Discurso del grupo: Relaciones entre los componentes

Broadly, the perceived reliability of information transmitters depended upon four factors, namely: the relationship between the receiver and the transmitter; the perceived trustworthiness of the transmitter; the information content being transmitted, and the agent used to convey that information.

The point was made in the preceding chapter that all my respondents’ information transmitters were kin, in other words personal transmitters. In arriving at an assessment of their reliability, it is interesting that a distinction was generally not made by respondents between close and distant relatives, nor between relatives according to whether they had lived in the same household as respondents in Mozambique. All relatives were therefore perceived as trustworthy transmitters of information.

Trust is of course a concept which carries many meanings, and it is important to realise that the trust placed in relatives seemed to be that they would honestly attempt to transmit reliable information, and not that they could necessarily be trusted to succeed. In contrast, respondents’ perception of the potential trustworthiness of institutional transmitters varied. Often they were not trusted to make the honest effort to transmit

reliable information, but perhaps better trusted to succeed when information was transmitted.

In general, respondents perceived as more reliable the Government of Malawi than either party in Mozambique:

’The Government of Malawi will tell us when it is peaceful at home...we don’t trust either side in Mozambique, but we trust the Government of Malawi which has received us openly and well’ (K:7)

I’ve heard of the Peace Talks in Rome, but don’t trust anyone in Mozambique, neither FRELIMO nor RENAMO, because they’re from whom I fled. I only trust the Malawi Government’ (K:44)

The perceived unreliability of either side in Mozambique naturally varied according to the respondent’s personal experience of either. One respondent had been captured by FRELIMO forces as she tried to flee Mozambique, and was forced to work for them. Understandably, she did not trust FRELIMO. Several had similar experiences at the hands of RENAMO troops, and were equally mistrustful of that side. Nevertheless, generally a distinction was not made between the two, which is a reminder of the basically non-partisan nature of the refugees from Niassa:

’When the Government in Mozambique tells me it is safe. I’ll go home. It doesn’t matter whether they’re FRELIMO or RENAMO’ (C:83)

In contrast, there were circumstances when personal transmitters were not trusted to succeed in transmitting reliable information. This occurred either when the information transmitted concerned places or issues about which the transmitter was not perceived as qualified to know, or when the agent who conveyed the information was not trusted. The two excerpts which follow are taken from two separate interviews. In both cases, the respondent had relatives who had returned to Mozambique from Malawi. In both cases the respondents were in receipt of frequent, up-to-date information transmitted by them and conveyed by reliable agents that conditions at home were safe. Yet in both cases, the respondents stated that they would not return until the end of the war:

’Even though my parents and sisters continually ask me to go back, I won’t because I don’t believe it’s safe there’ (C:68)

’My brother works in Mandimba boma [town], and lives in Liseyeta...but I won’t go back because it is unsafe to return’ (C:79)

Speaking abstractly, another respondent told me:

’I will return only when the Government tells me that the war is over...I wouldn’t even go if my mother told me it was safe and asked me to go’ (K:15)

The perceived reliability of personal transmitters was therefore mediated by the content of the information being transmitted. Security was the best example of an issue about which most personal transmitters were not perceived as qualified to know. One reason was that they were in some cases not living in the intended destination areas of respondents, and thus were not perceived as knowledgeable about conditions in those areas. This was as a result of the discordance in the geography of some information networks discussed in the preceding chapter. Another reason was the fact that many respondents were concerned that security conditions might change quickly, such that information transmitted by whatever transmitter might be out-of-date by the time it was received.

The perceived reliability of transmitters was also mediated by the perceived reliability of the agent used to convey information. As shown in the preceding chapter, the majority of personal transmitters either visited or were visited, or used personal agents. There were only five examples where an institutional agent had conveyed information to a respondent from a relative at home. One respondent had heard a message from his relatives read on a Radio Mozambique broadcast; two respondents had received letters via the Post Office, and two respondents had received letters via the Malawi Red Cross Tracing Scheme. In the latter two examples, the letters received had been in the hand­ writing of a relative, and so their authenticity was not doubted. However three of the four respondents did express doubt as to whether all of the letters sent by their relatives via those sources had reached them. The respondent who heard the broadcast believed that the message had come from his parents, but doubted whether their actual words had been

loyally broadcast. Agents were therefore perceived to be in a position to be able to alter the information which they conveyed, and so their perceived reliability often proved central in an evaluation of the information received via them.