A sharp dispute among President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ministers and advisers about which country to extradite former Mozambican finance minister Manuel Chang to is keeping him incarcerated in a South African prison more than 28 months after he was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg.
This securocrat, pro-Frelimo faction, led by presidential security adviser Charles Nqakula and his wife, Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, is urging Ramaphosa to send Chang back to Mozambique, the sources said. Nqakula is himself a former defence and safety and security minister, and has been South African High Commissioner to Mozambique.
turned up the heat on Ramaphosa by threatening to launch a legal challenge in South Africa’s courts if he decided to extradite Chang to Mozambique. He said Mozambique had only asked Pretoria to extradite Chang to Mozambique after his arrest in South Africa — and this was to thwart the US extradition request and not to seek justice.
Nuvunga said that Mozambican civil society wanted to see a judgment in the US case first because this would strengthen Mozambique’s argument in another current court case in the UK where it is seeking to avoid repaying the $2-billion in loans on the grounds that they were illegal. If the UK court declared the loans null and void, that would help the poor in Mozambique who were suffering from the impact on the economy of the loans scandal.
The main reason for the court’s decision was that there was no guarantee that Chang would stand trial in Mozambique — which was an essential condition for extradition. This was still in doubt.