Delaware

Mozambique had a long civil war for seventeen years between the communist Frelimo and their opponents, the Renamo. The civil war had ended in late 1992. In 1994, myself and Gilson, my Portuguese speaking friend from Brazil, were some of the early travellers into that country which was still infested with land mines all over. We travelled along the long 2000-kilometre stretch of tortuous road that went from north to south of the country. After many incidents, we were heading towards the capital city of Maputo, which was close to the border of Swaziland to the south.

We had an early breakfast with some milk tea and caught a minibus to take us to Maputo. The minibus owner was Shoaib, an Indian from Valsad in Gujarat. Shoaib is a Bohra Muslim and was in his early twenties and seemed an easy-going fellow. He turned out to be an interesting and enterprising guy. I wondered what he was doing here in war torn Mozambique, running minibuses across the length of the country and earning weak Mozambican currency. But reality as he described it, was more interesting.

Shoaib migrated to Mozambique through Zambia and Zimbabwe some two and a half years before the civil war came to an end. His sharp nose for business opportunities naturally told him that business could be good here as the civil war is going to end. He spoke Makhuwa, the Mozambican ltribal anguage, Portuguese, English, Hindi and Gujarati! His long range plans were to stay on in Mozambique for five years which would enable him to get Mozambican citizenship.

'Why in the world would you want to acquire this country's citizenship? It is one of the poorest in the world!' I asked him.

'Well, as things stand today, it is possible to apply for migration and citizenship to Switzerland and Canada if you are a Mozambican citizen. In fact your chances are brighter with Mozambican citizenship' he said.

He seemed to have done his homework. I asked him about his business and life in Mozambique.

'Actually, I make pretty good money here running the bus. Business is brisk and I make enough money to buy another bus. But life is no fun here. You will find a lot of Indians and Chinese doing business here. I feel there are too many Indians here for my comfort. We also have many Indians as part of the UN to restore the roads and other services which have been destroyed by sixteen years of civil war.'

'What about elections in October? Who do you think will win?' I asked.

'Frelimo will naturally win. They have support among the rural people. Renamo does not have much support among the people. Most people see them as bandits. But the one big question on everyone's mind is whether a Frelimo victory will push Mozambique back to civil war as it happened in Angola. Nobody knows.'

Gilson and I had talked about it a few times before and we thought that Mozambique will not do an Angola simply because the external support needed to revive the civil war does not obtain in Mozambique. Apartheid South Africa was primarily supporting Renamo and Malawi was being neutral in the past which helped the apartheid regime to foment the civil war. But now, with Nelson Mandela in power (in 1994), Renamo had no external backers and so they have no option but to accept the peoples' verdict. Whereas in Angola, the Zairians had taken over the role of supporting UNITA once South Africa ended apartheid. This was the reason for continued civil war in Angola.

Frelimo strikes

The minibus made good speed and at around two o'clock we stopped at a small village called Manhiga, just 78 kilometres from Maputo. It was not a scheduled halt. But we got stuck there because the Frelimo soldiers had blocked the road to Maputo bacause of a salary dispute with the government. Nobody knew when the road would be cleared or what was happening. The small village had no way of coping with such a large influx of people in buses and trucks. Vehicles were lined up all the way for almost a kilometre and all of us got out of the minibus and stretched ourselves.

People waiting to 'catch' their transport across to their work to Inhambane

Everything came to a standstill. Nobody had any idea as to what would happen next and when. Shoaib said that we simply had to stay put and wait in Manhiga till the blockade is lifted. That could take anywhere from an hour to some days. We went to the only restaurant in 'town' and managed to find a table in spite of the crowd. Gilson ordered some chips, salad and bread and omelette and we both drank the Milkstout beer from across the border in Swaziland. The beer was the best we had in Africa and the food was surprisingly good. There was nothing more to do after lunch except walk around for an hour or so. Finally, we took up positions on the roadside and played a game of chess. Gilson's heart wasn't in the game and we both retired to do some reading and writing.

The Mozambicans were just taking it easy waiting it out. Darkness fell and there were no street lights. The entire population converged on the restaurant and the adjoining pub and we joined them for some more Milkstout beer and some more chips, salad and bread! With no further news on the strike, around ten o'clock, we spread our sleeping bags on the edge of the road and slept.

Morning broke after a good night's sleep and there was still no news on the blockade. In order to kill time, we set ourselves the project of getting some bread and hot coffee with milk. We managed to buy freshly baked bread in the market and found some tea with milk.

Afterwards, I spoke to Shoaib and we decided to return to Xai Xai for a few days in the other direction till the blockade is lifted. Xai Xai is supposed to have a nice beach and it sounded a better place to wait than Manhiga by the roadside. But Shoiab pointed out difficulties in doing that as well. Any bus that will go to Xai Xai will have to start from Manhiga and that is not a possibility because there are no bus operators from this small town. Other buses which head for Xai Xai are blocked on the other side of the blockaded highway and they can get here only if the blockade is lifted. If the blockade is lifted, then we might as well go to Maputo!

Suddenly, all hell broke loose at 10 o'clock. News came that the blockade has been lifted and there was a sudden spontaneous outpouring of joy in the streets of Manhiga among the 'expatriate' crowd! Women danced on top of the trucks and a fellow Mozambican from our bus shook hands with me and hugged me. Joyous shouting resonated all over Manhiga. One would have thought that Mozambican civil war had just come to an end..!

It was amazing how quickly everybody was galvanised into action. Within ten minutes our bus was loaded fully back again and in another five minutes, we were off towards Maputo.

A shipwreck on the coast in Beira

We had another 80 odd kilometres to get to Maputo. I asked Shoaib more about his life and times.

'This mini bus business is very good. There is great demand and I work all seven days a week. I make something like 150 US dollars everyday transporting people from Maputo towards Beira.'

Gilson was surprised to hear the amount of 150 dollars a day. A little bit of arithmetic on our part and the distances involved showed us that he is pushing up his earnings two-fold. But he had no reasons to posture with us. Perhaps, we did not know the full story.

'How did you decide to do this in far off Mozambique? Why not run the same business in India?'

'As I said earlier, my aim is to live in Canada or England. If you work in Mozambique, you can make money here and convert it to dollars or pounds and save it overseas. I keep some Mozambican money for my expenses here and the rest I save in British pounds with my sister who lives in England. Not only me, this is what other Indians and Pakistanis and the Chinese do here. In fact, it is mostly Indians and the Chinese who run the transport business in much of Southern Africa and we are all looking for the same thing.'

'You mean , go and live in Canada or the UK?'

'No, to buy more buses and make more money. In fact, I want to buy a Tata bus. You can get them from India and they cost only about 70000 dollars. The Benz buses are at least a 100000 or more.'

Obviously, the Indians and the Chinese are contributing to the flight of foreign exchange from this fledgling economy. But this erstwhile socialist economy is also moving towards free market reforms and it is going to be the survival of the fittest, at least for the next twenty years.

We reached Maputo in two hours' time . Shoaib dropped off all the passengers along the way and then asked us to bear with him as he had go in search of that one woman passenger who was supposed to have vanished into thin air without paying the fare a few days before!. It was an interesting search as Shoaib went around the capital city to the area where she is known to live and enquired as to her whereabouts. Within minutes, he tracked her down and was engaged in a totally non-violent argument in the local dialect about the money she owed him. In between laughter and denials, they seemed to arrive at some compromise and Shoaib left with perhaps part of the money. Shoaib seemed very much part of the local scene, inspite of looking very Indian. Knowledge of the tribal language and his integration with the locals in Mozambique in just two years seemed to be the key for his success. As I watched him haggle for his money, it never felt like the scene it could have been - a merciless foreign moneylender harassing a poor native woman for a pittance.

Soon, Shoaib dropped us off in the centre of town, wished us good luck and went on his way. I felt quite proud of him as a fellow Indian.