Mozambique: The Ombudsman of Justice and (il)legality in an illiterate society

Paulo Vilanculo"

In Mozambique, the Day of Legality is celebrated, an event that, in official discourse, aims to exalt the rule of law, justice, and transparency. However, in a nation where written law rarely reflects the real lives of the people, this celebration becomes a mirror of contradictions. The term "agraph" comes from the Greek, meaning "without writing," and these societies depend on oral transmission to pass on information and traditions from generation to generation. An agraph society is a society without writing, which has not developed its own system for recording its language or knowledge.A non-literate society, by nature, is a society of words, where truth is transmitted orally, through the advice of elders, through traditions, and through community consensus. What kind of legality is being celebrated in a country where citizens remain imprisoned for exercising their constitutional right? The concept of legality is the legal principle that requires all acts and relationships, both of citizens and the State, to conform to the law..Legality, in a legal sense, is the principle that obliges the State and citizens to submit to the law. Regarding legality,The law is the basis for any action, ensuring that no one will be compelled to do or refrain from doing anything except by virtue of the law, limiting state power and preventing arbitrary actions. In a predominantly illiterate society, where a large part of the population neither reads nor understands legal texts, the law becomes an instrument of exclusion for the people who live under norms, rules, and decrees that they do not participate in creating, do not understand, and do not know how to interpret. What is called "legality" can be understood, in the eyes of the people, as (il)legality disguised as authority, imposed from top to bottom. When the modern State imposes a written legality distant from those who should benefit from it, a cultural abyss is created: on one side, the formal law that exists in offices; on the other, the law lived in villages and neighborhoods. In the middle of this abyss, the common citizen becomes the orphan of justice. Can a secular and democratic state be one that punishes freedom and absolves impunity? It is known that an ombudsman is an independent state body that defends the rights and freedoms of citizens against abuses by public administration and various powers of the state that it must...To act as an informal mediator, receiving and analyzing complaints, without the power to make binding decisions, although it may issue recommendations to correct illegalities or injustices. We have recently observed the deafening silence of the Ombudsman regarding the repression of post-election demonstrations, salary delays, corruption, and the impunity for rivers of bloody murders that are not mere deviations, but rather symptoms of a structural, institutionalized, and normalized (il)legality, since in a country where the law is written for some and applied to others, the real crime is believing that justice still exists. And as long as there are political prisoners, criminalized protests, and institutions subservient to power, the Day of (Il)Legality is celebrated, paradoxically, an almost theatrical act with applause for the norm and silence for justice. The discourse on legality becomes a performance, a liturgy of hypocrisy, celebrated where the law is transformed into an instrument of power. What does a provider of justice mean in a non-literate society? Perhaps it signifies a figure who speaks a language the people don't understand. A mediator of documents in a country of words. A defender of written law in a context where justice is oral, lived, and communal. In theory, it is an independent, impartial, and ethical body. For the people, justice is a conversation, not a decree. The rural or suburban citizen doesn't seek the ombudsman; they seek the chief, the elder, the local leader. The paradox is glaring in that, while the Ombudsman speaks in the Assembly of the Republic about the importance of legality, hundreds of Mozambicans live with voiceless injustices, trapped in "kafiriko agráfa" processes, victims of a system that protects the strong and punishes the weak. In this formula, the Ombudsman becomes a misplaced symbol of popular democracy, an institutional bridge that exists on the map but does not reach the other side of the people, and in this scenario, the figure of the Ombudsman, created to defend the citizen from abuses by the public administration, becomes irrelevant. Celebrating the Day of Legality in a country where political power captures institutions, the ombudsman is often reduced to a symbolic voice, a guardian of legality without the power to correct illegalities. Thus, Mozambique continues to be constitutionally defined as a Democratic State under the Rule of Law, but in practice, it lives under a democracy of convenience, where legality is applied according to the interests of those who are mandated.

2025/12/3