Born in Beira in central Mozambique, Cardoso went to secondary school in South Africa, and then to the University of the Witwatersrand, where he became a student activist. When Frelimo defeated the Portuguese colonial power in Mozambique in 1974, the apartheid government expelled him to Portugal, and he paid his own way back to a soon-to-be-independent Mozambique. His father, the manager of a dairy products factory, joined the exodus of Portuguese in 1975.
Cardoso's commitment and integrity, combined with his journalistic skills and out- spoken manner, constantly annoyed the Frelimo leadership. He joined the government-run magazine, Tempo, in 1976, and was pushed into a backwater in the music section of Radio Mozambique in 1979, only to be appointed in 1980 as editor of the government press agency, AIM.
In 1982, he was jailed, probably on the instructions of President Samora Machel, for a newspaper column about the growing war with the rebel movement, Renamo. Released after six days, he returned as editor of the government press agency, and later became one of Machel's advisers. He warned of Machel's impending assassination by South Africa in 1986, and probed Mozambican links to the killing.
Frustrated by management, and what he saw as poor journalism, in 1989 Cardoso turned to painting, but three years later he was back, as co-founder of Mozambique's first independent press cooperative, Mediacoop.
Cardoso was always pouring out wild ideas: turning marijuana into a major export crop, or giving marbles to children in exchange for growing papaya. Most of these came to nothing, but he did create probably the first faxed daily newspaper in the world, when he set up Media- Fax in 1992. Detailed and accurate, it became required reading in Maputo. But, in 1997, frustrated with what he saw as the sloppiness of even the independent media, Cardoso quit Mediacoop to set up a faxed newspaper of his own.
This time he was sole owner, but he paid high wages. The paper was called Metical, after the Mozambican currency, and was a business daily, supporting local entrepreneurs against the globalising pressures of the World Bank and IMF, and the predations of a corrupt political elite. It was profitable within weeks.
Cardoso led the campaign against the World Bank's enforced closure of the cashew nut processing industry. He pushed people like me to write articles to challenge, from both right and left, orthodox economic solutions for Mozambique's underdevelopment.
His campaigning was not just journalistic. He was elected to the Maputo city assembly in 1998, as part of a citizens' list called Together For The City. But he remained totally committed to the ideals of the party; during one heated debate, he yelled across to the Frelimo bench: "You are not the only Frelimo in this room."
L ast week, Cardoso started campaigning against what he called the "gangster faction" in Frelimo, who, he argued, provoked recent violence to cover their own misconduct and inaction. When I was in his office three weeks ago, he was researching an exposé of the links of senior officials and businessmen to a £10m bank fraud and subsequent cover-up. His killing is a clear message to journalists and others of the price of asking too many questions.
Cardoso's combination of doggedness, journalistic skill and integrity were unique in Mozambique. He leaves his wife, the Norwegian lawyer Nina Berg, whom he met in 1989, and two children, Ibo and Milene.
Carlos Cardoso, journalist and editor, born 1952; died November 22 2000
