The fieldwork on which this chapter is based, started in the early 1980swhen I was working as a sociologist in the Mozambican national women's organization, Organização da Mulher Moçambicana, the OMM. At that point Mozambique had just emerged from a successful war of liberation against Portuguese colonialism. Then, Mozambique was a one-party state. Frelimo, the previous liberation front had transformed itself into a socialist party and was firmly in power. The general atmosphere of the country was one of optimism, enthusiasm and hopefulness. This was in spite of sanctions and boycotts by the donor world (except DDR, Russia, Bulgaria and Cuba) and economic hardship. Among Mozambican intellectuals, there were some misgivings regarding the monopolistic political style of the Party, which left little space for civil society discussions of and engagement with politics.

In the meanwhile much has changed. Mozambique has been through civil war, internationally-supervised peace negotiations, constitutional change to multi-party so-called democracy, World Bank invasion, and structural adjustment politics. In the early 1980s, Mozambique was a very special country, with a very special history – and a very special setup of expatriates: there were the Cubans, Eastern Europeans, and a bunch of left wing people from Europe and Latin America, including a handful of Scandinavians. Today, Mozambique is just another poor African country, playing along the lines of the Washington Consensus, the Paris Declaration, the Millenium Development Goals and anything else the donor world has constructed to the supposed benefit of poor, underdeveloped countries.