Arquivo morto: notes on institutional memory in postcolonial

Euclides Gonçalves Kaleidoscopoio – Research in Public Policy and Culture and Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research University of Witwatersrand Benedito Machava Princeton University

Abstract

In Mozambican bureaucratic practice “arquivo morto”, literally translated as “dead archive” refers to a site where documents that are inactive or have been taken out of circulation are kept before they are eventually destroyed. Starting from the arquivo morto, we explore the life cycle of documents backwards in order to understand the place of institutional memory in Mozambican governance. Based on ethnographic research in district administrations in northern, central and southern Mozambique, we show that the arquivo morto is not the primary locus of institutional memory. Differently than bureaucracies where information primarily kept and retrieved from sources in paper or digital support, Mozambican gives importance to individuals in position of political or bureaucratic authority. As a result, Mozambican governance is based on a shallow institutional memory, allowing for institutions and processes to be contested but also built anew according with the political and economic context of the day.

Introduction

In the past two decades the archives have become important sites where historians and anthropologist interrogate the state and governance. Attention has been given to the workings of the colonial and apartheid state (Stoler 2002; Hamilton at al 2002; Hull 2008; Feldman 2008) to postcolonial rule (Riles 2000, Tarlo 2001; Hull 2012a; Kafka 2012, Weld 2014, Mathur 2016). In these works, archives are seen as repositories of documents that are more than “simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves” (Hull 2012b: 251).

In this paper we take Stoler’s (2002) and Hamilton et al (2002) lead and look at the process of constitution of the archive. Here, arquivo morto as a repositories of documents it simply our starting point as we work backwards to understand management of information in Mozambican bureaucratic practice. Our interest in the arquivo morto has less to do with the past than with the present. The things, documents and people in it are of our interest in as much as they can provide us with insights into governance in contemporary Mozambique.

Our focus on management of information has lead us away from traditional medium of support of information that constitute documents. In a bureaucratic context where oral documents are as important as the written ones, we argue, figures of political and bureaucratic authority become repositories of institutional memory. From this, emerges a mode of governance that is based on short institutional memories, allowing for institutions and processes to be contested but also built anew according with the political and economic context of the day.

The bulk of data for this paper was collected during field research for our doctoral research project. Additional information was collected in the course field other field research trips conducted from 2015 to 2018 in districts of the , Gaza, Inhambane, Tete, Niassa and Cabo Delgado the provinces. In our combined experience of field research in Mozambique, accessing documents from local state is often a laborious process even when documents we sought were under legal obligation to be publicized or its information had already been disseminated to the broader public. Examples include local government officials’ messages delivered on commemorative dates, minutes of District Local Council Meetings or lists of beneficiatiaries of the District Development Fund. The difficulty increased whenever we requested to access information of historical significance, often kept at the arquivo morto.

Following this introduction, we describe how the management of information was central to the building of the postcolonial state both in opposition to its colonial predecessor and the number of challenges it faced during the periods the government sought to establish a state of socialist orientation. Here we show how from the first years of independence, a distinction between friends and enemies placed administrative secrecy was as a central element in the reforms and bureaucratic practice. Then we turn to a discussion of the arquivo morto as a site where documents are stored for long periods of time but also as sites where people, documents and things are recycled, brought back into bureaucratic circulation or taken to another lives outside the state bureaucracy. The next section describes public functionaries at work and the handling of documents and sharing of information. Here, we highlight the importance of political and bureaucratic figures of authority as repositories of institutional history. Before the conclusion, we discuss advances in the current regulatory framework

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and the ways law remains distant from dominant practices of management and dissemination of information developed during the first decades that followed independence.

State reform and vigilance

Following independence in 1975, the Mozambican government sought to radically reform the colonial administration. Given the vision of a socialist project and the fact that most competent public servants had worked or experienced the state during colonialism, the reform was designed as a double edged ritual of purification. On the one hand, there was the need to destroy the inherited colonial state apparatus which still reflected the racism, elitism and exploitation that characterized the colonial project and, in particular, a multitude of bureaucratic procedures that delayed service delivery and policy implementation. On the other hand, the reform aimed at purging the state apparatus of the enemy within. Some public functionaries were seen has having been contaminated by colonialism and the spoils of capitalism. One part of the reform followed the principle of “destroying the colonial state apparatus” in order to build the socialist project. The other part was presented as a fight against the enemy within, epitomized in the figure of the Xiconhoca. Six months within the independence of the Mozambique the ruling party made the following diagnosis:

At the level of the state apparatus, the bourgeoisie uses the positions available to them to block the implementation of Frelimo’s political line... real political struggle is intensifying between us and the bourgeoisie at the level of the state apparatus. In the name of the technique they create obstacles to the implementation of revolutionary measures [...] This domination of ideas of the bourgeoisie is felt especially amongst some Mozambicans who, although not having great means of fortune, they have been profoundly culturally and ideologically contaminated by capitalism through the Portuguese colonial bourgeoisie.1

In the enthusiasm of independence and the quest to establish the party throughout the country, colonial symbols and documents were removed and in some cases vandalized. At district administrations, a significant proportion of the documents left by the colonial administration was transferred to the National Archives in Maputo.

By February 1976 during the Eight Meeting of the Central Committee and at the First National Seminar of the State Apparatus and Public Service held in October, speeches made references to the enemy within.2 For all the edict work on the reform of the colonial state, five years after independence, the situation had not improved. In fact, plans designed on paper for all the sectors, in particular the economic, health and education sectors presented mixed results in which the losses seemed to outweigh the gains thus, frustrating the promise of a betterment of the living conditions of the masses leading then President Samora Machel to launch at the beginning of 1980 a series of “presidential offensives” set to address concrete problems and to strengthen party control over the state (Marleyn, Wield and Williams 1982). The resulting “self-criticism” exercise characterized the state as

a heavy and bureaucratised machine – a machine conceived to oppress the people, never to liberate and support the creative energy as we think our state should be. In other words, our state apparatus was not yet ours, built in line with our conceptions

1 Reunião do Estado Maior General das FPLM de 10 a 13 December 1975 in Tempo 296 2 Prior to that see Xiconhoca 2

and at the measure of our objectives. In second place, that state was profoundly infiltrated by physical and ideological agents of the enemy, which inevitably was reflected in its style and methods of work, in its (lack) of sensibility towards the problems of the people, it’s (in)capacity to implement the orientations from the party.3

The exercise of “self-criticism” produced a number of resolutions that included a declared war on the enemy within,4 and the permanent character of the offensive. As one of the resolutions of the offensive, the ruling and single party took upon itself the responsibility to the lead the state and society and also the task of identifying and neutralising the infiltrated.5 At the level of the state apparatus, the 6th Session of the Popular Assembly in July 1980 emphasised the continuation of the “purification of the state apparatus from the unruly, incompetent, negligent, sloppy, corrupt and saboteurs6.” In this, the people were seen as playing a key role: “the people have always been the filter when it comes to purifying our lines. In the structuring of the party, in the constitution of people’s assemblies, in denouncing the infiltrated, it has always been the people that have known how to denounce, isolate and neutralize the agents of the enemy.”7

By the end of the first five years of independence, Mozambicans were very familiar with Frelimo’s agenda and rhetoric which were helped by the massive effort of establishing dynamizing groups and party cells since 1974. Towards the end of 1976, Frelimos’ Department of Information had begun publishing cartoons about the ‘internal enemy’. Everything related to the ‘internal enemy’ was epitomized in the figure of the Xiconhoca: he was a rumourmonger, a speculator, a racist, a ‘tribalist’ and lazy man. One of the cartoons depicting Xiconhoca shows a man sitting on the floor, with three bottles of beer (one of them already empty) listening to Radio Rhodesia, Voice of America and to a South African station. The subtitle reads: “Xiconhoca - only hears and repeats the lies of the racists, the colonists, the reactionary and the imperialists”.8

While destruction was the principle of the reform, vigilance was the basis for reconstruction. In the context of an “ideological struggle” in which the enemy within was not easily identifiable, the time required double vigilance. Public functionaries found themselves both, as actors and objects of vigilance as the enemy within was both in the country (any citizen was a potential enemy – either as a saboteur or a collaborator with the external enemies) and within the public institutions (bourgeois, lazy people, capitalists, rumourmongers).9 Thus, while being cautious not to pass important information, act as or listening to the enemy outside his respective institution, the public functionary had to remain vigilant in relation to fellow public functionaries. Party cells had been created in public institutions and it was there where the “order of the discourse” was established following directives and orientations from the centre.

In this scenario, public functionaries were generally insecure. The situation of public functionaries became more precarious as disputes for position fostered accusations among colleagues. This was combined with a generalized practice of people in leadership positions having a “trusted informant” among the subordinates. Additionally, elements of SNASP the National Popular Security Services

3 Voz da Revolução 71 4 Williams (1980) 5 Voz da revolução 71 “Resoluções sobre a ofensiva” 6 Assumir a ofensiva é tarefa de cada deputado Voz da Revolução 71 7 Voz da revolução 71 “Resoluções sobre a ofensiva” p.9 8 See FRELIMO (1979). 9 See also Buur (2010). 3

were thought to be everywhere, exacerbating the feeling of constant surveillance among public functionaries. In fact, the feeling prevails in rural Mozambique today where, even in social occasions such as birthdays or conversations at the market, public functionaries are reluctant to comment on general themes related to public policy because “they [SISE]10 are everywhere…you never know when they are working.”11

While the figure of the Xiconhoca has exited the political realm, the radical societal division between friends and enemy has remained entrenched in the public function. In the context of democratic politics, the ruling party’s insistence on maintaining party cells in public institutions12 helps to reproduce old distinctions between Frelimo and the people on one side, and the enemy on the other. In the context of agnostic democratic party politics, Renamo, the leading opposition party, is often constructed as the enemy. The not so muted code of interaction in public institutions is: you are with us or with the enemy, now embodied in the opposition parties.

The figure of the rumourmonger as the ‘enemy within’ produced high levels of suspicion and vigilance. Public functionaries developed an awareness about what they said and to whom and also about what they heard. Suspicion and vigilance coupled with the Frelimo party culture of top down decision making, contributed to a general outlook of the public functionary as an individual with a uneasy relationship with information. Public functionaries are, generally, only happy and willing to reproduce the party rhetoric and slogans of the day.

In the general context of vigilance against the ever-present enemy, a conversation at the office or at a bar may influence the course of one’s career. This has resulted in growing number of public functionaries who employ cynical reason to avoid direct confrontation with colleagues in order to keep their jobs. Most qualified public functionaries we encountered explain their reluctance to talk politics and preference to express “technical opinions” in public service in terms of keeping their jobs. When eventually public functionaries provide information or express their views on public policy this is often prefaced with a “do not quote me” request. This way, they able to simultaneously express their “technical views” and frustrations while providing information in the legitimate frame of “personal contributions” rather than that of that of exposing state secrets.

The arquivo morto as a productive site

Traditional approaches in records management theory and practice classify documents according to a life cycle that starts at the moment of their production, circulation, preservation and destruction. According with its status as active or less active, documents are stored in different types of archives that facilitate their retrieval. The arquivo morto is that site where less active and closed files are kept. In Mozambican bureaucratic practice, arquivo morto can be found in public and private institutions. Even if only recently Mozambique has begun to invest in the management of documents, a number of

10 State Information and Security Services (SISE) replaced SNASP. 11 Informal conversation - Zavala, August 2009 12 The General Secretary of Frelimo, has recently announced that the party will continue creating cells in the public institutions as a way of ensuring that the government five with year plan is implemented. Paúde diz que a Frelimo criara mais células nas instituições públicas. In O País. 05.02.10 http://www.opais.co.mz/opais/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4409:paunde-diz-que-a-frelimo- criara-mais-celulas-nas-instituicoes-publicas&catid=63:politica&Itemid=273 (accessed 10.02.10). 4

institutions have arquivo morto as spaces dedicated only to the storage of documents.13 However, arquivos mortos at district administration throughout rural Mozambique are often site where information cannot be retrieved easily. In fact, it common to not be able to locate them.

A common feature of the “dead archive” is the unsavoury pilling up of permanent files with old typewrites, furniture, spare parts, and other material debris of bureaucratic work and administration. Institutional and public memory lie in waste, leaky and humid basements. These are often rooms with no electricity or natural light making it a site to be avoided by bureaucrats themselves. When documents are kept in good state, they are often not accessible because whenever there is a need for new offices documents are bundled up in no particular order in order to create room for expansion.14 For researchers and journalists, access can only be granted after presented professional credentials are approved and days and weeks of persuasion and persistence finds a sympathetic bureaucratic willing to grant access to the site.15 In practice the arquivo morto is a site of burial, a place where dead documents are stored.16

But the arquivo morto is not only a site of waste and death. It is also a site where documents, people and things are recycled. Rural administration often runs out of paper and files to store new documents and the arquivo morto is a resourceful site. So when the front office runs out of folders to put on documents the arquivo morto can provide folders to be used for current documents; and when there is lack of paper, the “dead” documents now left outside the folders and in no particular order can now become paper to be reused.

The arquivo morto is also a place where local administrations station their lowest ranking employees, servants, demoted bureaucrats or people under disciplinary measures. The role of these people is not to organize the archive, but to hold the keys for the room and, like the old documents and equipment, lay waste. People assigned to the arquivo morto as an unwritten disciplinary measures have the option of getting back in line or are left to die of boredom as they become the very extension of the neglected those rooms and its debris. Still, people assigned to this archive are often able to turn it into a milking cow for illicit trades that supplement their meagre salaries. The dead archive is often connected to an informal market where spare parts and old equipment are the primary goods of trade. Documents often find themselves in the chain as informal vendors often procure paper too to bundle roasted nuts and other goods.

Front office: secrecy and institutional memory in people

If the arquivo morto illustrates a culture of neglect when it comes to the management of information at the archives in the rural districts, a move to the front office may give us additional insight on how

13 Jean Allman notes that postcolonial states in Africa have not embraced archives as an important branch of government. See Allman (2013)13 14 In Inhamabane province the provincial archives were squeeze in order to create space for new offices to the point of forming a huge pile up to to ceiling with no room to access any specific document. In Lichinga, the administrator of a newly built building for the local department of finance set fire on all the old documents because he did not want his new building filled with “waste.” 15 Under such conditions, researchers need to consider new tools and innovative strategies of investigation. See Elli (2202). 15 Achille Mbembe, “The Power New questions of deontology and copyrights will have to be addressed. 16 See Mbembe’s (2002) discussion of of archiving as an act of burial. 5

information circulates before it is sent to the distant archive. In this section, we explore the front office as a site of production and circulation of institutional memory. Our aim is to highlight on particular kind of institutional memory – that which is kept with figures of political and bureaucratic authority. This kind of institutional memory takes central role in Mozambican bureaucracy because of the pervasiveness of secrecy.

In many ways Mozambican see secrecy as quintessential to their work.17 As Weber notes in his general assessment of the place of secrecy in bureaucratic organizations,

“[b]ureaucratic administration always tends to exclude the public, to hide its knowledge and action from criticism as well as it can...This tendency towards secrecy is in certain administrative fields a consequence of their objective nature: namely, whatever power interests of the given structure of domination toward the outside are at stake, whether this be the case of economic competitors of a private enterprise or that of potentially hostile foreign polities in the public field” (1968/2006: 54).

But Weber is also quick to observe that “[h]owever, the pure power interests of bureaucracy exert their effects far beyond these areas of functionally motivated secrecy. The concept of the ‘office secret’ is the specific invention of bureaucracy, and few things it defends so fanatically as this attitude which, outside of the specific areas mentioned, cannot be justified with purely functional arguments” (idem).

There seems to be no question about the need for secrecy in bureaucratic practices, especially regarding the so called sensitive areas of intervention. Our focus here is on what kind of management of information is possible when secrecy is pervasive in bureaucratic organizations? What effect institutionalized secrecy has on the everyday work of local state bureaucrats?

In an interview to the daily Noticias18 in August 2008, Tomás Mário, then head of the Mozambican Chapter of the Media Institute for Southern Africa (MISA), declared: “Press freedom wanes as one moves away from Maputo city towards the hinterland in the country”. In the same interview he went on to criticise the posture of state bureaucrats, in particular the district administrators:

[…] In the districts, freedom of the press is still something strange for the great majority of local public authorities. […] The figure of the district administrator, has so far escaped all the reforms that have reshaped the Mozambican state, and essentially he continued the traditions of the colonial local state. At the heart of the district administrator's form of exercising power is the idea that he is the chief of the territory, not the idea, contained in the public sector reform, that he is a democratic facilitator. […] This is reflected in everything that goes on in the district. Sometimes a simple survey in the district can be stopped if the administrator has not been informed. He can order the survey to be stopped to find out who the people are, where have they come from, and why are they doing this work. As for freedom of the press, basically he doesn't know about it.19

17 Simmel notes how until the 19th Century, secrecy was part of mystical authority of bureaucrats (Simmel 1950: 336). 18 Notícias 25.08.08 19 Notícias 25.08.08 6

Although Mário’s remarks above cannot be generalised, his assessment reflects a common reality in the provincial governments and district administrations throughout the country.20 Public functionaries such as permanent secretaries, directors of provincial and district departments and clerks at front desks have a similar attitude.

Most people who have conducted research in Mozambique will have experienced the need to have a credencial everywhere they went to talk to people in general and state bureaucrats in particular. The credencial is an institutional letter granted by a ‘credible’ Mozambican institution to a researcher or person seeking information and briefly explains the reason for requesting the information. It often happens that after the credencial has been presented it is scrutinised and it must have been signed by someone higher in hierarchy to the person receiving it. This person in turn will authorise the collection of information or will also sign the document authorising one to proceed downwards in the hierarchy of an institution. A person of authority known to the provider of information can also serve as a credencial for an outsider and often a combination a letter with an institutional overhead signed by someone high in the institution and a local figure of authority is the best approach to take when seeking information, particularly outside the capital cities of the provinces.

The practice of asking for a credencial before providing information is so widespread to the extent that even citizens being approached in surveys by Mozambican researchers in possession of identification cards are, at times, still asked to produce their credencial.21 The credencial serves effectively a double purpose. On the one hand, it removes the responsibility from the person providing the information to the person who signed the credencial. In the case the information is used in a way understood to harm the institution, those up the hierarchy who authorised the provision of information will be accountable, thus protecting the information provider. Second, it establishes the legitimacy of the person demanding information even though this has to be continuously negotiated according to the kind of information one is requesting.

Mozambicans and state bureaucrats in particular have ranked information seekers according to their perceptions of danger and exposure involved in providing information. While, like researchers, journalists are often received with suspicion, by virtue of their profession they are perceived as the less dangerous and most legitimate information seekers. Foreign researchers, especially those working for international NGOs, are perceived as more dangerous than the journalists but less so than their Mozambican counterparts. Foreign researchers, who are often Caucasians, are generally associated with. In those cases, there is even diligence in the provision of information. Mozambican researchers are perceived as the most dangerous information seekers especially when the final objective of the research is not clear to local bureaucrats.

In the relationship with journalists there is the assurance that the information is going to be used for news making and with foreign researchers there is the idea that the information will make possible a

20 Even in the capital city, the concealing of information is still a well established practice. In 2009 MISA approached five state institutions, including three ministries, with requests for information on budgets, expenditure, procurement, hiring procedures and contact details for officials who should liaise with the public. Of the five institutions, only IGEPE (Institute for the Management of State Shareholdings) provided the information requested and within a reasonable time. Similar research was carried out in 11 other SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries, and Mozambique was ranked bottom (the survey did not cover Zimbabwe). http://appablog.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/misa-mozambique-unveils-constrains-to-press-freedom-in-mozambique/ (accessed 26.0210) 21 See for example West (2003). 7

future project. Still, there have been cases where foreign researchers have authored reports which the Mozambican government did not receive well and with the multiplication of media outlets not many journalists do not shy away from controversial topics. Mozambican researchers seem to seek information for knowledge sake which also says that information may be used for unimagined purposes. This is a general picture. In practice each case must be negotiated in the moment and the prospects of success depend on various aspects from the information required to the political and economic context at the national and local level. For instance, Michael Walker, an American researcher, reports that while conducting field research in the district of Sussundenga in central Mozambique he felt he was suspected as a spy after it had become clear that he was neither a priest nor an aid worker:

My physical appearance and my Zimbabwean Shona shaped how I was perceived by an important traditional authority early in my fieldwork. After our introductions and description of my research, he questioned Nelson, my research assistant, about my true motives. Through his interrogation and change in demeanour, it became apparent that he thought I was a spy. He alleged I had come from Zimbabwe to Mozambique to steal Mozambicans’ agricultural knowledge (Walker 2009: 8).

If a foreign researcher can be thought to be a spy or a member of Renamo22, as happened to Bertelsen (2002), Mozambican researchers often find themselves in equally awkward positions. In fact, there are times that being a Mozambican researcher can be a drawback. A student who conducted research for his doctoral dissertation in two districts of in Northern Mozambique expressed his disappointment that at times foreign researchers can more easily have access to information. For about five weeks he was not granted access the district archives while a foreign colleague manage to do that in a couple of days. The doors opened for him only after having been to a Sunday morning breakfast with a senior party and government member at his house in the province.23 One of the authors of this paper’s requests to access the archives in district were only taken seriously when he began making reference to senior government officials whom he could call to expedite the process. The other author who worked in had to keep the topic of his research as vague as possible to be able to access specific information related to his project.

Even though we had been conducting research in Inhambane and Niassa for more than a year, all we often managed to easily access information when we declared that we were studying “tradition” or “local culture and history”. Once we started enquiring about written documents and archives then a number of bureaucratic procedures came up.24 Even local bureaucrats we had befriended during field research could only reply to our requests to see documents with the all too familiar standard responses: ‘you need to make it in writing and say the documents you need’; ‘you need to talk to the chefe de secretaria (chief of the district secretary only subordinate to the district administrator); ‘you need to talk to the secretário permanete (permanent secretary)’. Both, the chefe de secretaria and the

22 Renamo is currently the most represented opposition party in parliament and developed from the movement that waged the civil war against Frelimo (the ruling party). 23 Personal communication, January 2010. 24 Bjørn Bertelsen, a Norwegian researcher who studied memories of violence in Chimoio, , also reports how he was threatened to be sent home by an officer who insisted that he was “being watched” by the local branch of the State Information and Security Services. The officer warned him: ‘Find out what they eat, what they grow, and stay out of politics!’ (Bertelsen 2002: 22). 8

secretário permanent may not be easy to meet given their busy schedules which include regular field trips and meetings.

When it comes to giving interviews, middle ranked state bureaucrats prefer to talk in the presence of colleagues even if the colleagues are not familiar with the subject of the interview. In interviews conducted in Gaza and Inhambane provinces on the articulation between local government and civil society organization, public functionaries insisted they would give the interviews from their desks usually in a shared office where other colleagues could follow the interview. In two occasions, bureaucrats preferred that interviews took place in the cafeteria of their institutions where colleagues would be having tea on the tables next to the one we were sitting. Not sharing their working or social space, senior public servants often resort to evasiveness25. In spite of these reservations, research and news information are still possible because many public functionaries will provide information once they are assured that they will not be quoted or identified. Some of the reasons for the behaviour of state bureaucrats towards the publicity of information may be explained by the relationship between public services and the state.

The view that Mozambican political continues to be based on the distinction between friends and enemies continues very present in state bureaucracies where the ruling party insists in maintaining party cells to ensure the party control of the state. Even when sharing information that must be shared by law, bureaucrats often face a possible backlash because they cannot always know how the information they provide will be used. As such, a safer way to share information is to repeat what senior figures of political or bureaucratic authority have said in public. As it has been shown elsewhere (Goncalves 2013), Mozambican bureaucrats subordinate written documents to oral ones as long as these are produced by higher figures of authority.

“Documents never die”

For any bureaucracy to function a system of production, circulation and management of information must be established. In the Mozambican case, recent attempts to regulate the management of information within state administration have been mostly concerned with the concealing of information from the public. In the Mozambican Constitution the issue of information is addressed in relation to the freedom of the press.26 In its reference to the “Freedom of Expression and Information” it states that all citizens have the right to freedom of expression, press freedom, as well as the right to information.” However, no further detail had been given in this document or any other on how citizens may exercise that right (Nharreluga 2009: 42). This changed recently with the approval of the new regulation on rights to information that allow citizens to request and receive information without having to declare the reasons for their requests.

While the right for information act grants rights to access information, Mozambican bureaucrats still have to deal with internal legal and para-legal instruments that regulate state bureaucracy. Before we proceed into the analysis of the existing regulations I need to make two important remarks. First, legal and regulatory documents must be read in the politico-ideological context in which they exist.

25 It is important to note that senior public servants are not evasive all the time. Depending on “the order of discourse” senior public functionaries may be excited to provide information they expect will publicize their work. For instance, in context of the present state rhetoric on the “fight against poverty” senior public servants at the district and provincial level are more often happy to list the activities they have undertaken to fight poverty. 26 The Strategy for the Management of State Archives and Documents under discussion also does not address the issue. http://www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz/docs_gov/estrategia/tecInfo/estrateg_g_d_a_e.pdf (accessed 20.02.2010) 9

A contextualization of regulatory documents allows for a better understanding of the possibilities of their implementation. It is also a fact that political rhetoric also generates practices that are not regulated. Second, practice shows that regulatory documents in Mozambique need not to be legal or in writing form. There is a history of circulating party orientations published via magazines, newspapers and the radio and this include interviews by senior government officials. In that way, the power of documents and information resides in the authority of the speaker. Thus, for public functionaries, the speeches of the president or the interviews of the provincial governor on the local radio or newspaper may have the force of law. In fact, orientations passed through the media have a particular weight as they are thought to have emerged from the most recent party meetings, thus being the most update version of the party thinking.

The former law 2/79 which established and defined the punishment for crimes against the People’s Security and the Security of the Popular State27 of Mozambique dedicated one section to agitação (agitation) and other to boatos (rumours). On the section related to the agitation, article 35 of the law established that “to publicly, by any means, interpret in bad faith the orientations and the laws outlined by the Frelimo party and State or of the objectives which those orientations and laws aim to achieve” was considered a crime against the People’s and State Security. Similarly, article 36 of the same law made reference to the fact that any Mozambican abroad “…that makes or publicly reproduces, or by any means publicizes or tries to publicize statements or news he/she knows are false or deformed…is punished with a sentence of two to eight years in prison.”28

Both articles make reference to characteristics attributed to the figure of the Xiconhoca, the agitator and the rumourmonger. During the socialist period, it was very easy for one to fall under either of those categories, especially given the ubiquitous character of the Xiconhoca in social and professional life. For instance to present in public a view that challenged the “orientations and laws outlined by the Frelimo party” could well be considered “agitation”. Hence, the system of subordination within the public function and the party hierarchy demanded that critiques were not made in public but presented to the leaders in appropriate fora. Even journalists who had willingly embarked in the socialist project could not engage in public critique of Frelimo’s policies as they generally lead to accusations of one “being at the service of the enemy.”29

Towards the end of the socialist period, another legal document defined in ambiguous terms when public functionaries were allowed to provide information to the public. The decree 36/89 of 27 of November of 1989 which approves the norms of the functioning of the State Services30 states in point 2 of Article 4 regarding information that “all the information which for its complexity needs major consideration should be submitted to the functionary higher in the hierarchy to the person to whom the information was requested”31. Point number 3 of the same Article states: ”Incorrect information which leads the requestor to error leads to civil or criminal responsibility the

27 Replaced by Lei número 19/91, de 18 de Agosto Lei sobre os crimes contra a Segurança de Estado 28 Lei 2/79 de 1 de Março Define e estabelece as punições dos crimes contra a Segurança do Povo e do Estado Popular de Moçambique 29 There are documented cases in which members of editorial boards of newspapers and magazines were axed or resigned (Machiana 2001, Jone 2005). 30 Replaced by the Decreto 30/2001 de 15 de Outubro 31 Decreto 36/89: Aprova as normas de funcionamento dos Serviços do Estado, bem como os modelos de impressos para seu uso. 10

functionary who has provided such information, regardless of the disciplinary measures that might be taken.”32

While point 2 of Article 4 of Decree 36/89 denotes the hierarchical subordination proper of bureaucratic institutions, it leaves for interpretation how one evaluates the “complexity” of the information that needs further consideration. Is it a matter of detail on the information requested? Is it a matter of the subject of the enquiry? Who and how does one evaluate the degrees of “complexity” of requested information? Number 3 of the same article criminalized the provision of “incorrect information” further constraining public functionaries in providing any information to the public. This is more so as from the socialist period a rule based on “practice” and “experience” has constantly put regulating documents at odds with practices and orientations – oral or written – that guide them.

While in Decree 30/2001 which replaced Decree 36/89 the provision of information is not criminalized, it remains ambiguous to what is now referred as “technical complexity”.33 Similarly, the law 14/2009 which approves the General Constitution of State Functionaries and Agents34 states that state functionaries and agents should “Keep secret on matters related to the service even after the end of term”35 leaving it to specific departments to produce regulating documents to detail what matters related to service should be kept secret for life. The same document further states that should a state functionary or agent “disclose or allow the disclosure of classified information which he knows as a function of his service” he or she shall be dismissed.36 However, until recently, information produced and archived in public institutions had not been object of a clear general legislation.

Certainly public institutions find space in their regulatory instruments to classify and manage the circulation and the archive of information. Where new regulatory instruments are not in place, public functionaries use regulation from the colonial period. The old Decree 33/9237 of 26 of October which established the National System of Archives did not provide technical annexes detailing the classification of documents. The new Decree 36/2007 of 27 of August which establishes the National System of State Archive has detailed technical annexes attached to it which includes a Classifier of Information in the Public Function.38 Unfortunately this document presents a map that classifies information in four categories (state secret, secret, confidential, restricted) all of which are related to the restriction in the access of information.39 Furthermore, the description of each of the class of documents allows for an extensive interpretation to the extent that most documents of public interest can fit in one or another class of restriction. For example, “technical reports in research issues that justify the classification of State Secret”40 are considered state secret.

32 Idem 33 Number 2 of Article 38 of the Decreto 30/2001 de 15 de Outubro: Normas de Funcionamento dos Serviços da Administração Pública 34 Estatuto Geral dos Funcionários e Agentes do Estado 35 Point number 9 of Article 39 of the law 14/2009 36 Point b) of the Number 2 of Article 87 of the Decreto 30/2001 de 15 de Outubro: Normas de Funcionamento dos Serviços da Administração Pública 37 Decree replaced by the Decree 36/2007 38 Presidencial Decree 9/2003 of December Classificador de Informacoes na Função Pública 39 This is not surprising considering that the document was conceived by the National Commission for the Implementation of the Norms of State Secrets 40 Presidencial Decree 9/2003 of December Classificador de Informacoes na Função Pública 11

Considering the press freedom guarantees in the Mozambican Constitution and in the 1991 Press Law, there should be not many constraints to the publicity of information by public institutions, but journalists continue to be concerned with legislations such a clause in law 19/91 which treats libel against the President, the Prime Minister and other senior political and judicial figures as a state security offence.41 As just as the journalists concerns are, we should not underestimate the significance of public functionaries entrenched practices developed over past historical and ideological periods. In some cases, it is as if public functionaries signed some “official secrets Act” of the type in force in early 20th Century Great Britain.

In the context of the administrative reforms, state bureaucrats have been trained to adopt to the new legislative framework. A common response to a request to visit the arquivo morto is that “documents never die.” Indeed, that is the message passed the trainings but interviewed bureaucrats also complain that the new regulation creates a number of difficulties when it comes to classify information, especially that which pertains to state secrets.

Conclusion

I began by considering some anecdotes which illustrate that the practice of secrecy is pervasive among public functionaries in Mozambique. The experiences of researchers and journalists who seek for information also show that citizens have also learnt to be suspicious of foreigners requesting information. Credecials or other forms of identification are often demanded before providing information to visitors. Negotiations of what information to give and to whom depend on the interpretation of who requests the information and the purpose for which the information might be used.

When put in historical perspective, it seems that the reasons for the uncomfortable relationship between public functionaries and the management and publicity of information can be found in the ideological relation between friends and enemies built during the first years of independence. Virtually all voices public positions that were differed from the principles of Frelimo’s version of socialism could be taken as an attack on the revolutionary project. Xiconhoca, the ubiquitous caricature of the enemy within was also portrayed as an agitator (a person who asks difficult and embarrassing questions) and a rumourmonger (a person who gave information about things when did not know and heard and repeated the words of the external enemy). In their management of information, public functionaries could easily fall under the category of the Xiconhoca.

The general climate of insecurity and suspicion for the public functionaries from the first years of independence was carried over to the democratic period. Public functionaries learnt to be vigilant towards members of the public and their own colleagues. This insecurity and vigilance was exacerbated as colleagues could throw accusations at each other in order to eliminate competition for leadership positions while at the same time being watched by colleagues doubling as State Secret Services agents.

41 See MISA-Mozambique unveils constrains to press freedom in Mozambique http://appablog.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/misa-mozambique-unveils-constrains-to-press-freedom-in-mozambique (accessed 26.02.10) 12

While new legislation grants citizens the right to information, local state bureaucrats seem to be trapped in the practices of previous ideological periods. The constitution and condition of the arquivo morto is an illustration of this. As a result, information not primarily kept and retrieved from sources in paper or digital support. Individuals in position of political or bureaucratic authority and the reservoirs of institutional memory allowing for institutions and processes to be contested but also built anew according with the political and economic context of the day.

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