbing the third mountain”.Speaking at a rally in Matema, an outlying neighbourhood of the western city of Tete, Guebuza said that in recent memory Mozambicans have already climbed two mountains – the first was the struggle to win independence and defeat Portuguese colonial rule, while the second was to win peace and end the war of destabilisation.The third “mountain” was the current struggle against poverty. When that mountain is climbed, he predicted, Mozambicans will embrace each other joyfully, scarcely able to believe the results they have achieved. Guebuza pointed out that Portuguese colonialism lasted for 500 years. Overcoming it was not an easy matter since initially there was no unity among Mozambicans. They could only reach the top of this mountain, he argued, after Eduardo Mondlane, described as the “architect of national unity’ had created a national movement, the key to success in the struggle against colonial rule.Mondlane, the founder and first President of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), taught Mozambicans the value of unity, argued Guebuza, and the result was the triumphant conquest of the summit of the first mountain with the proclamation of independence in 1975.The second mountain was the war imposed on Mozambique by the racist regimes of Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa. The values of unity again spoke loud and clear, Guebuza said, and allowed Mozambicans to end the bloodshed and opt for reconciliation instead of war. “When Mozambicans finally concluded that they were all brothers with the same destiny, they said ‘’no’’ to war which soaks up so much blood from children, young people, and adults, who all had a role to play in the construction of the country”, said the President. Now Mozambicans were facing the third mountain, that of the battle against poverty. Guebuza was sure that the moment would come when “having a decent house, access to hospitals and schools and other services and goods will not be any luxury, but will be something very normal”.“We have to get there”, he said. “There are obstacles, and so we have to define our strategies, including the building of roads, schools, public works, the extension of the electricity grid to the districts”.At the rally Guebuza, as usual during such events, invited people to raise their concerns. One complaint from a Tete resident claimed that that the mega-projects under way in the province have an “English face”, since a condition for workers to be recruited is that they must speak English,This is entirely untrue – indeed the first of the gigantic coal mining projects to start production is owned, not by an anglophone company, but by Vale, a company from Brazil which, like Mozambique, is a Portuguese speaking country. There were calls for priority in recruitment to be given, not just to Mozambicans, but to people from Tete – the speakers were apparently unaware that this is already the official position both of Vale, and of the second company already developing coal mines, Riversdale Mining of Australia.There were also complaints that foreigners are paid more than Mozambicans on the mining projects and that the foreigners hold the management positions.Guebuza made no promises of immediate solutions to any of the problems raised. He said it is the duty of the state to protect Mozambicans, and that the complaints made at the rally would be carefully analysed.Guebuza has now ended his “open and inclusive presidency” in Tete province, and on Monday he begins a working visit to the northernmost province of Niassa..