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ABSTRACT
It has been about three decades since Mozambique transitioned from a brutal civil war and one-party rule to peace and democracy. Although Mozambique has not relapsed into another large-scale civil war, sustainable peace and democracy in the country have become ever more elusive. In 2013, military clashes between Renamo and the Frelimo-led government resumed and prompted a new peace process, whilst poverty and inequalities are rampant, authoritarianism is on the rise, and an Islamic insurgency erupted in the northern region. Accordingly, while some scholars still praise Mozambique’s post-war peacebuilding as successful, others have claimed that peacebuilding failed. This article evades the binary of successful or failed liberal peacebuilding in Mozambique. Instead, it applies the concepts of friction and hybridity to offer an alternative way of reading the 30 years of peace (building) in Mozambique. The article argues that frictions in values and interests between the international/liberal peacebuilders and local (non-liberal) elites have resulted in a negative and unstable hybrid peace, that is, a precarious peace in Mozambique.
Acknowledgements
The research behind this article was conducted during a doctoral program supported by a scholarship from Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers whose insightful comments and suggestions greatly improved the article. Also, they would like to thank Professor Yukiko Nishikawa for her encouragement and comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
Notes
1 See Pitcher, ‘Transforming Mozambique’; de Brito, A Frelimo, o Marxismo e a Construção do Estado Nacional 1962–1983.
2 Paris, ‘International Peacebuilding and the “Mission Civilisatrice”’; Hegre, ‘Democracy and Armed Conflict’.
3 Rummel, ‘Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder’.
4 Moran & and Pitcher, ‘The “Basket Case” and the “Poster Child”’; Barnett, Fang, and Zürcher, ‘Compromised Peacebuilding’; Manning and Dendere, ‘Mozambique: A Credible Commitment to Peace’.
5 World Bank, ‘Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Mozambique’.
6 Cahen, ‘Mozambique’; Ostheimer, ‘Mozambique’; Weinstein, ‘Mozambique’; Bornstein, ‘Planning and Peacebuilding in Post-War Mozambique’; Hanlon, ‘Mozambique’.
7 de Brito, ‘Uma Reflexão Sobre o Desafio da Paz em Moçambique’; Maschietto, ‘What Has Changed with Peace?’; Maschietto, Beyond Peacebuilding; Bueno, ‘Reconciliation in Mozambique’; Muchemwa and Harris, ‘Mozambique’s Post-War Success Story’; Sambo, ‘The Politics and Political Economy of Violent Conflicts in Post-War Mozambique’.
8 Jett, ‘Mozambique Is a Failed State. The West Isn’t Helping It’.
9 Muchemwa and Harris, ‘Mozambique’s Post-War Success Story’, 43.
10 See, for example, Öjendal and Ou, ‘From Friction to Hybridity in Cambodia’; Björkdahl and Gusic, ‘“Global” Norms and “Local” Agency’; Simangan, ‘When Hybridity Breeds Contempt’; Elbasani, ‘State-Building or State-Capture?’; South, ‘“Hybrid Governance” and the Politics of Legitimacy in the Myanmar Peace Process’; Tom, Liberal Peace and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in Africa.
11 Paffenholz, ‘Unpacking the Local Turn in Peacebuilding’, 862.
12 Luttwak, ‘Give War a Chance’; see also Wagner, ‘The Causes of Peace’; Licklider, ‘The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945–1993’; Toft, ‘Ending Civil Wars: A Case for Rebel Victory?’
13 Hartzell and Hoddie, ‘Institutionalizing Peace’; Hartzell, ‘Settling Civil Wars’; DeRouen et al., ‘Civil War Peace Agreement Implementation and State Capacity’; Derouen, Lea, and Wallensteen, ‘The Duration of Civil War Peace Agreements*’; Joshi and Mason, ‘Civil War Settlements, Size of Governing Coalition, and Durability of Peace in Post–Civil War States’.
14 DeRouen et al., ‘Civil War Peace Agreement Implementation and State Capacity’.
15 Wallensteen, Quality Peace: Strategic Peacebuilding and World Order; Joshi and Wallensteen, Understanding Quality Peace.
16 See Paris, At War’s End; Richmond, ‘A Genealogy of Peace and Conflict Theory’.
17 Chandler, Peacebuilding.
18 Grimm and Weiffen, ‘Domestic Elites and External Actors in Post-Conflict Democratisation’; Jarstad and Sisk, From War to Democracy; Le Billon, ‘Corrupting Peace?’; Zürcher, ‘A Theory of Democratisation through Peace-Building’.
19 See, for example, Hanlon, ‘Mozambique’; de Brito, ‘Uma Reflexão Sobre o Desafio da Paz em Moçambique’; Maschietto, ‘What Has Changed with Peace?’
20 See, for example, Paris, At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict; Richmond, ‘The Problem of Peace’; Jarstad and Sisk, From War to Democracy; Roberts, ‘Saving Liberal Peacebuilding From Itself’; Campbell, Chandler, and Sabaratnam, A Liberal Peace?; Chandler, Empire in Denial.
21 Björkdahl et al., ‘Introduction’, 5.
22 Björkdahl et al., ‘Introduction’; Björkdahl and Höglund, ‘Precarious Peacebuilding’.
23 Öjendal and Ou, ‘From Friction to Hybridity in Cambodia’, 367.
24 International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance, 9.
25 Richmond, ‘The Dilemmas of a Hybrid Peace’.
26 Ibid, 54.
27 For detailed accounts of the peace process see Alden, Mozambique and the Construction of the New African State.
28 See the GPA, p. 4 (emphasis added) available at https://peacemaker.un.org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/MZ_921004_MozambiqueGeneralPeaceAgreement.pdf
accessed on 14 March 2022
29 Interviewed on 18 May 2022
30 Manning and Malbrough, ‘Bilateral Donors and Aid Conditionality in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding’; Manning and Malbrough, ‘The Changing Dynamics of Foreign Aid and Democracy in Mozambique’.
31 The Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN declared the elections free and fair and the UN Security Council through the Resolution 960 endorsed the electoral results.
32 As of 2022, Mozambique held six presidential and legislative elections (1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019) and five municipal elections (1998, 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018). At the time of writing, the sixth municipal election were scheduled for October 11, 2023 (see https://clubofmozambique.com/news/mozambique-sixth-round-of-municipal-elections-scheduled-for-october-11-2023-212440/ accessed on 1 February 2022).
33 Protocol IV of the GPA (available on https://www.peaceau.org/uploads/mozambique-peace-agreement-1992.pdf accessed on 10 January 2022)
34 see, e.g., Jung, ‘Power-Sharing and Democracy Promotion in Post-Civil War Peace-Building’; Manning, ‘Conflict Management and Elite Habituation in Postwar Democracy’.
35 Barnett, Fang, and Zürcher, ‘Compromised Peacebuilding’, 614.
36 Hanlon, ‘Mozambique’; Jett, ‘Mozambique Is a Failed State. The West Isn’t Helping It’.
37 Afrobarometer data available at https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Summary%20of%20results/moz_r8_sor_in_english_17nov21.pdf accessed on 2 January 2022
38 EIU, ‘Democracy Index 2020: In Sickness and in Health?’, 54.. The Democracy Index places countries under one of four possible categories: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, authoritarian regime.
39 Manning, ‘Mozambique’s Slide into One-Party Rule’, 152.
40 See V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report 2022 available at https://v-dem.net/media/publications/dr_2022.pdf accessed on 2 April 2022.
41 See Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Report 2022 available https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/FIW_2022_PDF_Booklet_Digital_Final_Web.pdf accessed on 1 April 2022.
42 Mosca, ADN da FRELIMO: Poder e Dinheiro.
43 Macamo, ‘Violence and Political Culture in Mozambique’.
44 Igreja, ‘Traditional Courts and the Struggle against State Impunity for Civil Wartime Offences in Mozambique’.
45 See also de Brito, ‘Uma Reflexão Sobre o Desafio da Paz em Moçambique’.
46 Interviewed on 10 June 2022, Maputo
47 ‘Continuidade Na Renovação?’, 431.
48 Interviewed on 25 May 2022, Maputo
49 ‘Mozambique’, 142.
50 ‘MOZAMBIQUE’.
51 Interviewed on 02 June 2022, Maputo
52 Cited by Igreja, ‘Os Recursos da Violência e as Lutas pelo Poder Político em Moçambique’.
53 Data reported by Afrobaromer available at https://afrobarometer.org/countries/mozambique-0. Accessed on 6 June 2021.
54 Interviewed on 25 May 2022, Maputo
55 Interviewed on 18 May 2022, Maputo
56 Interviewed on 20 May 2022, Maputo
57 ‘The Dynamics of Donor and Domestic Elite Interaction in Mozambique’, 328.
58 ‘Conflict Management and Elite Habituation in Postwar Democracy’, 63.
59 Manning, 63.
60 According to the WJP Rule of Law Index, which measures aspects such as constraints on government powers, regulatory enforcement, and fundamental rights, Mozambique scored just 0.40, below sub-Saharan Africa (0.46) and global (0.56) averages. The index is available at https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/Mozambique accessed on 1 April 2022.
61 Sambo, ‘The Politics and Political Economy of Violent Conflicts in Post-War Mozambique’, 102.
62 Morier-Genoud, ‘Proto-guerre et négociations. Le Mozambique en crise, 2013–2016’.
63 Pereira, ‘Para Onde Vamos? Dinâmicas de Paz e Conflitos em Moçambique’.
64 de Brito, ‘Uma Reflexão Sobre o Desafio da Paz em Moçambique’, 23.
65 Rummel, ‘Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder’, 4.
66 Interviewed on 20 May 2022, Maputo
67 Vines, ‘Renamo’s Rise and Decline’, 390.
68 Vines, ‘Violence, Peacebuilding, and Elite Bargains in Mozambique Since Independence’, 331.
69 Ngoenha, do Amaral, and Nhumaio, ‘Cabo Delgado e o Risco Sistémico da Guerra em Moçambique’, 37.
70 At the time of writing, attacks have been reported in Cabo Delgado (the epicentre), Niassa and Nampula provinces.
71 Macalane and Jafar, ‘Ataques Terroristas em Cabo Delgado (2017–2020): as causas do fenómeno pela boca da população de Mocímboa da Praia’.
72 Abadie, ‘Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism’; Krieger and Meierrieks, ‘Does Income Inequality Lead to Terrorism?’; Krieger and Meierrieks, ‘Income Inequality, Redistribution and Domestic Terrorism’; Piazza, ‘Rooted in Poverty?’
73 Alden and Chichava, ‘Cabo Delgado and the Rise of Militant Islam’; Feijó and Maquenzi, ‘Poverty, Inequality and Conflict the Northern Cabo Delgado’.
74 UNDP, Human Development Report 2020.
75 UNDP, 4.
76 World Bank, ‘Accelerating Poverty Reduction in Mozambique: Challenges and Opportunities’.
77 Heyen-Dubé and Rands, ‘Evolving Doctrine and Modus Operandi’; Habibe, Forquilha, and Pereira, ‘Islamic Radicalization in Northern Mozambique’.
78 For more theoretical insights, see Richmond, ‘The Impact of Socio-Economic Inequality on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding’.
79 For more, see Domson-Lindsay, ‘Mozambique’s Security Challenges’.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Manuel Francisco Sambo
Manuel Francisco Sambo is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Japan. He holds a MA in International Development (Peace and Governance) from Nagoya University, Japan and a BA (Hons) in International Relations and Diplomacy from the former Higher Institute of International Relations (ISRI), Mozambique. Sambo’s research interests include peace, security and development policies in sub-Saharan Africa. He has recently published ‘The Politics and Political Economy of Violent Conflicts in Post-War Mozambique’. In Globalisation and Local Conflicts in Africa and Asia.