A Brazilian Air Force jet with dozens of police officers come to fetch Gilberto Aparecido Dos Santos and took him home to face justice.

Brazil’s largest cocaine smuggler, known by as Fuminho, is a leader of the São Paulo-based First Capital Command gang that  moved drugs all over the planet.

Among the charges he faces back in Brazil is plotting to free the head of the gang, Marcos Camacho,  who is serving a 200 year sentence in a maximum security prison.

Gilbert Aparecido Dos Santos was arrested last week in a luxury Maputo Hotel with two Nigerian citizens. A quantity of drugs was seized.

His capture is part of an international sting operation.

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Police running the international sting operation are looking for cronies. They say he is part of big São Paulo gang and does not operate alone.

Forty nine year old Gilberto Aparecido do Santos was nabbed at the luxury Monetebelo Indy hotel in Maputo.

Two Nigerian citizens were seized with him.

Dos Santos, known as Fuminho, is part of the game known as the First Capital Community of PCC.

They move tons of cocaine all over the world.

He arrived in Mozambique a month ago

Police seized a fake Brazilian passport, a quantity of dagga, several mobile phones and a car during the operation.

Dos Santos is accused of financing a plot to free a fellow gang member serving a 200-year term in a maximum security prison in Brazil

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There have been uniformly respectful official tributes from the neighbours of  ousted Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe who has died in Singapore  aged 95.

“South Africans join the people and government of Zimbabwe in mourning the passing of a liberation fighter and champion of Africa’s cause against colonialism,” says South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“Under President Mugabe’s leadership, Zimbabwe’s sustained and valiant struggle against colonialism  inspired our own struggle against apartheid and built in us the hope that one day South Africa too would be free.”

Namibian President Hage Geingob says: “ Comrade Mugabe was an outstanding revolutionary, a tenacious freedom fighter and a dedicated Pan Africanist.

“He made enormous sacrifices in the struggle against injustice and the liberation of Southern Africa from racial subjugation and colonial oppression.

“As Namibians we owe President Mugabe  deep sense of gratitude for his immense and selfless contribution to the liberation of our country. ”     

I first met Mugabe  in 1975 as a United Nations correspondent covering a conference in Maputo supporting the  liberation  movements in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

His passionate call for the people of those countries to avoid the mistakes  that Mozambique had made in driving out white farmers and entrepreneurs made him one of the most impressive liberation leaders I had encountered.

Mugabe  took a tough line at the Lancaster House Conference three years later, repeatedly telling his British hosts that with power awaiting him, he did not need to be negotiating.

To no-one’s great surprise, Mugabe won a landslide victory in Zimbabwe’s first democratic election.

His first years in that job were a resounding success.

Apartheid ministers I  spoke to in Pretoria in  the  mid eighties said if Mugabe was the face of majority rule in the region, they could deal with it.

But then came the massacre of thousands of Joshua Nkomo’s supporters in Matabeleland backed by North Korean special forces.

When he lost a constitutional referendum and was  in danger of losing an election to the Movement For Democratic Change, Mugabe attempted to regain support by offering Zimbabweans land.

This he seized from whites farmers. He intimidated and even killed those resisting, driving at least 100 black workers off the land with every white farmer he dispossessed.

The policy lost him British government support and drove Zimbabwe into agricultural collapse and a downward economic spiral from which it has yet to emerge.

At one point inflation was 200 000 000 percent as the region’s bread basket, that once exported food to its neighbours, became the basket case dependent on emergency food aid.

Former anti-apartheid activist and British Foreign Office Minister Lord Peter Hain calls Mugabe a classical case of a liberation leader who betrayed the very values for which he was imprisoned and tortured.

“History will judge Robert Mugabe very harshly,” says Lord Hain.

“We were delighted when he came to power ending the white racist rebel government of Ian Smith. He talked of reconciliation and the values we had all be fighting for,” he says.

“Sadly he deteriorated into leading a corrupt regime that flouted human rights and the rule of law.”

Lord Hain advocated slapping sanctions on Mugabe’s Zanu PF government – which are still in placef- or stealing elections and violating human rights.  

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The watchdog group wants the pontiff to talk about human rights to heads of state, civil society representatives, diplomats and community leaders he will see in Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius.

Amnesty International says Pope Francis should use the pomp of his visit to cast the spotlight on human rights.

AI says there are serious violations in Mozambique where journalists and human rights defenders have been assaulted.

In Madagascar it lists prolonged pretrial detention in inhumane conditions.

The Pope arrives in Maputo tomorrow and moves on to Antananarivo on Thursday and Port Louis next Monday 

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He  has told the authorities in South Africa’s eastern neighbour to provide only his basic needs accommodating him.

Speaking in Portuguese, Pope Francis sent a message of peace to Mozambicans preparing for elections on October 15.

He says his heart reaches out to all the people of that country, even though he won’t be able to travel beyond its capital Maputo.

It was hoped he would visit the cyclone-hit parts of the country where at least 600 people died earlier this year.

The Pope moves on from Mozambique to Madagascar and Mauritius.

Pope John Paul II visited Mozambique when the country was still at war 31 years ago.

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There were many of us who did not believe – whatever the reliable wire services were reporting – that Robert Mugabe was going to step down as Zimbabwe’s President yesterday.

Interestingly, we were invariably those who have met and spoken to the 93 year old.

Robert Mugabe is probably the most stubborn man I have met.

In the days when his political star shone bright, he could afford to be.

In our first interview in Maputo 41 years ago, he said his  Mozambique host Samora Machel has taught him the invaluable lesson to retain white farmers and entrepreneurs.

In power 15 years later, to ward off a threat from a burgeoning opposition he launched land grab that turned his country from the regional bread basked into the continental basket case.

At the Lancaster Conference in London in 1979 he had his host Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary over a barrel.

Every time deadlock loomed, Mugabe would pack his papers and lead his team out.

He knew there could be no settlement without him.

On the few occasions I spoke to him in Harare, Mugabe knew he had the whip hand with overwhelming support from the military and the ruling party.

This enabled him to insult and belittle British premier Tony Blair, Botswana’s President Ian Khama and anyone else he perceived as a dangerous opponent.

Many years have passed and the glaring defiance has evidently dimmed.

He has repeatedly overplayed his hand. And, more fatally, he has allowed his South African-born typist wife to play hers.

Approaching his 94th birthday, the longest serving head-of-government on the planet has obviously not grasped the reality that his actions, and those of his wife, have stripped him of friends, allies and supporters.

Mugabe will be impeached this week.

The ruling ZANU PF will make sure of it.

So will Zimbabwe’s military, desperate to avoid having the African Union officially characterise its actions as a coup which would automatically red-card the country.

What Mugabe will not be be able to do is effect a dignified exit.

And he will find it infinitely more difficult to achieve the shelter he is seeking in Singapore for himself and his wife, who has been expelled from Zanu PF.

Some find this sad.

The majority, however, are saying what Zimbabweans finally dare to go to the streets to declare: good riddance.

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There’s no intention of closing them down as Recep Tayyip Erdogan requested when he visited Maputo last month.

The Turkish premier maintain the schools are terrorist cells run by exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen whom he maintains mounted a coup against him last year.

The colourful, secular Willow International School in Maputo looks nothing like a terrorist cell.

The 630 pupils are indeed currently playing politics.

They’re about to elect their head boy and head girl.

But as pupils go, their preoccupation  is preparing for the Cambridge exams.

Their parents, who pay about R45 000 a year to keep them here, fully support this.

Abdul Carimo Sau says there’s no chance of closing schools that are befitting so many children.

“Those schools have been in Mozanbique a long time and are doing  people a lot of good. We don’t want what is happening other countries to be brought here,” he says.

His message to President Erdogan is simple: don’t try to export your political problems to Mozambique.

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