­chapter 8 Fear and Propaganda: a Case for

Maria Ahmad, Aradhana Sharma and Marianne Perez de Fransius

Over two decades after the 16-​year long, brutal civil war ended, Mozambique, has been witnessing impressive economic growth. Discovery of valuable nat- ural resources had led to optimism regarding the country’s future with major investments coming in. However, this outlook has dimmed with revelations of the government’s high debt burden in recent months. Discontentment has been on rise with resentment brewing over how this newfound wealth will be shared. One of the ways it manifested was with the reemergence of the conflict, though not full blown, between Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique, Mozambique Liberation Front), which led the country to independence in 1975 and has been in power ever since and the main opposition party, Renamo (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana, Mozambican National Resistance), key player in the civil war and maintains armed elements. This article has tried to analyze how this conflict has played out in the Mo- zambican media, which is susceptible to political influence. Articles on the “politico-​military tension” were analyzed in three outlets for the month of March 2016. The main stories that emerged were about Renamo’s attempted takeover of the six provinces in the center and north of the country, where their presidential candidate claimed to have won the majority of the vote, and the status of refugees and internally displaced people as a result of ongoing violence between the military and Renamo fighters. The study also included interviews with and politicians in order to further inform the primary research and help with the analysis. The data has been organized under the themes of Ownership; Propaganda; Censorship; and lack of and conflict analysis in order to understand the Mozambican media landscape. In our research, we relied mostly on and Jake Lynch’s the- oretical frameworks on peace journalism, especially when analyzing content and editorial decisions. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s theories were invaluable for shedding light on propaganda, ownership and censorship. We, however, used these and other theoretical frameworks sparingly because a lot of the models apply to more developed and sophisticated media systems. The Mozambican media, which has largely developed in the past two decades, is

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004386365_009 Fear and Propaganda: A CASE FOR PEACE JOURNALISM 149 still in a nascent stage and thus cannot always be looked at through the same prisms as applied to more developed media systems.

General Background

Mozambique ranked 68th out of 163 in the Global Peace Index 2016 (Vision of Humanity) and 180 out of 188 in the Human Development Report. (undp 2015) According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (si- pri 2015), Mozambique is undergoing a “minor armed conflict” as a result of the country returning to violence in 2013, growing more acute in 2015 when disagreement over the polling and the political process between the ruling par- ty Frelimo and the largest opposition party, Renamo, could not be reconciled. This is commonly referred to as the “political-​military tension.” In the years after gaining independence from Portugal (1975), when Mozam- bique was a socialist, one party state, the media was part of the state apparatus. During this decade and a half, dominated by a civil war between Frelimo and Renamo, the media mainly acted as disseminators of government-​provided and approved information with an aim of painting Frelimo, in a good light. In 1990, a new constitution brought multi-​party democracy to the country. Along with guaranteeing freedom of expression it also allowed for private own- ership of the media. Since 2009, the Movimento Democratico de Mozambique (mdm), a third political party has been represented in Parliament. Currently, mdm and Renamo together have about 40% of the Parliamentary seats. Three out of the four largest cities have mdm mayors.

Mozambique Media Landscape

Low literacy levels,1 low Internet penetration2 and lack of a common language3 are all factors that contribute to the lack of sophistication of the Mozambi- can media ecosystem. Media content production tends to follow propagan- da – ​counter-​ with a few independent outlets in the middle. Meanwhile, PR strategies, planting stories, putting spin on stories and other

1 Only 3.6% of the population has any kind of secondary education and the adult literacy rate is 50.6%. (undp 2015). 2 Only 5.9% of the population has access to the Internet. (undp 2015). 3 About 40% of the population speaks Portuguese; even fewer have it as a primary language. (Info as Aid 2012).