c. For Mozambique, dealing with the challenges posed by inequality is critical to future growth and prosperity. Policy in the country should focus on the specific dimensions of inequality that create or perpetuate unequal opportunities for participating in the gains from future economic growth. 4.2 Interwovenness of Party, Government and Business: The Moral Conundrum ci. The commitment of African states to fight corruption collectively and severally is demonstrated by their endorsement of international conventions against corruption. Mozambique, like most African countries, is a signatory to the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption. It signed the convention on 15 December 2003 and ratified it on 2 August 2006. It is also party to the SADC Protocol Against Corruption. These two documents define corruption very broadly and make similar wide-ranging recommendations for checking corruption in the public and private sectors. cii. A crucial anticorruption measure that is missing is an explicit and unambiguous definition of the ethical boundary not to be crossed by government or senior ruling party officials and their families in carrying out business while still in office. This problem is not peculiar to Mozambique; rather it is a major shortcoming in national integrity systems in Africa. In Mozambique, the problem is more acute owing to the severely predatory nature of the former Portuguese colonial policy. At the time of independence, the size of the national elite was quite small and exclusively political in character. Post-independence civil war further stunted the development of the economic elite, especially as virtually the entire economic infrastructure was ruined during the war. ciii. In the 1990s, the government embarked on a structural adjustment of the economy and privatised many public companies. Inevitably, government officials considered it a reward for their tenacious struggles against colonialism and internal rebellion to buy off privatised public companies and take over the reins of the economy. Over the years, through strong equity participation, management consultancies, partnerships and fronts, senior government and party officials and their families have held the economy in their stranglehold to such an extent that it is difficult to imagine the state autonomously regulating the economy as it ought to. In Mozambique, senior FRELIMO politicians are the party; the party is the government; and the government is the state. Thus, Mozambican state bureaucracy is not only still deeply entangled with the FRELIMO party apparatus, but it also bears over-formalised and overbureaucratised features inherited from the Portuguese colonial administration. Consequently, what senior politicians decide is their interest is the state’s interest. Little wonder, then, that the battle against corruption is not succeeding as well as it might. 21