Carlos Alberto Lopes Cardoso, known as Carlos Cardoso (10 August 1951 – 22 November 2000) was a journalist born in

Mozambique Mozambique (), officially the Republic of Mozambique ( pt, Moçambique or , ; ny, Mozambiki; sw, Msumbiji; ts, Muzambhiki), is a country located in southeastern Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi ...

from Portuguese parents. His murder 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 hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on ...

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 to 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 southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

, where he went on to attend the

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

. He spoke

and second languages Ndau and

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

Mozambican independence

As a student, he became an activist against

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

, 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 the Portuguese , ) is a democratic socialist political party in Mozambique. It is the dominant party in Mozambique and has won a majority of the seats in the Assembly of the Republic in every election since the country's first ...

liberation movement in the context of the

Lusaka Accord The Lusaka Accord (Portuguese: ''Acordo de Lusaka'') was signed in Lusaka, Zambia, on 7 September 1974, between the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the Portuguese government that had been installed by the Carnation Revoluti ...

, 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 Mozambican military commander and political leader. A socialist in the tradition of Marxism–Leninism, he served as the first President of Mozambique from the country's ...

, 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, 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 democratically-control ...

. In 1992 he founded the weekly newspaper ''

Savana Savana is a town and commune in Madagascar. It belongs to the district of Vohipeno, which is a part of Vatovavy-Fitovinany Region. The population of the commune was estimated to be approximately 4,000 in the 2001 commune census. Only primary ...

'', which he left in 1997 to found a new business newspaper ''Metical.'' In 1989 he met his wife Nina Berg, a

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

lawyer. They had two children together, Ibo and Milena.

Newspaper editor and local politician

In 1997 Cardoso founded the business daily news-sheet ''Metical'', and was elected to the

Maputo Maputo (), formerly named Lourenço Marques until 1976, 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 popul ...

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. 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 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 one of the most successful African demo ...

, as paying Cardoso's murderer by cheque.

Aníbal dos Santos Aníbal António "Anibalzinho" dos Santos Júnior (Aníbal dos Santos, born 1971 or 1972) is a Portuguese criminal convicted of masterminding the November 22, 2000, murder of Carlos Cardoso, a journalist investigating bank fraud in Mozambique's Ce ...

, 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 Colonial people in Mozambique 20th-century journalists