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Abstract
During the early 1960s, many Mozambicans fled from the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa to the sanctuary and friendly border of Tanganyika (Tanzania) to escape the escalating violence of the anti-colonial war. These Mozambicans experienced, like many political refugees, a crisis of status during this migration. In seeking to survive their migration to Tanzania, many existing social relations among Mozambican refugees were temporarily suspended during this transit. Under the auspices of FRELIMOFootnote 1 and the Tanzanian authorities, Mozambican refugees often found that their opportunities during this social breakdown were usually limited and redirected for the purposes of winning the anti-colonial war. Many of these people, regardless of gender or age, were also socially transformed by a continuum of survival skills that I call the bio-social experience. Many Mozambican refugees opted to work with FRELIMO as products of their own individual bio-social experiences. With the assistance of this revolutionary constituency of Mozambican refugees, FRELIMO’s institutional strategies and infrastructure projects inside Tanzania and in northern Mozambique offered an opportunity to demonstrate its early proto-state hegemony and revolutionary Pragmatism.
Notes
1. In its English translation, FRELIMO stands for the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique.
2. The vast majority of these Mozambican refugees were Makonde from the northern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa.
3. I analyse and address these concepts of proto-state and contingent sovereignty in greater detail in my forthcoming dissertation, “A Nation in Name, a ‘State’ in Exile: The FRELIMO Proto-State, Youth, Gender, and the Liberation of Mozambique, 1962–1975.”
4. The exact moment and definitive declaration that Niassa and Cabo Delgado were officially “liberated zones” is debatable. However, in its November 1965 Mozambique Revolution, FRELIMO stated that these provinces were “semi-liberated zones,” implying that they were on the verge of proclaimed independence from Portuguese colonialism.
5. Portugal made a semantic amendment to its Constitution, Articles 134 and 135 in 1951, henceforth omitting the use of the word “colony” and replacing it with the term “overseas province.” This linguistic manoeuvre was meant to deflect foreign criticism and signalled a deepening ambiguity of meaning in its control over territorial possessions around the world. This is not to be confused with specific regional provinces (such as Cabo Delgado, Niassa, Gaza) within the so-called former colonial “province” of Mozambique.
6. This fact was an essential component for FRELIMO’s legitimation as first the sole liberation front for Mozambique and, later, as a proto-state whose institutional development was tacitly monitored by Tanzanian authorities. This, in turn, is an example of FRELIMO’s contingent sovereignty while operating within Tanzania’s borders.
7. For example, see the extensive digitalised documents produced by FRELIMO maintained by the ALUKA Project at www.aluka.org.
8. Dar es Salaam also played host to the OAU’s Liberation Committee, commonly referred to as “The Committee of Nine.”
9. Despite visits in late 1964 from Tanzania’s Vice-President Rashidi Kawawa, the Minister of State in the Vice President’s Office, Lawi Nangwanda Sijoana, and the Minister of External Affairs, Oscar Kambona, to the region, no official census of refugees was made since the numbers increased dramatically over the course of a short period of time. At best, then, the numbers were estimates probably compiled by the staff reporters from hearsay and empirical observation.
10. The numbers remained estimates at best.
11. The emphasis is mine.
12. According to the Tanzanian Ministry of Home Affairs website, the “five settlements” were at Rutamba, Mputa, Muhukuru, Matekwe, and Lundo. The emphasis is mine.
13. It is interesting to note that Tunduru was not one of the official “five settlements” where refugees lived; its location was designated specifically for orphans and young children who lived under the care of FRELIMO. TANU and the Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service (TCRS) provided basic humanitarian assistance to Mozambicans living in the “five settlements.”
14. Most of my informants were former students at seminary schools in Mozambique and already possessed a modicum of education. Many of these students were targeted to attend the Mozambique Institute secondary school in Dar es Salaam and were subsequently deployed as teachers and visible models of FRELIMO’s vision for the “New Man.”
15. It is also important to note that FRELIMO’s activities at Tunduru (and likewise at Nachingwea) were outside of the “five official settlements” for refugees. This demonstrates that, despite the “official” spaces afforded Mozambican refugees, FRELIMO was able to engage in other educational and military activities on Tanzanian soil. Therefore, this suggests a fluidity of boundaries within Tanzania for FRELIMO based on the proto-state’s contingent sovereignty.
16. In no way am I suggesting that FRELIMO enslaved Mozambican refugees, but they worked for a revolutionary and collective purpose when they laboured for FRELIMO.
17. The capital “P” is intentional to distinguish it as a noun and not an adjective. For an explanation of “revolutionary Pragmatism” and the grammatical difference, see my forthcoming dissertation, note 3. The politics of revolution is a process as, throughout the 1960s, various internal tensions, external influences, and the events of the anti-colonial war all contributed to FRELIMO’s politicisation and eventual control of Mozambique.
18. FRELIMO’s First Congress was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in late September 1962. This Congress established FRELIMO’s revolutionary tenets well before the massive influx of refugees into Tanzania in late 1964.
19. I refer to Tanzania as a “revolutionary laboratory” in my dissertation. It was the host to myriad liberation movements in Africa but, for FRELIMO in particular, the geographic proximity of Mozambique significantly informed the political circumstances and relations between TANU and FRELIMO.
20. This is also true of the UNHCR, which, although founded in 1951, was slow in helping Mozambican refugees in this particular crisis for reasons that are unclear. However, the organisation did eventually offer some assistance to Tanzanian authorities in helping to organise the refugees. Oxfam and various missionary groups such as the Tanganyika Christian Refugee Service also provided basic essentials such as food and blankets.
21. It was especially true in Tanzania after the 1967 Arusha Declaration, when Nyerere and TANU enacted macro-structural reforms on a national level. FRELIMO maintained a similar animosity toward traditional leaders as many worked for the colonial regime. Moreover, loyalty to traditional authorities was perceived to hamper FRELIMO’s modernist vision for the future. The use of the word “chief” here is also problematic, as the politically decentralised Makonde rarely made use of a single “chief” but commonly used the term nang’olo (elder).
22. Many of FRELIMO’s leaders were educated either in Protestant mission schools or in Catholic seminaries.
23. This concept is a modified version of American philosopher John Dewey’s philosophical argument about the biological impetus of the human species as a whole. His theory of a biological continuum was: first, instinct; second, habits; third, intelligence. Read in the case of the Mozambican war refugee, Dewey’s concept can be reinterpreted as “survival, coping, flourishing.” This model of human experience also applies to refugees elsewhere and in the contemporary world.
24. The same is true for slaves in the situations that Patterson describes. Slaves, although considered transferable property, maintained a modicum of their own humanity and actively sought, whenever possible, opportunities to alleviate their marginalised position vis-à-vis a master or owner. Patterson’s argument about “social death” is applicable to refugees in a sense, but its definitive linguistic connotation obfuscates acts of slave (or refugee) agency.
25. Various images displaying the military activities of men and women were reproduced in numerous editions of FRELIMO’s primary organ, Mozambique Revolution.