by Nanette Braun, UNV Information Officer

11 June 1998

Bonn, Germany: When night falls, the sound of an antelope’s horn is transmitted on Radio Mozambique. It is the symbol for the municipal elections at the end of June, calling on people to cast their vote. The daily radio jingle is part of the civic education campaign preceding the balloting. Technical advice on civic education and the logistics of the electoral process is provided by 23 UN Volunteers. They know the issues they are dealing with: All of them were involved in the 1994 national elections. Now they have once again been deployed to Mozambique’s provinces, assisting the Technical Secretariat for the Administration of the Elections, STAE.

In 33 cities and towns some two million voters will decide on Municipal Assemblies and their Presidents, initiating the replacement of the country’s highly centralised administration with more flexible structures on the local level. Elections in further municipalities are planned at a later stage. The process has not been unproblematic: RENAMO, the main opposition party, decided not to participate.

In the shade of the enormous trees in the centre of Napai, an agitated yet good-humoured discussion has been triggered among the people of this small bairro by the visitors from the provincial capital. Together with their counterparts from the STAE of the Northern province of Cabo Delgado, UNVs Marissa Ragragio from the Philippines and Aoki Shinichi from Japan have come to explain the purpose and procedures of the elections. What happens if the voter registration card is lost? Where exactly are the polling stations? Laughter and applause accompany the answers; Marissa and Aoki distribute T-Shirts, baseball caps and info-cartoons.

To reach out to the remoter neighbourhoods is an integral part of the civic education campaign. Hundreds of local civic education agents are touring the bairros on bicycles or responding to queries in the information centres, small straw thatched palhotas which have been set up in the municipalities. Brochures and posters, but also dance, music and painting competitions - how to inform the public is also a question of creativity, and of suggestions coming from the UNVs: Civic education agent Maria Lidia Miguel has rehearsed a little theatre play on the balloting with the children of her bairro. "Through the kids you reach the adults. They love to see them perform. And then - they are the constituents of the future." Aoki put his idea into practice when he was a UNV preparing for the 1993 elections in Cambodia - it was a success.

Yet, it’s not only ideas that have to reach the provinces’ outposts: Info-material and mobile video units are needed for civic education; for election day, transport has to be arranged for the ballot papers and boxes. In an environment where vehicles and gasoline are rare commodities, this can pose more than a minor problem. "All that bamboo!" UNV Logistician Marissa still laughs when she recalls how her truck seemed to almost disappear under the "ingredients" for the whole information centre in Montespuez. UNV Fernando Guerra from Portugal who assists in co-ordinating the country-wide transport from Maputo knows about such constraints: "We have 30 rather old trucks at our disposal for the whole country. And then the roads are not exactly in prime condition." The ballot material will be flown to the provinces; for the civic education kits it can take up to ten days before they reach the provinces. In the meantime, there is still Radio Mozambique: And every night, there is the sound of an antelope’s horn.