Little noticed amidst the fanfare surrounding regime changes in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa, the formerly socialist country of Mozambique has undergone a tumultuous transition to democracy and capitalism in the last ten years. Its privatization program has been called the most “successful” in Africa, while the peaceful completion of two national elections suggests that the chances for democratic consolidation are at least as good as, and probably much better than, many countries in the rest of Africa. The purpose of this book is to situate Mozambique's experiences within the comparative literature on the erosion of socialism and the transformation to a market economy. I focus on the politics of privatization in order to draw conclusions about the role of the state and social forces in structuring, challenging, supporting and undermining comprehensive change in transitional countries. I argue that although privatization has certainly altered the role of state institutions in Mozambique, the process and outcome of privatization have not eliminated state power, only redirected it. These findings challenge claims by supporters of neo-liberalism that transitions have been “revolutionary.”

My initial approach to understanding Mozambique's transition from socialism to capitalism was to give a great deal of weight to international factors. When I first got interested in Mozambique in the 1980s, some of the more influential secondary literature placed the blame for the failure of socialism in Mozambique on South Africa's support for the counter-revolutionary movement, Renamo, and on policies of destabilization practiced by Western countries.