Director of Aim Blackmailed and Libeled

24 May 2011

Maputo — Last Friday, a journalist working on the weekly paper “O Publico”, Osvaldo Tembe, asked for a meeting with the Director of AIM, Gustavo Mavie.

Mavie accepted and was surprised to find Tembe presenting documents which allegedly provided that Mavie was mismanaging AIM, and had committed theft and other acts of corruption.

Tembe then went straight to the point – either Mavie paid him 250,000 meticais (about 8,330 US dollars), or “O Publico” would publish these supposedly damaging revelations about the AIM director.

Mavie told the blackmailer that the documents were either downright lies or forgeries – and that he had no intention of paying Tembe a cent.

And sure enough, on Monday morning “O Publico” carried a front page spread accusing Mavie of ruining AIM. A two page article inside contained a wide range of libelous claims against Mavie, some of them repetitions of claims that have been made and disproved in the past.

But who is Osvaldo Tembe? This man is in no position to accuse anyone else of corruption since he happens to be the only journalist in recent years who has been caught and jailed for corrupt behaviour.

Tembe used to work on the weekly paper “Zambeze”, when that paper was under the management of Salomao Moyana. In March 2006, he was accused of extorting money from a Maputo family promising that, in exchange for cash, he would abort the publication of a piece of investigative journalism involving a member of the family.

Instead of following the instructions from his editorial superiors, Tembe went to the family and told them he could prevent publication of the report – if they paid him 2,000 US dollars. They did not possess such a sum, but did pay Tembe 7.5 million old meticais (about 300 dollars) as the first instalment of the bribe.

Tembe then did indeed hold up the report, giving the paper’s editors the excuse that the sources he needed to complete the story were not available.

Later the family paid Tembe a further three million meticais, but he was still not satisfied and demanded more. The family’s patience snapped, and they went to the police.

The family, the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) and the editors of “Zambeze” worked to lay a trap for Tembe. On 14 March 2006, Tembe was surprised on the paper’s premises receiving an envelope containing 35 million meticais. Asked what the money was for, Tembe confessed to the crime of extortion.

Tembe was immediately expelled from “Zambeze”. The case went to court, and Tembe served an eight month prison sentence.

In many countries, this behaviour would have ensured that Tembe never worked in the media again. But “O Publico” has offered him a job, and he is now involved in exactly the same type of extortion that ensured his expulsion from “Zambeze”.

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