Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-5wvtr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T20:40:25.102Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Violence in Mozambique: Towards an Understanding of Renamo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Extract

Recent developments on the South African political scene have raised some hopes about bringing an end to the war in Mozambique. The change of direction initiated by President F. W. de Klerk, the unbanning of the African National Congress (A.N.C.) and other previously prohibited organisations, and the progress made towards negotiations have pointed to a possible change of heart by the Government, and a relaxation of its previously hostile regional policy. There can be little doubt, given Pretoria's rôle in the whole area, and the history of its involvement in the Mozambican crisis, that changes within South Africa will be felt beyond its borders. However, it would be unwise to ignore the part played by internal factors in explaining the growth in both the scale and severity of the conflict in Mozambique over the past decade.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cf. Phillips, Mark and Coleman, Colin, ‘Another Kind of War: strategies for transition in the era of negotiation’, in Transformation (Durban), 9, 1989, pp. 130.Google Scholar

2 For example, Metz, Steven, ‘The Mozambique National Resistance and South African Foreign Policy’, in African Affairs (London), 85, 341, 10 1986, pp. 491507;Google ScholarSaul, John, ‘Mozambique: destabilisation and counter-revolutionary warfare’, in Studies in Political Economy (Ottawa), 23, 1987, pp. 540;Google Scholar and Davies, Robert, ‘South African Strategy toward Mozambique since Nkomati’, in Transformation, 3, 1987, pp. 430.Google Scholar See Hall, Margaret, ‘The Mozambique National Resistance Movement (Renamo): a study in the destruction of an African country’, in Africa (London), 60, 1, 1990, pp. 3968, for a welcome new study that focuses on the dynamics of the war.Google Scholar

3 Much of this literature is not in English, but see Clarence-Smith, Gervase, ‘The Roots of Mozambican Counter-Revolution’, in Southern African Review of Books (London), 2, 4, 1989, pp. 710,Google Scholar and Harries, Patrick, ‘Mozambique's Long War’, in Social Dynamics (Cape Town), 15, 1, 1989, pp. 122–31.Google Scholar

4 Gersony, Robert, ‘Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts of Principally Conflict-Related Experience in Mozambique: report submitted to Ambassador Jonathan Moore and Dr Chester A. Crocker’, U.S. Department of State, Bureau for Refugee Programs, Washington, D.C., April 1988.Google Scholar

5 See Minter, William, ‘The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) as Described by ExParticipants’, in Development Dialogue (Uppsala), 1, 1989, pp. 89132, for the research report that he submitted to the Ford Foundation and the Swedish International Development Agency in March 1989.Google Scholar

6 Roesch, Otto, ‘Rural Mozambique since the Frelimo Party Fourth Congress: the situation in the Baixo Limpopo’, in Review of African Political Economy (Sheffield), 41, 1988, p. 73.Google Scholar

7 See Southern African Review of Books, 2, 5, 1989, pp. 22–3.

8 See Fauvet, Paul, ‘Roots of Counter-Revolution: the Mozambique National Resistance’, in Review of African Political Economy, 29, 07 1984, pp. 108–21;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLegum, Colin, ‘The MNR’, in CSIS Africa Notes (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.), 16, 1983, pp. 110; Metz, loc. cit.;Google Scholar and Flower, Ken, Serving Secretly: an Intelligence Chief on record. Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, 1964–1981 (London, 1987).Google Scholar

9 Metz, loc. cit. pp. 492–3.

10 Fauvet, loc. cit. p. 114.

11 Thomashausen, André E., ‘The National Resistance of Mozambique’, in Africa Insight (Pretoria), 13, 2, 1983, pp. 125–6.Google Scholar For an account of the internal conflict in Frelimo in the 1960s, see Opello, Walter, ‘Pluralism and Elite Conflict in an Independence Movement: Frelimo in the 1960s’, in Journal of Southern African Studies (Oxford), 2, 1, 1975, pp. 6682.Google Scholar

12 Fauvet, loc. cit. p. 114.

13 Metz, loc. cit. p. 494.

14 Fauvet, loc. cit. p. 116.

15 Metz, loc. cit. and Legum, loc. cit.

16 Metz, loc. cit. pp. 494–5.

17 Ibid. and Fauvet, loc. cit. p. 117.

18 Metz, loc. cit. p. 495.

19 Ibid. p. 496.

20 A Luta Continua appeared irregularly and did not give its place of publication.

21 Fauvet, loc. cit. pp. 117–20.

22 Thomashausen, loc. cit. p. 127–8.

23 Hanlon, Joseph, Beggar Your Neighbours: apartheid power in Southern Africa (London and Bloomington, 1986), p. 149.Google Scholar

24 Minter in loc. cit. points strongly towards continued South African support, but others are more hesitant; for example, Gunn, Gillian, ‘The Chissano Era – Mozambique Comes to Terms with Itself’, in Africa Insight, 19, 1, 1989, pp. 1620.Google Scholar

25 See, for example, Africa Confidential (London), 29, 18, 9 September 1988, p. 1, and 30, 14, 7 July 1989, p. 1; also Davies, loc. cit. pp. 10 and 19.Google Scholar

26 The significance of these alternative sources of support has been questioned by Minter, , loc. cit. p. 4.Google Scholar

27 Gunn, Gillian, ‘Post-Nkomati Mozambique’, in CSIS Africa Notes, 38, 1985, pp. 34.Google Scholar

28 Africa Confidential, 26, 15, 17 07 1985, p. 5.Google Scholar

29 Isaacman, Allen, ‘Mozambique’, in Survival (London), 30, 1, 1988, pp. 2731.Google Scholar

30 Hall, loc. cit. p. 45.

31 Minter, loc. cit. pp. 11–14.

32 Ibid. pp. 3–5.

33 Gersony, op. cit. pp. 8–15.

34 Africa Report (New Brunswick), 0304 1989, p. 20.Google Scholar

35 Minter, loc. cit. p. 11

36 South Africa did not honour the agreement in full according to a number of sources. For example, see Metz, , loc. cit. p. 498; Saul, loc. cit. pp. 21–2; and Davies, loc. cit. pp. 11–16.Google Scholar

37 For example, see Africa Confidential, 29, 18, 9 September 1988, p. 1, 30, 3, February 1989, pp. 1–2, and 30, 13, 23 June 1989, pp. 1–3.Google Scholar

38 See Munslow, Barry, ‘State Intervention in Agriculture: the Mozambican experience’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 22, 2, 06 1984, pp. 199221.Google Scholar

39 See Clarence-Smith, Gervase, The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975: a study in economic imperialism (Manchester, 1985), passim.Google Scholar

40 Allen, and Isaacman, Barbara, Mozambique: from colonialism to revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder and Aldershot, 1983), pp. 141–9.Google Scholar

42 Keesings Contemporary Archives (Harlow, Essex), 26, 5 12 1980, pp. 30, 611.Google Scholar

43 Egerö, Bertil, Mozambique: a dream undone. The Political Economy of Democracy, 1975–1984 (Uppsala, 1987), p. 88.Google Scholar

44 Munslow, loc. cit. p. 208.

45 Allen, and Isaacman, Barbara, op. cit. p. 149.Google Scholar

46 See Galli, Rosemary, ‘The Food Crisis and the Socialist State in Lusophone Africa’, in African Studies Review (Los Angeles), 30, 1, 1987, pp. 1944,Google Scholar and Young, Tom, ‘The Politics of Development in Angola and Mozambique’, in African Affairs, 87, 347, 04 1988, pp. 165–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 Egerö, op cit. p. 88.

48 Isaacman, ‘Mozambique’, p. 20, and Raikes, Philip, ‘Food Policy and Production in Mozambique since Independence’, in Review of African Political Economy, 29, 07 1984, pp. 102–3.Google Scholar

49 For example, according to Munslow, loc. cit. p. 213, the Limpopo agro-industrial project was formed from 1,500 previously white-owned farms.

50 Ibid. pp. 210–15, and Clarence-Smith, loc. cit.

51 Munslow, loc. cit. pp. 215–17.

52 Munslow, Barry and O'Keefe, Phil, ‘Rethinking the Revolution in Mozambique’, in Race and Class (London), 26, 2, Autumn 1984, p. 19.Google Scholar

53 Raikes, loc. cit. p. 95

54 Munslow and O'Keefe, loc. cit. p. 20.

55 Southern African Review of Books, 2, 5, 0607 1989, pp. 22–3, and Hall, loc. cit. p. 56.Google Scholar

56 Munslow, and O'Keefe, , loc. cit. pp. 1819.Google Scholar

57 Ottaway, Marina, ‘Economic Reform and War in Mozambiqeue’, in Current History (Philadelphia), 87, 529, 1988, p. 201.Google Scholar

58 Hall, , loc. cit. pp. 47–8 and 55–7, and Clarence-Smith, loc. cit. p. 10.Google Scholar

59 Harries, loc. cit.

60 Clarence-Smith, , loc. cit. pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

61 Ibid.; Harries, loc. cit.; and Hall, loc. cit. pp. 55–7.

62 Hall, loc. cit. p. 48.

63 Ibid. p. 47, and Africa Research Bulletin (Oxford), 26, 7, 15 08 1989, p. 9, 344.Google Scholar

64 Collins, Carol, ‘Mozambique: dynamising the people’, in Issue (Los Angeles), 8, 1, 1978, p. 12.Google Scholar

65 Opello, loc. cit. pp. 66–7.

66 Clarence-Smith, loc. cit. p. 9.

67 Gersony, op. cit. pp. 8–13.

68 Minter, loc. cit. p. 12.

69 Clarence-Smith, loc. cit. p. 9.

70 Egerö, Bertil, ‘People's Power: the case of Mozambique’, in Munslow, Barry (ed.), Africa: problems in the transition to socialism (London, 1986), p. 125.Google Scholar However, this decision was reversed at the 5th congress in 1989, when Frelimo committed itself to broadening the basis of party membership, and not to exclude anyone on ideological grounds. Keesings Contemporary Archives, 35, 7–8 07 1989, p. 36, 804.Google Scholar

71 Egerö, , ‘People's Power’, p. 130.Google Scholar

72 Ibid. pp. 123–5, and Clarence-Smith, loc. cit. p. 8.

73 Harries, loc. cit. p. 126.

74 Clarence-Smith, loc. cit. pp. 8–9.

75 Campbell, Horace, ‘War, Reconstruction and Dependence in Mozambique’ in Third World Quarterly (London), 6, 4, 10 1984, p. 847.Google Scholar

76 The literature in English on the Mozambican military is scant. Two of the best overviews are by Seegers, Annette, ‘From Liberation to Modernisation: transforming revolutionary paramilitary forces into standing professional armies’, in Arlinghaus, Bruce E. and Baker, Pauline (eds.), African Armies: evolution and capabilities (Boulder, 1986), pp. 5283,Google Scholar and ‘Revolutionary Armies of Africa: Mozambique and Zimbabwe’, in Baynham, Simon (ed.), Military Power and Politics in Black Africa (New York, 1986), pp. 129–65.Google Scholar

77 Seegers, , ‘Revolutionary Armies of Africa’, p. 146.Google Scholar

78 Metz, loc. cit. pp. 495–8.

79 See Campbell, loc. cit. p. 851, and Africa Confidential, 29, 5, 4 03 1988, p. 5.Google Scholar

80 Maier, Karl, ‘The Military Mix’, in Africa Report, 33, 4, 0708 1988, p. 56.Google Scholar

81 Finnegan, William, ‘A Reporter at Large’, in The New Yorker, pt. II, 29 05 1989, pp. 8895.Google Scholar

82 Isaacman, , ‘Mozambique’, p. 34.Google Scholar

83 Maier, loc. cit. p. 56, and Africa Confidential, 27, 10, 9 05 1986, p. 7, and 28, 17, 19 August 1987, p. 7.Google Scholar

84 Africa Confidential, 31, 7, 6 04 1990, p. 1.Google Scholar

85 Campbell, loc. cit. p. 850.

86 Gersony, op. cit. p. 19.

87 Isaacman, , ‘Mozambique’, pp. 26–9.Google Scholar

88 Frontfile (London), 2, 6, 05 1999, pp. 13.Google Scholar

89 Clarence-Smith, loc. cit. p. 9.

90 Africa Confidential, 30, 13, 23 06 1989, pp. 13, and 31, 3, 9 February 1990, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

91 Work in Progress (Johannesburg), 68, 08 1990, p. 3.Google Scholar