Carlos Alberto Lopes Cardoso (10 August 1951 – 22 November 2000) was a Portuguese-Mozambican investigative journalist. His assassination in 2000 followed his newspaper's investigation into corruption in the privatisation of Mozambique's biggest bank.

Early life

Cardoso was born in Beira, the son of

white White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

immigrants in colonial Mozambique, where his father ran a dairy processing plant. He was educated in Mozambique and at high school in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, where he went on to attend the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The universit ...

. He spoke

and second languages Ndau and

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Journalistic career

As a student, he became an activist against

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

, leading to deportation from South Africa to Mozambique on 1 September 1975. After the withdrawal of the Portuguese colonial administration from Mozambique in 1974 following the handover of power to the

FRELIMO FRELIMO (; from , ) is a democratic socialist political party in Mozambique. It has governed the country since its independence from Portugal in 1975. Founded in 1962, FRELIMO began as a nationalist movement fighting for the self-determination ...

liberation movement in the context of the

Lusaka Accord The Lusaka Accord (Portuguese language, Portuguese: ''Acordo de Lusaka'') was signed in Lusaka, Zambia, on 7 September 1974, between the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the National Salvation Junta, Portuguese government th ...

, Cardoso was among the minority of white Mozambicans who remained in the country. He worked first in junior positions in government media and, from 1980, as editor of AIM, the government press agency. Following a brief spell of imprisonment, Cardoso worked also as an advisor to

Samora Machel Samora Moisés Machel (29 September 1933 – 19 October 1986) was a Mozambique, Mozambican politician and revolutionary. A Socialism, socialist in the tradition of Marxism–Leninism, he served as the first President of Mozambique from the coun ...

, but quit AIM in 1989 to work first as an artist, and later as founder of Mediacoop, an independent press

co-operative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, coöperative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democr ...

. In 1992 he founded the weekly newspaper '' Savana'', which he left in 1997 to found a new business newspaper ''Metical.'' In 1989 he met his wife Nina Berg, a Norwegian lawyer. They had two children together, Ibo and Milena. In 1997, Cardoso founded the business daily news-sheet ''Metical'', and was elected to the

Maputo Maputo () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed ov ...

city council in 1998. ''Metical'' ceased publication in December 2001.

Murder and investigation

Cardoso was shot dead in central Maputo on 22 November 2000, while investigating a US$14 million fraud connected with the privatisation of Mozambique's largest bank, Banco Comercial de Moçambique (Commercial Bank of Mozambique). In the 2002 trial of six murder suspects, three suspects described Nyimpine Chissano, the son of Mozambican President

Joaquim Chissano Joaquim Alberto Chissano (born 22 October 1939) is a Mozambican politician who served as the second President of Mozambique, from 1986 to 2005. He is credited with transforming the war-torn country of Mozambique into a successful African democra ...

, as paying Cardoso's murderer by cheque.

Aníbal dos Santos Aníbal is the Spanish and Portuguese masculine given name equivalent of Hannibal (q.v.), itself a latinization of the Greek name Hanníbas (Ἁννίβας), derived from “ḥnbʿl” in the Carthaginian language (Carthaginian Punic script, � ...

, a Portuguese citizen who was said to have masterminded Cardoso's murder, was convicted ''in absentia'' in 2003 after escaping from prison; and a retrial in 2006 (following dos Santos' second escape) upheld his sentence of 30 years in prison. Nyimpine Chissano was charged with "joint moral authorship" of Cardoso's murder and various economic crimes by the Mozambican Public Prosecutor's office in May 2006. The Mozambique News Agency reported on 11 May 2006 an anonymous claim that an arrest warrant for Chissano had been rescinded following the intervention of the former president and his wife.

References

''The Guardian'', "Carlos Cardoso - His tenacious journalism exposed corruption in Mozambique", 24 November 2000BBC News online, "Mozambique murderer sent to jail", 20 January 2006
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20060811203803/http://www.cpj.org/attacks01/africa01/mozambique.html Committee to Protect Journalists, "Africa 2001 - Mozambique" {{DEFAULTSORT:Cardoso, Carlos 1951 births 2000 deaths People from Beira, Mozambique Mozambican atheists Mozambican politicians Assassinated Mozambican journalists Deaths by firearm in Mozambique People murdered in Mozambique Mozambican people of Portuguese descent People from Portuguese Mozambique 20th-century journalists