THE ORIGINS OF
MOZAMBIQUE’S LIBERALIZATION, A REASSESSMENT OF FRELIMO’S EARLY YEARS
by Geert Poppe
__________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY
OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS)
ABSTRACT
The
recent history of Mozambique is one of turbulent change. Having moved through colonialism, scientific socialism and
civil war the country has now become a paragon of successful economic and
political liberalization. Immoveable amid all these transformations stands FRELIMO,
Mozambique’s sole ruling party since independence. Its protean nature reflects
the changes imposed upon Mozambican
society:
erstwhile a broad-based liberation movement, first after independence it declared
itself a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, now it is widely credited for success
of the liberal reforms. This study consists of three distinct parts that aim to
contribute to a historical understanding of FRELIMO as an autonomous actor in
its country’s development. Chapter I addresses the current state of Mozambique
and takes issue with deterministic
accounts, whether describing FRELIMO’s liberalization policy as a foreign ploy
or hampered by a culture of patrimonialism alien incompatible with modern rationality.
Instead it argues that liberalization is a profoundly political process whose
understanding requires knowledge of the local dynamics; its course not wholly idiosyncratic,
typically African or Mozambican in
nature.
FRELIMO was presented once in historiography as modern and nationalist; qualities portrayed as depending on its
commitment to Marxism. Such unitary view, unsuited to explain the recent change and
post-Marxist present, now requires reexamining. Chapter II reviews FRELIMO’s
internal struggles, political and administrative
organization, economic and foreign policies prior to its Third Party Congress of 1977. Marxist-Leninist
vanguardism, generally presented as the result of a collective evolution by the movement,
appears from it far from a foregone vi conclusion suggesting an alternative
tradition existed within FRELIMO. Chapter III identifies two groups with
distinct ‘social trajectories’ that influenced their
respective
world views and have continued to exist within FRELIMO: a small core of
committed Marxist, mainly consisting of non-blacks, gathered around President Machel whose ideological perspective was
greatly influenced through their contact with the Marxist opposition to the
Salazar regime while students in Portugal and a group of Africans associated
with the Protestant Missions in Mozambique. The latter represent a more liberal, nationalist
modernizing strain within the party that became the principal agent of Mozambique’s
liberalization.
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