‘Queremos ser cidadãos’: citizenship in Mozambique from Frelimo to Frelimo

‘We want to be citizens’.

Abstract

This is a personal recollection of years of research and teaching stays in Mozambique with the institutional support of Centro de Estudos Africanos of the Eduardo Mondlane University. In the second half of the twentieth century, Mozambique suffered radical transformations. The first was the Frelimo-led liberation struggle (1962–1975) which later on led to the adoption of Marxist–Leninist nation state (1975–1992). The second came into being in the aftermath of Renamo destabilization war. It involved the drafting of a new Constitution (1990) and the adoption of multiparty democracy and market economy. Yet this radical change was unable to fulfill citizenship and developmental expectations. To describe their understanding of what is a ‘citizen’, people never ceased to use the language of their experience. Hence, the popular references to chibalo (forced labor), and indigenato. Land reforms can illustrate this situation clearly. Although Mozambique has adopted what many consider to be one of the best land legislation in Africa, control of the land continue to be decided to the advantage of the most powerful interests. In this perspective, the use of words such as chibalo and indigenato is in fact a description of how people recognize and articulate their history of exclusion and their struggle for an inclusive citizenship.

Keywords:

• Mozambique
• citizenship
• Indigenato
• chibalo

Notes

‘We want to be citizens’.

1. Conducted in Lugela and other districts in northern Zambezia, the research’s goal was to propose a method to assess the reality of the conditions lived by the population. It first aimed to collect data on production, family livelihood, services and their real performance and accessibility. Afterward, the research tried to analyze the critical links between family agriculture, state agricultural enterprises, cooperatives, means of transport and commerce, and services. The outlined method aimed to help local administrators’ performance, namely in improving their knowledge of the district and defining more efficient interventions. The complete set of the Relatórios (Reports) and field notes is deposited at the Archive of the Centro de Estudos Africanos (Centre of African Studies) of the University Eduardo Mondlane.

2. The fieldwork reports don’t express the richness of the experience. Back in Maputo, the capital, we only had time to write the results in an efficient and dry language, identifying the districts’ situation and the obstacles to overcome to build ‘poder popular’ (popular power) to help central and local administrations. District and provincial administration used to send us their reports written by hand on recycled paper (on the blank pages of colonial documentation). These reports expressed remarkable efforts to attend to populations’ needs and they succeeded in conveying concrete problems to central authorities.

3. Many of us working at CEA had severe skepticism concerning communal villages because we had experienced the problems of Ujamaa settlements in Tanzania. Initially, communal villages functioned reasonably well as emergency operations to save people affected by war and natural disaster. However soon they proved to be less popular as instruments of integrated production.

4. ‘Armed bandits’ was the official name used by Frelimo’s authorities to name Renamo’s forces.

5. Some of the interviews are gathered in «Não Vamos Esquecer!», Boletim Informativo da Oficina de História, Centro de Estudos Africanos. Also, many hours of interviews conducted in Maconde area are preserved in Arquivo de Estado, in Maputo, since 1984.

6. Initially Frelimo’s ideology was a polyphony that included critical discussions on national struggles in Africa, workers’ movements in the postwar European welfare states, and cultural and political cosmopolitan debates in African, Asian, Latin American and European socialist movements.

7. These were the northern social democratic countries, such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Holland. Italy too had a role both through its government and civil society.

8. In 1978–1979, Tanzania intervened in Uganda to help to defeat Idi Amin in what is known as the Liberation war. As an African leader, Nyerere was the most active enemy of the South African and UDI regimes. He hosted numerous exiled nationalist African leaders, such as Mugabe and Museveni. Moreover, during the liberation war, Frelimo’s headquarters were located in Dar Es Salaam and guerilla training camps were set up in Kongwa, Southern Tanzania.

9. Operação Produção (Operation Prodution) aimed to deport for re-education camps those who were considered to be improdutivos , comprometidos, inimigos (unproductives, collaborationists and enemies), that is to say, those that weren’t aligned with Frelimo’s hardline dogmas. In the 1983, during the Party Congress, it was decided to sponsor more flexible measures in agrarian policies. This change seemed to be inspired by a new sense of reality, but it was too little and too late.

10. The construction of the new Chinese Embassy was taking place after the end of the war and the signature of the Peace Accord (1992) – when political and economic transition to liberalism was already taking speed.

11. The marchers didn’t know that the word Greve carries a highly symbolic meaning: Place de la Greve in Paris, (now Place de l’Hotel de Ville), was the site where people gathered trying to be hired for work and where, at the beginning of the French Revolution, was situated the Guillotine, before being transferred to Tuileries.

12. Opportunits, criminals, adventurers, bandits.

13. It should be noticed that this exodus is linked to the fraility of resettlement projects, economic rehabilitation and reorganization of productive sectors.

14. Since 2012, a new cycle of violence merged in central Mozambique – a region where Renamo has its social base. The party is threatening to resume war if Frelimo doesn’t accept to change the electoral law and recognize Renamo’s right to control the provinces in which it holds the majority of votes. After a long wrangling, an international mediation commission went to Maputo. However, negotiations have been postponed given the complete lack of good will from both sides (cfr John Hanlon, Mozambique 334, News and Reports, August 1st 2016.).

15. While collecting data on suburban lands for the União Geral das Cooperativas (General Cooperatives Union) in 1981, I noticed that many prized Quintas (farms) were being registered in the name of relatives of important politicians. This practice occurred at a time when private ownership was very limited, if not severely forbidden. A significant part of the participants in the cooperative movement (especially women) explained that their membership was motivated by the possibility to obtain access to some type of ownership.