An initiative of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University Oral History Program Series: Governance Traps Interview no.: M10 and M11 Interviewee: Alfredo Gamito Interviewer: Itumeleng Makgetla Date of Interview: 26 and 27 January 2010 Location: Maputo Mozambique Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties MAKGETLA: My name is Tumi Makgetla, it's the 26th of January 2010. I'm in Maputo, Mozambique, with Dr. Alfredo Gamito, the former Minister for State Administration from 1995 to 2000. Thank you very much for joining us for this interview. And before we begin, can I just confirm that I have your consent that this is a voluntary discussion. GAMITO: Yes, this is a voluntary discussion, without any problem, very free. MAKGETLA: Excellent, that's what we like to hear. Before we get into the time when you were the Minister for State Administration, I'd like you to just give us a bit of background, as you have just now, about your career, and how you came to this position. GAMITO: My career was done basically in public administration. I started work in finance services, then I went to the private sector. I worked in the bank, and in a cashew company, and the cashew company was linked to the finance administration area. After independence, I was called to Maputo. I used to live in the northern part of Mozambique, in Nampula. I was called to organize a state company, the cashew company, in this sense. I was the general director for the cashew company. It had about seven factories around the country. They had about 20,000 workers and 15,000 were women. And then, through that, I went back again to the government. I was elected as the secretary of the cashew company in the state. And this state company-I worked in this state company, and five private companies and then was nominated Vice-Minister of Agriculture, mainly to reorganize the business or private sector of the government. And then I was called to be the- But also better working conditions. This was the modernization directional line. Then we had a third line, which was decentralization. Here, the exercise was to make decision-makers on the low level in the places, or in the districts, where things happen. So, we created different municipalities, and these municipalities were autonomy entities of the state, that administrative autonomy, financial, and patrimonial. So, that's how the municipalization of the country started. We started with 33 municipalities, now we have 43 municipalities. They also made laws for the local government. And they decentralized many of these local governments. MAKGETLA: Can I just clarify, local government is beneath provincial? Provincial down? GAMITO: The provincial government is also-here is central governor, okay? Now, is provincial-provincial governor is one level. Another level is district governor. This too is in our local government, okay? MAKGETLA: Okay, excellent. GAMITO: So, they decentralized from here, from the central government to the provincial government, then to the district government. This was the second phase of the decentralization. The third phase of decentralization, it was not during my time as a minister, but they continued with the program. They created the provincial assemblies. At this level, they have the Provincial Assembly. In the district, they have what they call Community Counseling Services. MAKGETLA: Excellent. GAMITO: Most of these members from the communities of the district are the members of the Provincial Assembly. So, they improved, or they increased, the participation of these people. MAKGETLA: Okay. I'd like to ask you, it's very interesting, you said that when you came in you initially conducted a diagnostic of the public administration. Can you describe that process? GAMITO: They had a team working on the ground, a Mozambican team. They had to see on the ground what were the conditions of the public administration in the specific areas of places. They had to make a census of all the workers in the state, civil servants in the state. And from there, they could diagnose the situation of the servants in the government. And they got that number of 120,000 that they gave us. That was in 1995. Of these 120,000, 60 percent were working in the education sector and health sector. Forty percent were from the education sector, and 20 percent in the health sector, and they had to train them. That's why they had to establish these three lines, professionalization, modernization, and decentralization. MAKGETLA: How big was this team, and where was it located within the Ministry? GAMITO: One team was on the central level, as the coordinator, and they had provincial teams in the ten provinces, and it was mainly geared by the local services. MAKGETLA: And so, they asked about the qualifications-educational qualifications, that-occupation-what other sorts of questions did they-? GAMITO: One of the problems they had was lack of infrastructure to put these people working. The other problem was that the infrastructure of the state or government was damaged by the war. In the war, when they would attack a certain district, the first thing they would do was to destroy the building of the administration, which was the symbol of power. The second action was to kill the administrator if that was possible, and the people working in that administration-staff. So, these were the main worries that they had at the time. You can say when the war was over, the public administration all of the country had about 4,000 buildings. Half of these buildings were destroyed. The other half were seriously damaged. Here, we're talking about the house of the staff. They were placed where there were no conditions for the administration to function, work. So, this is what they had to do. They are still working on this process of renovating these places, but it's not over yet. MAKGETLA: You know, I understand that after the 1992 accords in Rome, the parties to those discussions set up a commission for territorial integration. Did you work with that at all, or was that before? GAMITO: Yes, I did. In Mozambique, we have about 128 districts, and 400-we call them administrative posts. Here, on a district level, we had about 30 districts occupied the opposition party RENAMO (The Mozambican National Resistance). In the 400 administrative posts, we had about 60 occupied by the opposition party. So, the work of this commission was to integrate these 30 in the state administration, and the 60 in this 400, to make a unique administration. In Mozambique, during the war, we had a double administration-one was with the government, and the other one was with the guerillas. And the work here was to integrate this into one. The peace agreement, or the agreement-in this agreement, RENAMO had to indicate these 30 and these 60, to integrate them. They indicated, then the government nominated them, and they became the administrators of those regions within two years. So, there was only one administration after two years. We took these people who were in RENAMO areas, we took them to the government areas, and we took those from the government to the RENAMO area, and all these people went through a training process. Most of these people who were in the double administration had worked for the government. They had worked for the government before the war. It was an easy integration of these for them. After two years, no one, nobody else spoke about the double administration, but this was a serious problem they had. First, because they had some experience in administration and second, because we trained them. Above all, this worked because of the training they gave to these people. They were able to explain to the people, RENAMO people and FRELIMO (The Liberation Front of Mozambique) people, they had to explain to them that the state was one thing, and the party was another thing. That was the main line. MAKGETLA: So, this is very interesting, and there hasn't been that much written about what happened in public administration; there's a lot more on the demobilization of the armies, but less about-. GAMITO: This process is not-they don't talk much about this process, because everything went smoothly. MAKGETLA: But so, can you tell me about the training? So, again, within the Ministry, who was focusing on these issues? GAMITO: They had the National Directorate specific for these trainings. In the Ministry, the two organic units, one was for the public services, managed the staff of the government, but also used to train the staff. And the other one was-dealt mainly with the departments of the states and the local level, local government. MAKGETLA: Okay. And you said that after two years, there was a decision to move them to the government areas and to move people from government areas to the former. Can you describe why that decision was taken? GAMITO: When these people were nominated, they were integrated as state workers, or state staff, civil servants. So, the civil servant has to be available to work in any place that he's nominated to work. So, they were transferred from one place to another, and they accept it without any problem, but they were already trained. After two years, they were able to administer any part of the territory. We had an integration process. When we trained them, we had about two classes, each class with about 30 people. There was a percentage of the civil servants, and others who came from RENAMO. You'd get in the classroom, and a simple teacher could not be able to distinguish who is who, who is RENAMO, who is FRELIMO, and they didn't feel comfortable with that. And until now, 15 years after, they are still administrators. MAKGETLA: So, what percentage of these 90 people would you say-did you track them specifically after they were integrated? How many stayed in? When they left? GAMITO: Okay, this process had a continuant. Some of these people, of course, had to reform. Other people died. Other people, you know, as life goes on, many things might have happened to them. For example, the administrator, the current administrator of Macossa is still there, it's a district. He was from Maringa, where at the time, he was nominated, and he has passed from other provinces. MAKGETLA: Okay, so just to go back, you said you had two classes and in each class you would have 30 people. So, who-how long was the training period for? How many weeks or-? GAMITO: This training had about different module. The first phase was about 45 days, then they would leave. There would be 90 days in the district to work, and then they'd come back again for another 45 days. These 90 days would be to make a monography of the districts. MAKGETLA: They would write up a report to those districts--? GAMITO: Yes. On the second phase, they'd come back with their report, and talk about what was happening in these districts. It was a permanent training, then they had the second phase. Mainly for this level of administrator of the district, it was a permanent training. These trainings were done here in Maputo, and also in their provinces. MAKGETLA: And so, they had 45 days, they went for 90-45 days, and then what happened? Would they continue this process? I mean, you said it's a permanent training, but what-how did that work? GAMITO: So, after the third phase, some people were sent to Portugal for training in public administration. Other people were sent to Brazil, and others were sent to a school in Cape Verde. These who went to Portugal were preparing the decentralization process. They went to learn about municipality in Portugal, and these were people with a medium standard. The university degree was done in Brazil, in public administration. MAKGETLA: Interesting. Okay. You know, lastly, I'd just like to ask, because this was a time just after a very difficult conflict, was it-you know, you mentioned that one of the most important things you taught them was that they were all members of the state, so-but were there ever any difficulties with the fact that they came-they had been in a territory that had been controlled by RENAMO? Were there any concerns when they came into office that they might try to hire people who had been, you know, who they were close to from the past? GAMITO: In the relations between RENAMO and the government of FRELIMO, there was no problem at all in the integration process. The main problem they had was not only with the RENAMO people, but also with the FRELIMO people. The main problem here was the education standard that was very low for these people. And most of them, when they would get the second phase, they could not go on because their qualifications did not allow them to understand the materials that were being taught. Some of the people who were sent to Portugal, had to come back because they had no qualifications for this kind of position. That's why now the government bets more on education, training. We motivated the Mondlane University for a public administration course there. We fixed about three training centers, one here in the southern region in Maputo, the other one in the central region, western Tete at this time, and the third one in the northern region, which is in Niassa, in Lichinga. It is with public administration and municipality. Fifty percent of people in the administration, and other people who came from the education system-half/half. MAKGETLA: Okay. GAMITO: And these are the people who are leading the public administration today. During this time, they only opened one center, and the colleagues who continued to open another two. This was a long-term reform problem. It was a problem with some success, because they had a good donor, which was Sweden and the Nordic countries. MAKGETLA: This is to set up the training program? GAMITO: Yes MAKGETLA: And in that time, with the training and integration, was there external funding to send people to these different universities? GAMITO: These were the main donors, Sweden and the Nordic countries. MAKGETLA: For this process of integration and--? GAMITO: Yes, yes. MAKGETLA: Okay. GAMITO: Not only professional integration-integration and training, mainly training. MAKGETLA: Okay, with professionalization--. GAMITO: Yes, yes. MAKGETLA: Great, well unfortunately, I would love to ask you many more questions, but it is very difficult. Okay, let me get Amy, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts with us. GAMITO: If you have any other questions, please feel free. MAKGETLA: It's the 27th of January, 2010. I'm in Maputo, Mozambique, again with Dr. Alfredo Gamito, the former Minister of State Administration. And we're going to continue our conversation on his period as Minister. I'd like to ask you, previously, we discussed the issues around integrating people into the civil service after the 1992 accords had been signed, and the decision had been made on how to conduct that process. And so, I wanted to ask you about, you know, you discussed the new imperatives for the civil administration; that you were going to professionalize, to modernize, to decentralize, and I'd like this to focus on the process of decentralization. Can you describe how that issue came on to your agenda? You mentioned the diagnostic that was conducted, but had there been a discussion about decentralizing? Can you contextualize those issues for me? GAMITO: Let's start talking about integration. The war lasted 16 years, and it caused a double administration in the country. From the 128 districts that we had in the country, 30 were under domain of RENAMO (The Mozambican National Resistance). Out of the 400 administrative posts, 60 were under domain of RENAMO. The general peace agreement defined that these, the areas, these zones of RENAMO, these areas had to be led or governed by RENAMO leaders, but proposed by the government. One of the main tasks from the first government we had of an election was to see the proposals from RENAMO and administer the nominees in this process. The task of these elements was to work in different areas so that we could create only one administration, not double, and this is what we did. And this component brought the training of these new elements. We had to mix the administrators from the government, or from the FRELIMO (The Liberation Front of Mozambique) side, with the administrators from RENAMO, so that they could be mixed and so they could understand the process clearly, because we wanted to integrate the people to know their capacities well. One of the conclusions that we had of the people who were indicated, we got to conclude that they already worked in the public administration. Most of them were people who were taken by RENAMO during the war to be in these districts. After two years of work we exchanged the administrators proposed to RENAMO for the government zones, and those of the government to the RENAMO zones. And that well concluded the process of integration, and that's how the double administration finished. In my opinion, training was a very essential element. From the vital subject that we're learned in this process, the main subject that people had to have in their mind was to separate state from their political parties so that things would be very clear-what is a state, what's a political party. And there are many people who still continue to be administrators today without any problem. This was the integration process. Today, there can be national meetings, and many people might not know that these were people who came from the whole process to be integrated in the system. I think this was a successful process. Two years after the peace agreement, the double administration stopped existing, and it came out of the political agenda. The objective of everybody was to look into developing the country. This was the integration process. MAKGETLA: Can I ask two questions that this has brought to mind? The first is, yesterday you mentioned that one of the issues that arose was the level of education, both of FRELIMO and RENAMO administrators, you mentioned the training that they did that was about working in the civil service, was anything done to raise their level of basic education? GAMITO: Much was done. Besides the training we gave in the Ministry to better know and make things happen-we motivated and we told-we motivated all the civil servants to study in normal schools, especially in evening classes. We also introduced distant learning, and this increased or improved the system. It must be clear that all this process was successful because of education, training. MAKGETLA: Sometimes it's difficult for people to, you know, go on this sort of training. How did you help them to prioritize that? Did you create incentives? Did you give them a stipend if they went on the training? You know, how-can you just explain if there's any way that you can support that? GAMITO: We elaborated a system of career and remuneration, and this was one of the biggest incentives. The career system had two main lines. First, the time at work: how long a person has been working in a position. And second, the academic background-the more educated you were, the better wages you would get. This was one of the greatest incentives that made many people go back to school. Because people knew if they had a basic level, they could work for 50 years, but they would not achieve the top level, so they had to go to school. They had to have a degree, so that they could have top-level jobs. We had a big problem in adopting this system. As I said yesterday, we also called many people to come and work for the administration, above all, those with the medium level and a university degree. A person with a university degree starting to work in the Ministry did not know how to do anything. You would get somebody who has been there for 20 years. You'd be well paid because of his university degree, in comparison to the person who has been working there for 20 years, but we made things happen. MAKGETLA: Just to ask you about another thing that came up in the course of what you said earlier, which is that you taught people to separate the party from the state, and that would make sense if an individual learned that, you could perhaps understand why they might change their loyalties to the state if they had it through education. But they were going into a community perhaps where people thought that they had obligations towards them. So, you train the administrator, but you put them into a community where the community members might say, "Hey, you're with us, you're with my political party." How did you deal with that situation, or maybe train people to deal with those pressures and demands from the community? GAMITO: It was not an easy process. I have to say certain-the administrators would make party meetings in government buildings. They would get visitors, their own visitors from the parties, and they would put them staying at government houses or buildings. One of the first things we did from FRELIMO Party, those days, the administrator of the district was also the leader of the party in the district. So, we had to separate that. Yes, separate, like, okay, one thing is for you to be administrator, the other thing is to be a leader. So, they had to separate these two functions. After we did that, we showed an example and we could also teach by example to the other people. For example, let's suppose you are from RENAMO. They receive a visitor and they put that person staying in government houses, that visitor from RENAMO, the opposition party. And when somebody from FRELIMO would come, which was the government party, and not being received in the same building, it's very complicated. It's got a very difficult political component. This was the process we managed to overcome. There's a big debate today, if we didn't have to go back, the district administrator, the leader of the government on the district, to also be the party leader. In FRELIMO, certain people don't agree with that. So, we have to maintain the separation. Although even the administrator and the party leader are from the same party, live in the district, their relationship also has some conflicts, because the person responsible for the government has more means for sustaining. He's got an official house. He's got a big house, a car. Sometimes the First Secretary of the party doesn't have all those conditions. The other one will go and want to borrow something from him. Sometimes he doesn't give it and that person will say, "But I'm responsible for the party of the government." So, this is a process. MAKGETLA: Can I ask you, how did you deal with those situations? Because this conversation is supposed to share your experiences and what you've learned. What would you say to someone else about the best way to deal with those tensions? GAMITO: We promote lots of dialogue. Normally, the people responsible for the government leaders and the party leaders, they meet together. And most of the time if these meetings are not well geared, there will be accusations. Each person will say, "You are not collaborating." So, there has to be somebody on top who will orient the meeting. Normally, this meeting, these big meetings are done on provincial levels, not on district levels. No, it's done not only on the district level, but also at the provincial level. When the meeting is at the provincial level, they are leading with the two, the First Secretary of the Party, and the Governor of the province; they are speaking again also, together. So, it's dialogue and training. MAKGETLA: And then with this situation with-when you said that you separated the post, when did that happen? Was that in 1995? GAMITO: No, no, it's before that. The separation was in 1988 to 1989, around that. When he went as the Governor of Nampula, he was responsible for the government and also for the party. And then he had to give the direction of the party, that was in 1990. We were already preparing the peace process, but the new constitution was also approved by then. The new constitution of 1990, also it foresaw the different party system in the government. The constitution we have, the first is 1975, the independence. The second is 1990. Normally, we call the "new constitution" for 1990, because it introduced a lot of change. Normally, the democracy, the multi-party--. Just now, we have another constitution, 2004, is there. But when we speak, when you listen to somebody say the "new constitution" is 1990, it's not for 2004, it's the 1990, the new. Really, the life is where we abandoned...where we introduce the multi democratic system, the free market, and so on. MAKGETLA: Really big changes. GAMITO: Yes, it was very big change in 1990. In that time, they brought a lot of problems. At that time we were not beginning with the discussion with the RENAMO. A lot of kind that the RENAMO justify the war, it's go down. MAKGETLA: So, before we move on, I'd just like to ask again, as advice to people who are listening to this, that situation that you described where RENAMO administrators might use government buildings for party purposes, how would you deal with that situation when it arose? GAMITO: Okay, like I was saying, we have a person, this member of government, OK, it was the leader of the party, the same people. When it went to make this concentration, separation, this member of the government, leader of parties, and other people, it's two people, okay? When somebody goes to one district, to one province, only they go. Party job, they go there, it's people, these people. When they go in the government task, they go to speak with these people. It's what we make here on the Parliament. I have my constituency, it's Nampula province. Sometime I go there in service of the assembly, on a job mission, on an assembly job. But I'm going to speak with the Governor. When I would go to work in my constituency, will-I go to the party. So here, what mainly has to happen is that the leader of the party should also have good conditions. That's the best way of separating the government leader from the party leader. MAKGETLA: But I was curious about the RENAMO administrators, how did you deal with the situation when they were using government facilities for party purposes? What was your response? GAMITO: What we had to do was give them an example that we had stopped doing that. In the first place, in these areas of RENAMO there was only RENAMO, so FRELIMO was coming slowly. So, as we took them to visit the government zones, they would see that there was FRELIMO, RENAMO was also coming so-and other parties were also appearing. So, we had to educate them. We are not talking about one party, but about multi-parties, there are many different parties. MAKGETLA: Okay, excellent. So, I'd like to ask you about the way that the government decided its relationship to traditional authorities. I understand that there have been some studies in the early 1990's, sponsored by Ford Foundation, and later when you were Minister, the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) also conducted a study. Can you describe to me the sort of debates that existed at the time, and how the process unfolded? GAMITO: That's also another delicate problem. Let me use three minutes to explain well. The Mozambican society, in our understanding, is a community society since the old days. In 1930, when the colonial administration started to expand, they started to search for the leaders of these communities. Because the communities were afraid of exposing these leaders, they would indicate just a simple person, and this person would be the link of the colonial authorities and the communities, and this is how it was developed. So, there were two parallel leaderships. The one-one is law leadership, and the other one is the de-facto leadership, and they started to go different ways, different directions. The de facto leadership-those who were the real leaders from the old days to that date, they started to lose power. And when the liberation war came for these leaders, the ones, the main leaders, they became members of FRELIMO. The other leaders become party of the colonialism. So, we start having a conflict there. This separation happened in 1960-1960-1962. This leadership linked to the colonial administration, they started accusing the link that the other leaders were having with FRELIMO, so many people were arrested. Many people died. We can say this-there's a genocide, the story will tell that. And people were taken to prison, and many people disappeared. So, when independence came, the people who were representing the community leaders were those linked to the colonial time-colonial administration. So, FRELIMO cut the relationship with them. They didn't have in mind that although those people had passed away were killed, they had like children, you know, people who were growing up and success, who knew about their past. In 1985-1988, when we we're trying to make this study, most would have two leaderships. One would be the one who came from the colonial administration, the other one would say, "I'm the main leader, because my great, great grandparents were the leaders of this community." So, we had to solve this. We called those people of the old days, like the main leaders, we called them community leaders of the first degree. The other ones we had to call leaders of the second degree, and this is how we solved that. And we integrated them in the administration process. The population, or the communities, are the ones who will legitimate if these leaders are the main leaders or not. The government only makes it official. MAKGETLA: So, which-this was in the 1980's? GAMITO: This started in 1988-1989, around that time. MAKGETLA: And so then, when you became Minister, what was the situation in that respect? GAMITO: Before I became Minister, I was the Governor of Nampula, so I participated in these studies. And they say, "He is one of the promoters of this initiative, of integrating the community leaders." The Minister who was there before, used me a lot for this work. I have a study-did a study on that, about the Nampula province. It's technical name, the traditional leader along one big river that we have in Nampula is the Lurio River. I concluded that in one extension for 1,000 kilometers, they have one relation between each other through marriages. I have a map here. Mozambique is dirty and then the road is dirt, they have a relation between. This river is a big river, this is how the Bantu people-the immigrating of the Bantu people started. The people who occupied Mozambique, they started from this river. MAKGETLA: That's very interesting. GAMITO: There's also an interesting study on that, made by [Indecipherable]. He's a French man. The title of the book is in French, but also in Portuguese. He studied about the origin of the war. It's like the cause of the arms, or guns. MAKGETLA: And when-so this is interesting, you had this background in Nampula from having worked to understand who were the original traditional leaders. And then when you became the Minister for State Administration, what was, you know, at that time, what was the decision, or how were the decisions being arrived at with respect to how the administration would have a relationship with these authorities? Because my understanding is the Minister before was quite enthusiastic about creating a space, not bringing them into the administration, but sort of creating a space to recognize traditional authorities. GAMITO: This process started in 1988 by the Minister before him. And when he became Minister in 1995 to 1999, he continued with these studies. And they were officialized; this relationship with the community leaders was officialized in the year 2000. It was a process of about ten to 15 years. Let me say, the relationship before that, before this link, it was the relationship of enemies. The understanding was, all that we thought that was community leaders would be from RENAMO. So, we had to remove this from the minds of the people for the psychological process. MAKGETLA: That could not have been easy. GAMITO: It was not easy at all. I said, as the investigator, let me talk also about FRELIMO, because you are an investigator. Even in FRELIMO, there are people who resisted changes and accepted this leadership, because during the war, FRELIMO had lost people. Many people were killed in FRELIMO, because these people denounced them. But we also had in FRELIMO, people who belonged to community leadership, their children; people who worked, who did a good job at FRELIMO. So, their request was, we had to meet with President (Joaquim) Chissano. The community leaders would say FRELIMO had the army-the colonial army. They had forgiven the colonial army. There were political police. They also forgave those people. There were other people also, and they were forgiven. The only people who were not forgiven by then were these community leaders. And they wanted also to be available in participating in the development of the country. Politically, this started touching many people, and this was a difficult process. MAKGETLA: In terms of the administration of this, within the Ministry, who was responsible for determining this policy or identifying the community leaders or traditional leaders that the Ministry would work with? GAMITO: Okay, this was done on the district level, but on the central level, there is a specific central directorate to deal with these issues of community leadership. MAKGETLA: A directorate in the Ministry? GAMITO: Yes, yes. MAKGETLA: Okay. And what was the work that it did in this period? GAMITO: They'd conduct these researches, these interviews, this was their job. As a minister, I had a direct link about this process. My experience as a Governor-okay, we'll talk about the second point, but let me explain this. In my opinion, our government, or state, was completely centralized, and all decisions had to pass from the top, and I did not agree with that. And this would go on down at different levels. So, I fought hard for decentralization, put the decision near the people. By then, we were at war in the country, and the central structure did not have the capacity of answering. As Governors, if we didn't make decisions on that level, things would be worse. This is why we came up with the idea of modernize, professionalize, and decentralize. It's a big political decision, because in FRELIMO, there were certain groups of people who thought we didn't have to decentralize because our government was still-our state was still in the process of building, or construction. And if we start decentralizing in this process, we cannot finish the objective. And we had convinced them that the decentralization would consolidate the process of the state. Philosophically, this is what happened. MAKGETLA: So, who did you look to for support? If you came in and you saw the need for decentralization, who were the individuals or the institutions that, as a minister, you could rely on to support your arguments? GAMITO: One, the support that they had was from the President himself, President Chissano at that time. He was very open to these kinds of discussions. And also, a big support, we had base support from the party, FRELIMO party. In relation to the governors, they also wanted decentralization in Mozambique, because it gave them more power. So, it was easy in that respect. By then, we also had a Prime Minister who was very open-minded. And certain people in the state, or in the government who had been governors, like certain ministers, they also thought that decentralization would be the best thing for the country. We would say, "Mozambique has about 128 districts. What would happen if all the decisions had to be made in the central level in Maputo? How could a minister, for example, choose the right person to work in a certain district while he's here, without consulting the governors and the other leaders?" So, it would be impossible. How could we take the structure of governing, and replicate it to the districts? In certain places, we'd have like the Director of Tourism, when there was no tourism at all in those areas or Directors of Mining where there was no mining activity. MAKGETLA: So, how did you begin to develop this policy? Did you bring in people to work with in the Ministry? Did you have to, you know, find people to work with or-can you describe that? GAMITO: We had, of course, we had to build certain people, but we had also to put decent ideas into the Ministry. This was a problem of big changes. MAKGETLA: So, can you just describe, you know, was there a group, a collective? Were you working with your directors? Did you have a unit working on what the new district or-so, there were no new districts created, but which districts would become municipalities? All of the decisions around decentralization, who was working on those? GAMITO: We, as any other ministry, we had the Minister, and we had different units that would deal with specific work or objectives with the Ministry. So, this group constituted a collective of the Minister and would meet once a week, at least once a week in an area as this, local governance. We also had a meeting with governors; they would meet every three months. The other group meeting would be a meeting where all the administrators would come in and meet with us. This would be every six months, or once a year. We called that the Coordinative Council. That's where we'd reflect about these issues. We'd make a balance of the previous year, and we'd explain the action for the following year. At a certain moment in time, this would also be training meetings to discuss policies and define actions. MAKGETLA: So, that means all the district administrators and the administrative chef de post, or is it-? GAMITO: No, no, no. Parallel to that, the governors also had to have a sort of meeting. There's the Governor, the provincial government, who also is collective. It can also include the administrators. The administrator also had the same thing. Yes, his people working with him and the next person. So, this is very refined. MAKGETLA: Okay. How many units did you have under the Ministry? GAMITO: Five or six. MAKGETLA: Can you describe what these units are? GAMITO: The Ministry had two big areas. They would manage all the staff of the government, that was called the National Directorate of Civil Service. Then we had the other area that was the local administration. Now, they divided this; this is a ministry now, an independent ministry. The other one was the National Directorate of Inspection, and then we had the National Directorate of Territory Division. These were the main areas. Then we have administrative management area. MAKGETLA: So, when it came to deciding, for example, which-and I realize all of-- when it came to deciding which districts would be eligible for elections, who within this structure would decide? It would have been the Local Government Directorate? GAMITO: Yes, Local Government, yes. MAKGETLA: Okay. And how did they decide? Can you describe? Did you tell them the criteria or-? GAMITO: The law itself defines that. We have two levels of municipalities. We have a city municipality, and a village municipality, and then we have the municipality of the administrative posts. We have the first level of municipalities and the second level of municipalities. In the first level, we have the population, then we have-to define that, we have population, infrastructure, income capacity, water supply, electricity, and so on. This defines the municipality, if it's a city municipality, or it's a village municipality, or administrative post municipality. So, if they have these requirements, then they can be able to define which is which. And the main requirement here is the population and income capacity, because the municipalities administrative autonomy, financial autonomy, and infrastructural autonomy, so these are the autonomies we have. This is the main reason. We want to assure the financial autonomy. They must have their own money income, and they get a subsidy from the government from the taxes that are collected. State taxes, they come into a central level, and come back again to the municipalities. MAKGETLA: So, did your ministry then-because I understand it was through a law in Parliament, but did your ministry help prepare that legislation and make the decisions deciding-? GAMITO: Yes, he was the one who prepared-who made the legislation then, all these laws of 1997, and the first election was done in 1998. It's a big packet with the municipality laws, the laws of the local finances, the law of the administrative function of the states, how the state can go toward-to the municipality. We have many laws, about eight. MAKGETLA: So, was the local government directed-or that they conducted the research as a basis for this law, to make these decisions? Because there are so many options, but you chose this set of criteria, how did that happen? Or did you conduct research first in local government; they presented the research to you? Did they have study tours? What was the process that gave rise to-? GAMITO: A study was carried out. We know that in Mozambique we have 23 cities. Of these 23 cities, 11 are provincial capitals. The other 22 are normal cities. Then we have 68 villages. In these 68 villages, we have many that are district capitals; others are not. When we started with the municipalization process, the initial project, we wanted to make about 11 municipalities-in 1998. We had the strong pressure from the opposition, and from the international community, to make in these 22 cities. Thus, when we came up 33 municipalities from 1998 to 2003. In the year 2003, no other municipality was made. In 2005, we chose ten more. Now we have 43 municipalities. This is gradual, it's a gradual process; 23 here, 10 there. Now, 58 remain. MAKGETLA: Okay, okay. Excellent. Well, you know, thank you for taking the time, because it has been-I could keep asking questions, but you have other things to do. Just lastly, you know, as we wrap up, is there anything in your own leadership or management style that you believed, you know, helped you to achieve these vast number of changes that you were able to affect? GAMITO: It's a difficult question you asked. I'm not a city man. I grew up in a district. I have a different way of viewing things on the district level. When I was invited to be part of the government in 1994, I only accepted because these were the problems. Otherwise, I wouldn't have accepted. This was one of the conditions I put on it, go and make reforms in the government and administration. I worked for many years in administration. I have my own ideas. There are many things that I didn't-was not able to make. For example, I still think that 43 municipalities are still too little. We need more. There should be more. Only after 12 years, we are starting to decentralize education, health, and other things to the municipalities. We could have done that long ago. I believe it's too slow because of the human resource capacity. These are the central, or main problems. The other day, I was called to make-to lead a workshop, and one of the questions that arose was-now we say that a district is where development starts, and I had to develop the team on how this made, how this happens. Are there conditions in the districts for that? And they think there are no conditions in the districts. Central level problems, and local problems, and also, the problem of people. If we want to make the district a development center, we have three main conditions. First, we have to design a government model on the local government. Second, we must have motivated people, people who are motivated. Third, we must have stable people. Sometimes these three conditions are not there. So, it makes things difficult. So, that's the theory if you say development starts in the districts. The other issue under the topic, I am a person who reads a lot. I call him the doctor, but he's not a doctor, the doctor is his brother. I have technical training-education, industrial institute. In the industry, I worked a lot in the administrative area. Then I did public administration in Brazil, in Sao Paulo-University of Sao Paulo. Then I went to do a research study in Mato Grosso, in a place called Cuiab‡. It's a place that looks just like Mozambique. But I don't have a degree-university degree. But I've been studying a lot on public administration. I like this subject very much. I like local government electoral law. These are the two areas that I like very much. MAKGETLA: Well, I'm glad that you were able to share your interests with us because we can learn a lot from the work that you've done. Thank you. GAMITO: I was very lucky, as well. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Governance Trap Oral History Program Interview number: M-10 and M-11 ______________________________________________________________________ 14 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties