Mozambique: Young people should reject 'gospel of hatred' - president
Personal view: Ex US ambassador Jett calls Mozambique a failed state, but ignores his role in that failure – By Joseph Hanlon
8:54 CAT | 10 Mar 2020
Joseph Hanlon. [File photo: Visão Actual]
“Mozambique Is a Failed State. The West Isn’t Helping It” is the headline of an article in the US journal Foreign Policy (7 Mar) by Dennis Jett, who was US ambassador in Mozambique 1993-96. In the article he notes that “the press is largely government-run or thoroughly intimidated.” He showed his support for a free press in December 1995 when he banned US embassy and USAID staff from talking to the editor of the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin, Joseph Hanlon, on the grounds that I was “totally biased”.
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Urgent_Action/apic_mz2496.html
The ban was criticised by several international press freedom organisations. Jett and I go back a long way.
One thing that may have made him angry was the report in the Bulletin (11, August 1994) that he used his speech on US Independence day (4 July 1994) to call for Mozambicans to vote for the opposition against Frelimo in the first multiparty elections in October. Jett had been acting US ambassador in Malawi (charge d’affaires, 1986-88) in a key period in which Malawi and South Africa were openly supporting Renamo in the north of Mozambique, with the covert approval of the US.
But the real problem was that 1993-96 when Jett was ambassador was when the international community sowed the seeds of corruption as they spread around money trying to convert the socialists to capitalists. I tell that story in more detail in a 2017 Third World Quarterly article “Following the donor-designed path to Mozambique’s $2.2 billion secret debt deal” (http://bit.ly/3WQ-hanlon). Jett ignores his own role in creating a failed state.
Jett was also ambassador when the US was accused of threatening the withdrawal of aid if Mozambique did not sign an unfavourable contract with the US firm Enron for the exploitation of gas at Pande, Inhambane. Then Minerals Minister John Kachamila accused the US embassy of a “smear campaign” by telling the press he would not sign the contract because he wanted a big kickback. Jett told the Houston Chronicle: ”The role of international trade to the US is tremendously important. We see other governments helping their businesses. and we aren’t going to stand by and not help ours.” (Bulletin 16 December 1995). Issues of the Bulletin from 1994-5 are on:
http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/political-process-1993-2008
By Joseph Hanlon
Source: News reports & clippings
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