Good morning and welcome to yesterday’s newsletter. Last night in Nairobi, News24’s Jeff Wicks won the African Investigative Journalist of the Year award for “Nine Lives”, his investigation into Vusimuzi “Cat” Matlala. Zitamar’s editor-at-large, Fernando Lima, was on the judging panel. Over 18 months and nearly 30 stories, Wicks showed how Matlala secured a R360m (about $20m) contract to provide health services to the South African Police Service in 2024. Matlala also faces attempted murder charges.
What followed matters more than the prize. The contract was cancelled, and a commission of inquiry chaired by retired judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga examined the evidence. In March, anti-corruption investigators arrested 12 senior police officers, most of them members of the bid evaluation committee. In April, national police commissioner Fannie Masemola appeared in court on four charges of breaching public finance law. He has since been suspended and says he is innocent. Matlala, still in custody, abandoned a plea deal in July and now faces a full trial.
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None of this amounts to a conviction. But a line has been drawn from a newsroom to a commission and then to a courtroom, reaching the top of the police.
Mozambique already has the first link in that chain. A year ago, the weekly Canal de Moçambique profiled two businessmen whom investors described as power brokers able to arrange deals with President Daniel Chapo and his office, as this newsletter reported at the time.
Alcides Chihono, known as Cantona, has an office a short walk from the presidency. He is thought to have acted as an intermediary for a Hong Kong property developer and a Nigerian oil company. Ingilo Dalsuco is the son-in-law of former finance minister Manuel Chang, who returned to Mozambique in April after serving a US prison sentence over the hidden-debts scandal. Canal reported that Dalsuco kept Chang’s business interests running while he was in prison and sold buildings to the state in Inhambane while Chapo was governor. As far as we know, neither man nor the presidency has denied the reporting.
