Stealing well

They’ve now got a digger out carving up the road with people nearby chuntering (positively) about plumbing and pipes.

I feel Paulo the txopelarista (txopela driver) gets a high profile on this blog, but fair enough as he’s one of the people I interact with almost daily. Today he pointed out a building associated with ex-President Joaquim Chissano, perhaps his residence in the city. Paulo regularly identifies the homes of prominent people, especially the current and previous Presidents (neither of whom are Chissano) and utters some scathing comments about how they roubam (steal) do povo mozambicano (from the Mozambican people).

I asked about the perception of Chissano and Paulo beamed and professed his admiration. As to whether people viewed him as having been corrupt whilst in office, Paulo said yes, however ‘ele roubou bem’ (he stole well). This meant from companies rather than people, and I can sympathise with the view of rinsing corporates even though it still sounds pervasive and detrimental.

I may need to drill down in subsequent tuk-tuk journeys this week into what ‘stealing well’ really means to a Mozambican. These conversations always remind me that bringing a strict European definition of corruption to most places in the world is futile and is evidence of, yet again, Europeans making a judgement without understanding what corruption actually means in the culture or psyche of a nation.