Tag Archives: Mozambique

Eusébio, A Life in the Shadows of the Colonial Past

Eusébio was one of the heroes of my childhood. Watching the 1966 Soccer World Cup in England on our neighbor’s black and white TV set  in Switzerland, all we wanted to see is Eusébio. Eusébio was the dominant player of that tournament, Pelé notwithstanding, and led the Portuguese squad to the third place. We admired the elegance of his play, his speed, and his superb ball control. It is because of players like him that we call soccer the beautiful game. Eusébio died on January 5, 2014.

Eusébio, whose full name was Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, retired from soccer in Portugal in 1975 to play in North America, and I did not think about him much anymore after that. Until 2012, when I took a walking tour through Mafalala, a poor slum of Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. As I walked across a gravel field, my guide told me that this is the place where Eusébio learned to play soccer and that Eusébio grew up in Mafalala. I was completely surprised–I always had thought of him as Portuguese, and the fact that he was black somehow went unnoticed during my childhood.

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Eusébio learned to play soccer on this field in Mafalala, Maputo.

Eusébio’s biography is marked by the de-facto Apartheid regime Portugal had implemented in Mozambique at the tail end of Portugal’s global empire. It lasted more than half a millennium and only ended in 1975 when Mozambique became independent from Portugal. The center of Maputo, then called Lourenço Marques, was reserved for whites only. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Portuguese built a large number of concrete highrises along stately avenues in the center of Maputo for a substantial Portuguese population–this is why it is referred to as Concrete City sometimes.

Blacks were not allowed to live there and were relegated to slums without any modern infrastructure. Mafalala was adjacent to the city center and became the focus of black intellectual life during the final decades of the colonial regime. It also was the center of resistance against white rule, and many leaders of FRELIMO, the Marxist liberation movement that seized power after independence, lived in shacks in Mafalala.

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Joaquim Chissano (b. 1939), the second president of Mozambique, used to live in the light blue house.

Eusébio moved to Lisbon in December 1960, at age 18, to play for Benfica. Sporting Lisbon, its cross-town rival, had first dibs on him as he played in their youth organization in Maputo. But Benfica outsmarted Sporting, and apparently they convinced Eusébio’s mother with a good bit of cash. Regardless the circumstances, for a kid from Mafalala to play for one of the major European clubs was a dream come true.

In Maputo, Eusébio was subjected to open racism imposed by the Portuguese colonial regime, but he was part of a majority community that gave him support. While the racism in Lisbon may have been less overt,  he had no community in Lisbon. So soccer became his community–which he worked for until the end of his life. He remained an untiring soccer ambassador for both Portugal and Benfica, his club, until his death. When Sepp Blatter, the FIFA boss, in 2011 stated that black soccer players just should shrug off racism, thus causing a scandal, Eusébio essentially agreed.

But we know that his 15 years at Benfica were tough, in spite of the huge sportive successes. Portugal then was a fascist state, ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) and his successor Marcelo Caetano (1906-1980), until the Carnation Revolution of 1974 swept away the dictatorship–which led to the independence of all Portuguese colonies in the following year. The established society always saw Eusébio as an inferior African, and Eusébio also endured racist attitudes at Benfica. But he never talked publicly about his experience with racism–in spite of the fact that he agreed to be ambassador against racism for FIFPro, the global association of soccer players.

His pay at Benifica was far below of what top players elsewhere in Europe earned. Clubs like Inter Milan were interested in him, but Benfica demanded unreasonable amounts of money to release him. Apparently, Eusébio personally appealed to Salazar the dictator to get permission to leave. But Salazar denied the request with the justification that Eusébio belonged to the Portuguese people. Dictators are lousy at understanding irony. And by the time the regime fell, he was 35 and no longer of interest to top European teams.

Eusébio’s biography has a lot more layers of complexity than I possibly could have suspected as kid who admired him. As a victim of a brutal colonial regime, he moved to the racist “motherland” and sought his fortunes there. He never moved back to his native Mozambique where he was admired as a national hero, although he visited often.

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Street sign and informal portrait of Eusébio in Mafalala.

It appears that the issue of race was like a festering wound to him–a topic he never wanted to discuss publicly. Donald McRae in a 2006 piece in The Guardian describes Eusébio as a conflicted individual who was haunted by the ghosts of his past and struggled with issues of identity and belonging. Apartheid and the Portuguese colonial rule are gone, but their impacts on lives are real and ongoing. Eusébio is exhibit A. In its obituary, The Guardian writes: “Eusébio was the greatest African footballer in the history of the game.” While this is true, I would have never thought of it this way. The story is more complicated than that.



Why the Crash of a Mozambican Plane in Namibia Matters

On November 29, 2013, flight 470, an Embraer 190 of Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM; Mozambique Airlines), crashed in a remote area of Namibia en route from Maputo to Luanda, killing all 33 on board. This event barely registered in world media. And maybe this a good thing.

Of course, we know the pattern of Western under-reporting about Africa: an event in Africa does not exist in the Western media unless it is related to atrocities or terrorism or it directly impacts Western interests. On the same day a police helicopter crashed into a pub in Glasgow, Scotland, killing eight. That accident was on top of the news in the US for two days.

Aside from the loss of human life, the accident is tragic because Africa urgently needs to expand its air transportation infrastructure in order to develop economically and become more competitive in international business. A report by Mathias Haufiku and Fifi Rhodes on the allAfrica.com web site explains the connection: “The accident took place at a time that African countries are working hard to shed off the negative reputation of accident-prone African airlines, the majority of which are still banned from flying over European Union airspace due to stringent EU safety standards. Currently there are only five African countries and their airlines, which are permitted to fly over European airspace, of which Namibia is one.”

The African Airlines Association (AFRAA) claims that the EU bans most African carriers by deeming them unsafe in order to block African airlines from competing in highly profitable routes connecting Africa and Europe and thus to give European carriers an unfair competitive advantage. For example, the European Union withdrew landing rights not just from LAM but from all airlines based in Mozambique in 2011. In other words, EU restrictions hit an entire country due to perceived deficiencies in its regulatory system, not just a single airline that happens to have an outstanding safety record–until last week that is. As a consequence, LAM had to give up its Maputo to Lisbon route. Today, a TAP flight to Lisbon is the only direct flight to Europe.

This is one of the reasons why it is difficult for African airlines to be competitive on the global market–aside from lack of capital and a very small domestic customer base of businesses and affluent individuals. Governments often protect their airlines through regulatory schemes–which removes the pressures to be competitive. But heavy regulation also turns out to be a huge impediment for air travel. National airlines like LAM still have monopolies which make air travel very expensive.


Embraer ERJ-190AR of Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique at Nampula airport (2012).

Mozambique tried to escape this vicious cycle. LAM leased a Boeing 737-500 and purchased a brand-new Embraer 190–the very plane that crashed last week–in November 2012 to bring the total of planes operated by LAM to seven. At that occasion, Paulo Zucula, the Mozambican Transport and Communications Minister, announced that Mozambique’s air space was being liberalized. Just two months before, his deputy Manuela Rebelo had stated that the liberalization of Mozambique’s air space had to wait until LAM  could “receive new equipment as it is currently unable to withstand competition.” But Zucula insisted that the two new planes now satisfied this criterion and that LAM was strong enough to compete in the market. But this now is very much in question.

Reliable, safe, and inexpensive air transportation is essential for Africa’s economic development by enhancing trade relations, helping to cultivate personal ties, and promoting tourism. Distances in Africa are vast, road infrastructure often poor, and rail infrastructure spotty to largely non-existent. Air travel still is the domain of a privileged few in most African countries which has a negative impact on the mobility and productivity of their populations.

On a trip to Mozambique in 2012 I had the option of a bus ride of over 48 hours on partly unpaved roads or an expensive two-hour plane ride on LAM from Maputo to Nampula–and back to Maputo. My decision was quick and easy, and the credit card took care of the rest. But for the middle class in Mozambique, this would not have been a likely choice as the ticket was expensive even by Western standards. The flights were highly uneventful–on-time departures, professional service, perfect take-offs and landings. But then I had no idea how well the pilots were prepared for emergency situations and how well the plane was maintained.

Regardless of the cause of this plane crash, airplane safety standards in many African countries are still not up to acceptable standards, and even though the cause of the crash has not been determined at this writing this crash may have “cast fresh doubts over Africa’s aviation safety record.” But many African countries have made great efforts to improve the safety of their air transportation systems. And the US government has tried to improve the air transportation infrastructure in a number of African countries through its “Safe Skies for Africa” program, launched by President Clinton.

Most African airlines are still not ready to be exposed to competitive pressures, including competitive pricing which is a prerequisite for developing a mass market. This is why the 2012 launch of Fastjet, the first African budget carrier with a hub in Dar es Salaam and Western capital support, is a real opportunity for Africa.

Unfortunately, the crash of LAM 470 creates a setback, in terms of demonstrating a sustained safety record in Africa, in terms of capacity to raise capital for new and innovative airlines,  and in terms of developing a market for airline seats, both domestic and international. LAM always could boast an impeccable safety record. This has changed now, with potentially serious consequences for the viability of LAM and for air transportation in Africa. This is why it is perhaps a blessing in disguise that this accident went largely unnoticed in the Western world.


Update 12/22/13: The preliminary investigation indicates that the pilot locked himself into the cockpit when the co-pilot had temporarily stepped out and intentionally crashed the plane. While this may point to a problem with pilot screening and training, this does not change the basic thrust of my argument.

In Mozambique, China is Encroaching

The Chinese presence in Maputo is subtle, yet noticeable. For instance, the Chinese Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group (AFECG) just built a shiny new international terminal at Maputo airport, and the new domestic terminal should be open by now as well. When I was in Maputo in summer 2012, the small old domestic departure lounge felt positively crowded while the new international departure area was cavernous and empty. The only things missing now are flights and passengers–at this writing Maputo airport has only 19 daily departures. So thanks to the Chinese, there is ample room for growth. Evidently, the Chinese are planning ahead.


Terminal building at Maputo airport, built by the Chinese. (Photo: Ryan Kilpatrick, Flickr, 2012)

Chinese contractors have also been building many roads, government buildings, public facilities, such as the national parliament building and the national stadium, but also commercial buildings. About 30 Chinese construction companies have a base in Maputo. Many projects were built free of charge or financed with soft loans from the Export-Import Bank of China. Mozambique also is an important trade partner. The Chinese have mostly imported agricultural and fisheries products from Mozambique and exported manufactured goods and machinery to Mozambique in return. But in the last few years, they have become more aggressively engaged in logging and in the extractive industries–as is the case in other African countries.

China’s involvement with Mozambique has grown sharply, as Lora Horta summarizes: “As China surges into Mozambique with sophisticated business relations and friendly aid, the former Portuguese colony’s traditional Western patrons are humbled.” One example is the recent exploration for gold by the Chinese Sogecoa corporation in Sofala province. But Chinese imports of Mozambican agricultural products, fisheries, and wood are sharply rising as well. The extraction of natural gas will commence in the near future (and India wants a piece of that action as well). A week-long trip of President Guebuza to China in May 2013 to meet government and business leaders accentuates the centrality of relations with China for Mozambique.

So the expansion strategy China pursues in Mozambique is quite evident. For over a decade, China has been engaged in projects designed to generate soft power, such as erecting stadiums and government buildings. Infrastructure projects followed suit, like roads, airports, and sea ports. In 2009, about a third of all road construction in Mozambique was being carried out by Chinese companies. Recent road construction efforts have been to pave roads along major transportation corridors, like the Nacala Corridor in northern Mozambique that connects the Indian Ocean port of Nacala with Malawi and Zambia.


Highway N8 in the small town of Monapo (Nampula province); the N8 is part of the Nacala Corridor.

Creating a more reliable transportation infrastructure helps China usher in the next phase that has now begun: Chinese-controlled mining and agriculture projects designed to meet China’s massive needs for raw materials and food–although Brazil has emerged as a competitor in Mozambican agriculture and mining as well.

Perhaps the most visible Chinese project in Maputo, and also a part of a long-term strategy to expand economic ties, is the two-story Horizon Ivato supermarket and department store on Avenida Vladimir Lenine which is designed to give Chinese workers and business people a homey feel and give the local middle class access to a wider range of consumer goods, made in China of course.

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Chinese-built and operated Horizon Ivato Supermarket and Sogecoa Apart Hotel in Maputo (constructed in 2004).

The upper floors of this fourteen-story highrise are occupied by the Sogecoa Apart Hotel. Sogecoa is a branch of the Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Group (AFECG), a Chinese construction and mining company, established in 1992, which also built the airport and the stadium. The AFECG has set up branches in 22 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean and in the South Pacific, with heavy emphasis on Africa. It has completed dozens of large and medium-sized projects, like this one, in more than thirty countries with aid from the Chinese government.

Corporations like AFECG often appear as state actors, and their corporate managers like to have their pictures taken with government officials. Photo-ops also arise when agreements are signed, for instance when a Chinese communist party delegation visited in 2011 to found a Confucius Institute in Maputo and to provide anti-malaria medications. Spreading goodwill and generating soft power in Mozambique is an ongoing effort. Soft loans or outright bribes to officials are common, as is extensive ajuda amigavel e gratuita (free and friendly aid) to benefit a broader segment of the population.

One such initiative to spread goodwill in Mozambique is the China-Mozambique “Journey of Brightness” launched in 2011–which is co-sponsored by the China Visual Impairment Prevention Office, the China Association for Promoting Democracy (I am not making this up–it even says so on the background in the image below), the omnipresent AFECG, and China Hainan Airlines. For six days, ophthalmologists from China performed cataract operations free of charge. Of course, frequent ceremonies and photo-ops are created to grease the Chinese PR-machinery.


“Journey of Brightness” ceremony (2011): pictures with Mozambican leaders are prized.

Efforts like this one serve as a glossy veneer to distract from hard-core business moves that take place in a darker and shadier place, one without cameras and without a presence on the internet. What we see here are parts of a well-coordinated strategy by the Chinese government and its dependent corporations to become a dominant force in the economy of Mozambique and to exert greater influence over its government.


“Strings of Chinese Pearls” of the Past

What do these three pictures have in common?


Bergen Bryggen, outpost of the Hanseatic League


Ilha de Moçambique: Fortaleza de São Sebastião


Port of Colombo, Sri Lanka (Source: The Economist, June 8, 2013)

All three images show attempts by a major power to expand its hegemonic sphere by expanding its own trade network.

Around 1360, the Hanseatic League established a Kontor (trade office) in the wharf of Bergen, a major Norwegian port city on the Atlantic coast. The Hanseatic League, based in Lübeck, was a trade and defense pact which dominated trade in the Baltic and North Sea from the 13th to the 17th century; at the peak of its power in the 14th century, it included 170 cities in Northern Europe. Over the next years, members of the Hanseatic Kontor bought all properties at the Bergen wharf which then was the city center, thus displacing the local traders and even forcing the city hall to move. The members of the Kontor, 2,000 strong at the peak, formed their own segregated society and system of governance that de facto ruled Bergen over centuries. It also controlled trade along the Atlantic coast of Norway. The Bergen Kontor only closed in 1754.

Access to the Asian spice and silk markets fueled a competition between Spain and Portugal to open a trade route to India and China during the first age of globalization. While the Spanish headed west but were slowed by this hitherto unknown continent that blocked access, the Portuguese traveled around Africa to reach Asia. Vasco de Gama landed on Mozambique Island probably in 1498. Subsequently, the Portuguese established a string of fortified outposts along the coasts of Africa, India, and China to secure their trade routes. By 1507, the Portuguese built a small fort on Mozambique Island. As the area was part of the Arabic and Ottoman trade systems, a more substantial fort was required. Between 1546 and 1583, the Portuguese built the Fortaleza de São Sebastião, the grandest of all European forts in Sub-Saharan Africa. Gradually, the Portuguese started to control territories and their populations on the adjacent mainland, predominantly to control the food supply for their trade posts. But the Portuguese did not assume full control over the territory referred to as Mozambique today until the 19th century when the major European powers started to carve up Africa into their own fiefdoms. Mozambique achieved independence from Portugal only in 1975.

These days, China is creating a shipping hub in Colombo, just 200 miles from India’s southern tip. A Chinese company is building a new container terminal which will be run by an entity controlled by another Chinese firm. The terminal opens this month and will be completed by April 2014. According to The Economist, this will make Colombo one of the world’s 20 biggest container ports. As the Economist article points out, the new Chinese hub in Colombo is part of a network of ports around the world that are at least in part controlled by Chinese interests, as the map below shows–which looks similar to the maps of the Hanseatic and Portuguese trade systems.


The Economist, June 8, 2013

Recently, Chinese investments in the ports of Piraeus and Karachi made the news–both times because they expand Chinese influence in parts of the world not traditionally considered in China’s orbit. The subtitle of the Economist article spells it out that “China’s growing empire of ports abroad is mainly about trade, not aggression.” But as the examples of the Hanseatic League and of Portugal show, this strategy of establishing trade outposts can serve to secure access and political power over long periods of time.

While the three images show three different historic periods and different parts of the world, they all illustrate the same pattern. They all represent the hegemonial aspirations of major powers which in all three cases are successfully implemented by securing trade posts far away from home and by creating expansive trade networks. Both the Hanseatic League and the Portuguese crown used their trade posts and their respective trade systems to gain political control over the areas in which they were active. It remains to be seen to what extent the Chinese strategy of creating a “String of Pearls” will translate into establishing hegemonic rule.


The Second Life of Used Toys

Nampula is a market town and trade center of half a million people in northern Mozambique; it recently surpassed Beira as the second-largest city in Mozambique. It is the economic hub of Northern Mozambique with an airport and other transportation infrastructure.

View of Nampula, Mozambique, from the air

View of Nampula, Mozambique, from the air

While walking down a major street close to the center of the city, I noticed a group of perhaps fifteen male workers unload a large container that was sitting on a truck. They were unloading large transparent plastic bags filled with used toys and children’s clothes. There was not much else going on (other than a wrecked ambulance standing in a ditch across the street which was witnessed by the locals with great consternation), so I started to take pictures.

Workers unloading used toys and clothes

Workers unloading used toys and clothes in Nampula, Mozambique

Moments later, a man of about 40 approached me; he made it clear that he was the person in charge of this operation, and he wanted to know why I was taking pictures. He was relieved that my interest was strictly academic–he had been concerned that I was a competitor checking out his operation. So he freely told me the story of the merchandise that was unloaded in front of my eyes. The toys and clothes were donated to churches in Europe by individuals; they in turn sold the collected items wholesale to a dealer who shipped them to Africa in a container. The container was put on a truck at a nearby seaport and brought to Nampula where workers were unloading the bags in front of my eye and bringing them into the warehouse where the items were sorted out.

Large container truck parked in front of the warehouse

Large container truck parked in front of the warehouse in Nampula, Mozambique

As he was light-skinned and spoke very good English (which is not common in Lusophone Mozambique), I asked him where he was from. His response surprised me: Sierra Leone. Of course I wanted the know where he was really from. (I understand that people with a hyphenated origin hate this question–but I felt that this was a relevant part of the story.) It turns out that his family of merchants was from the Middle East but had settled in Sierra Leone a couple of generations ago.

So what happens with these toys? After the toys and clothes have been sorted out, they go to markets all over the region to be sold. But in recent years, some buyers in the villages and small towns have become more market-savvy. They are quickly learning what the fashionable items and brands are in Europe and the U.S. because they have seen them on TV. So the distributor now has to sort all items into three categories for resale–trendy, average, and less desirable–and the pricing structure will have to reflect that.

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Roadside market in Mamudo, Nampula province, Mozambique

In the village of Mamudo, seventy miles east of Nampula, used clothes and other items are sold to the local population at a typical small roadside market. Villagers are unloading the same kind of plastic bags from a small truck, containing used clothes and other items. The toys and clothes appear to have reached the last part of the journey, where their second lives can begin.

There are three interesting angles to this story. The first is that donors in Europe unlikely understand what is really happening to their donated children’s toys and clothes. Rather, donors in Europe happily are left with the thought that their charitable donations are distributed to poor children in Africa for free. While churches presumably use the proceeds from the sale of donated goods for charitable purposes, the goods themselves cross over into the for-profit sector of the economy again. The trade in used merchandise is big business in Africa.

The second point is this: as the market in many African countries is flooded by cheap imports of donated used clothing, it is very difficult for the domestic textile industry to compete. Ironically, these donated goods hinder the development of domestic production and thus make many more locals dependent on development aid. While these donations by Europeans are well-intended, they actually become an obstacle to sustained economic development.

Youths in the small town of Mamudo, Mozambique

Youths in the small town of Mamudo, Nampula province, Mozambique

The third point is less tangible but equally important. How do T-shirts with imprints of Western brands and cultural icons impact these young people? What does this young boy think of this Marylin-Monroe-like seductive blonde on this chest? What does it teach him about consumerism that is unattainable to him, about racial hierarchies, and about the felt cultural, economic and political dominance of the West?