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State of the media in Southern Africa 2002
2002
tated by their inexcusable negligence.”
ALERT
DATE: 2002-10-08
PERSON(S): Fernando Lima, Kok
Nam, Marcello Moss
VIOLATION(S): Threatened
According to “MediaFax”, as well as
the Maputo weekly “Domingo”, a
man identified as “Opa,” or “Uapa,”
testified on September 23 before the
magistrate investigating the Cardoso
murder.
Opa claimed he met Momade
Abdul Satar, the accused mastermind
of the Cardoso murder, while in jail
and alleged that Satar had told him
that he had carried out Cardoso’s
murder at the behest of someone he
described as “o filho do galo” (the
son of the rooster). In a September
27 column signed by journalist
Fernando Lima, MediaFax reported
that Opa had told the magistrate that
the “son of the rooster” referred to
Nymphine Chissano.
The next night, at about 1 a.m., a
truck arrived at the home of Kok
Nam, the publisher of “Savana”,
which is owned by the same media
cooperative-MediaCoop-that publishes
“MediaFax”. The driver of the
truck said he had about 100 chickens
to deliver to Kok Nam and
Fernando Lima, who had written the
article in “MediaFax”. The driver
claimed that the chickens were a gift
from the first lady, Marcelina
Chissano. Later that day, similar
trucks carrying chickens attempted to
make deliveries to the home of
MediaFax editor Marcelo Mosse and
to the offices of “MediaCoop”.
84 So This Is Democracy?
UPDATE
DATE: 2002-11-04
PERSON(S): Fernando Lima, Kok
Nam, Marcello Moss
VIOLATION(S): Threatened
First Lady Marcelina Chissano has
denied intimidating any of the country’s
journalists, and has demanded
that her “good name and right to privacy
be respected.”
A letter sent by her lawyer,
Augusto Macedo Pinto, to the independent
weekly “Mediafax”, and
published on November 1 2002, also
stressed that the first lady wanted to
see the case of the murder of Carlos
Cardoso, the newspaper’s founding
editor, “resolved as rapidly as possible,
and the guilty parties tried and
sentenced.”
The letter, which made no explicit
threat of legal action, was clearly in
response to claims made a month ago
that the first lady had sent mysterious
gifts of live chickens to
“Mediafax” editor Marcelo Mosse,
Fernando Lima, chairman of the
board of Mediacoop (the company
that owns the newspaper), and Kok
Nam, director of the Mediacoop
weekly “Savana”.
The delivery of the chickens followed
“Mediafax”’s publication of
articles concerning “o filho do galo”
(“the son of the cockerel”). The
newspaper had revealed that a new
witness, named only as “Opa”, had
been heard by the magistrate investigating
the Cardoso murder. Opa had
just been released from Maputo’s top
security prison after serving half of
a 10-year sentence for illegal possession
of firearms. While in jail, he had
come to know Momade Assife Abdul