On 2 February 2005, Armando Emilio Guebuza of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) succeeded Joaquim Chrissano as president of the southern African country.
On taking office, Guebuza made clear that both he and Chrissano “are from Frelimo, we have the same philosophy, we share the same values of party organisation, of thinking about the country in a collective way, of consultation, and of freedom of expression.”
Nevertheless, most analysts saw Guebuza as a traditionalist who partly opposes the modernising efforts made under Chissano’s two-term rule. Yet he was also widely perceived as a reformist, someone who could improve effective policy implementation and address the problems of criminality, corruption and poverty which have gripped Mozambique in recent years.
Guebuza was born on 20 January 1943 in the town of Murrupula, in the northern province of Nampula. From an early age he was involved in the fight for Mozambique’s independence from Portugal, being elected president of the Mozambican Centre of African Students at the age of 20. Furthermore, he has been in the top leadership of Frelimo ever since the party’s second congress, held in 1968 during the independence war.
After the signing of the Lusaka Agreements in 1974, which granted Mozambique independence from Portugal, Guebuza was appointed Min-ister of Internal Administra-tion.
He earned his ruthless reputation later that year when he gave Portuguese settlers just 24 hours to leave the country if they felt unable to accept life in an indepdendent Mozambique. This became known as the ‘24–20’ order because the residents in question were restricted to just 20kg of luggage per person.
During the early independence years, he became the right-hand man of Samora Machel, the first post-independence Mozambican president, and occupied the posts of Minister of the Interior (1975–77) and 1983–85), Vice Minister of Defence (1980) and Resident Minister in the Province of Sofala (1981–83), among others.
During the 1980s Guebuza also developed an unpopular programme known as ‘Operation Production’ in which jobless people from urban areas were moved to rural regions in the northern part of the country with barely more than the clothes on their backs.
In the late 1980s, Guebuza was one of the first Mozambican leaders to realise the need to steer the country towards a multiparty market system. He represented Frel-imo at the peace negotiations with the Renamo guerrilla group that led to the Rome General Peace Accords, signed on 4 October 1992.
During the transitional phase towards the first general elections in 1994, he represented the government of Mozam-bique in the joint Supervision and Monitoring Commission, the highest implementing body of the accords.
Following the abandonment of socialist economic policies, which included the privatisation of state companies, Guebuza became a successful and wealthy businessman, particularly in the construction, exports and fishing industries. Today he is considered to be one of the wealthiest Mozambican citizens, earning him the nickname of ‘Mr Gue-Business’.
Guebuza was picked as Frelimo's presidential candidate in 2002, his reputation for fighting against corruption made him a popular choice. In the presidential elections two years later, he won with an overwhelming 63.7 per cent of the vote.
International observers criticised the fact that the National Electoral Comm-ission (CNE) did not conduct fair and transparent elections, listing a range of shortcomings by the electoral authorities that benefited the ruling party.
Apart from such criticism, one of Guebuza’s biggest challenges has been the voluntary repatriation of citizens in the wake of xenophobic violence in South Africa against African migrants last year.
Contrasting with the attitudes in his country’s larger neighbour, last month Guebuza opened the Second National Conference on Culture, which is intended to highlight Mozambique’s cultural diversity.
