About 300 people who had once been migrant workers in the now defunct German Democratic Republic (GDR) invaded the building of the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, on Wednesday.
According to Mozambican Television, which filmed part of the occupation, the former migrants (known colloquially as "majermanes"), took the police and Assembly officials entirely by surprise, and so met no resistance.
The majermanes are demanding more money from the government, which they allege was sent from Germany to Mozambique in the 1980s, and never paid to them. They also claim that the government is in breach of a resolution passed by the Assembly on the subject in May 2003.
The chairperson of the Assembly, Eduardo Mulembue, agreed to meet representatives of the majermanes, and, after lengthy discussions, he promised that on Thursday he would meet with President Joaquim Chissano, and present their concerns to the head of state. He even pledged that he would bring "concrete replies" from Chissano.
Alberto Mahuaie, coordinator of the Forum of Former Workers in the GDR, the body that claims to represent the majermanes, told reporters "We are demanding that the government pays what it owes us, and we want the parliament to force the government to comply with resolution 11/03, where the Assembly itself determined that majermanes should receive what they are entitled to".
The former migrants also wanted Mulembue to take action against the illegal ban which the police have imposed on majermane street demonstrations.
The Maputo police command have slapped a blanket ban on all public demonstrations by the majermanes, although they have no legal power to do so. The police ban is a flagrant violation of the constitutional provisions on freedom of assembly, and of the law governing demonstrations.
After Mulembue's promise to raise the majermanes' concerns with Chissano, and after he had signed a document to that effect, the group occupying the building were split over what to do next.
Some proposed spending the night in the Assembly.
But, after heated discussions, wiser counsels prevailed, and they decided to leave the premises. But they promised to return on Thursday to hear the result of Mulembue's meeting with Chissano.
For the first time, Mahuaie put a figure on the amount of money the majermanes are claiming. According to a report in Thursday's issue of the independent newsheet "Mediafax", he said the amount discounted from their wages was 22 million US dollars, but the government was only paying back seven and a half million.
Mahuaie was referring to the migrants' social security payments. Under the agreement on migrant labour of 1979, the East German government transferred half of the migrants' social security money to Mozambique at the rate of 32.5 East German marks per worker per month.
Although there is no legal or ethical obligation on the government to repay social security contributions, in April 2002 Labour Minister Mario Sevene announced that as "an exceptional measure" the social security money would be returned to all those majermanes who registered with the Labour Ministry. At that time, 11,252 had registered: the payments for this group did indeed amount to 7.5 million dollars.
But Mahuaie's information is woefully out of date. Since April 2002, several thousand more majermanes have registered with the Ministry. When Sevene reported to the Assembly in October 2003, he said there were around 17,000 registered and entitled to payments.
The amount each majermane receives depends on how long he or she spent in the GDR. AIM calculates that the total for 17,000 must be around 11.3 million dollars.
The total amount of social security money sent to Mozambique is not a matter for majermane guesswork. According to the figures from the German authorities, between 1982 and 1990, a total of 18.6 million dollars in social security payments was transferred to Mozambique.
This was for the total number of Mozambicans employed in the GDR, which the Labour Ministry puts at 21,870. Not all of these have registered with the ministry - some have died, and some of those who worked the longest contracts were able to stay in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall (either because they had married Germans, or had skills that were in demand).
As for the May 2003 Assembly resolution, this does not demand that the government pay everything the majermanes want. It called for more information - for example, on a claim that the authorities in a unified Germany has sent 300 million dollars to Mozambique to pay for schemes to employ the former migrants.
The government did as requested and issued a clarification, reminding the Assembly that the German authorities have denied ever transferring such a sum.
Of the various other points in the resolution, the government says it is complying with all of them - except one.
The Assembly demanded that the ten per cent deducted from the migrants' deferred wages when they returned, to cover administrative costs, be repaid.
On this issue, the government took a risk and openly disobeyed the Assembly. Sevene said in October that this ten per cent discount was only introduced in 1988 "in order to ensure that the workers shared in the administrative expenses".
Under the 1979 labour agreement, the costs inherent in sending thousands of Mozambicans to the GDR were to be borne by both countries. But by 1988, severe economic crises were affecting both the GDR and Mozambique, and so it was decided that the workers too, as the main beneficiaries of the labour agreement, should share in the costs.
Sevene said this was not a violation of the 1979 agreement, and there was no reason to return the money.
Fonte: AIM
