Christian missionary work in Angola and Mozambique during the colonial and postcolonial eras was shaped by a complex of factors related to religion, education, and politics. Missionaries’ networks of local support played an outstanding role in their humanitarian work, particularly in the 20th and 21st centuries.
By the end of the 19th century, Catholic and Protestant missions had established themselves in Angola and Mozambique. Until 1974, Protestants had a tense relationship with the Portuguese authorities, as they were suspected of serving the political interests of some European countries against Portugal, and later of supporting African opposition to colonial domination. Unlike the Protestants, the Catholic Church enjoyed a close collaboration with the ruling regime. Under the Concordat and the Missionary Accord of 1940 and the Missionary Statute of 1941, which were agreed between the Vatican and Portugal, Catholic missions enjoyed a privileged position to the detriment of Protestants, whose activities were severely restricted.
The years that followed the independences of Angola and Mozambique in 1975 were characterized by open hostility to religion, aggravated by the nationalization of missions’ assets and properties in both countries. Mission activities related to education and health became hard to carry out. With the civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, warfare and dislocation gave a new social role to the churches. Between the mid-1980s and 1990 the first signs of new policies emerged. While in Angola the relationship between church and state was marked by ambiguity and mistrust, cooperation and collaboration prevailed in Mozambique, where the 1980s saw a rapprochement and constructive dialogue between the two institutions. This was sealed by the roles both Protestants and Catholics played in the peace and democratization processes.
The political opening that characterized the 1990s and 2000s brought significant changes for both countries including the presence in the public space of new churches, especially those of Pentecostal denominations. The new sociopolitical contexts in Angola and Mozambique between the late 20th and early 21st centuries shaped the new roles of the missions, which remain more focused on social, rather than political, activities.
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Article
Christian Missions and the State in 19th and 20th Century Angola and Mozambique
Teresa Cruz e Silva
Article
Communism in South Africa
Irina Filatova
The history of communism in South Africa began with the formation in 1921 of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). The party was entirely white, as was the majority of organized labor—its main constituency. The CPSA attempted to fight for equality of black and white workers, but white labor refused to desegregate, and the party’s support among Africans was practically nonexistent. In 1928, the Communist International (Comintern), of which the CPSA was a member, sent it an instruction to work for an “independent native republic.” This slogan helped the party to attract a black membership, but resulted in much infighting.
The CPSA’s position strengthened during World War II, but in 1950, after Afrikaner nationalists came to power, the party was banned. It re-emerged in 1953 as the underground South African Communist Party (SACP). Since then, the party has worked closely with the African National Congress (ANC). Many of its cadres were simultaneously ANC members. In 1955, communists helped to formulate the Freedom Charter, the ANC’s overarching program. In 1960, the SACP launched the armed struggle against apartheid. The ANC took the nascent liberation army under its wing in 1963. In the early 1960s, many party members, including Nelson Mandela, were arrested or forced into exile.
The party had a deep ideological influence on the ANC: from 1969, its ideas on South Africa as a colony of a special type and on the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) have become part of all ANC programs.
After the end of apartheid, communists occupied important positions in all ANC governments. Despite this, many in the SACP have been unhappy with the direction the ANC has taken. However, the party has not contested elections on its own, trying instead to influence ANC policies from inside. This has cost it its reputation as a militant revolutionary party.
Article
Early Factionalism in Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle
Brooks Marmon
The course of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was fundamentally shaped by tensions among competing nationalist factions. The impact of this dynamic is typically observed from 1963, when Zimbabwe’s long-serving ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU)-Patriotic Front, was founded following a fissure in the liberation movement. Earlier instances of intranationalist competition in Southern Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe) have generally escaped scholarly attention despite their pioneering contributions to the dynamics of political pluralism in Zimbabwe and the presence of noted political figures amidst their leadership.
In 1961, the Zimbabwean nationalist movement experienced its first significant split with the formation of the Zimbabwe National Party (ZNP) which broke away from the National Democratic Party. The ZNP, in turn, experienced its own rupture a year later when the Pan-African Socialist Union (PASU) was formed. Although these were the two only two nationalist challengers of note in the early 1960s prior to ZANU, several other short-lived Black-led political parties emerged at this time in settler-dominated Southern Rhodesia.
The ZNP and PASU appealed to rising grievances with the prosecution of the anticolonial liberation struggle. They were also a consequence of the changing geopolitics wrought by Africa’s decolonization. The two parties sought to consolidate their position by appealing to the emerging cohort of African anticolonial leaders across the continent. These efforts induced extensive backlash from the main wing of the nationalist movement, then led by Joshua Nkomo. Both the ZNP and PASU were short-lived, effectively collapsing by 1963. While neither party was able to effectively overcome these intense assaults, their comparatively fleeting existence shaped the political environment by influencing tactics and providing a template for subsequent nationalist contenders seeking greater longevity.
Article
Eduardo Mondlane
Livio Sansone
Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane (1920–1969) was one of the founders of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) and its first president until his assassination. Generally considered one the “fathers” of independent Mozambique and the unifier of this young country, in recognition of that and his academic standing—he had a PhD in sociology—the main university of Mozambique is named after him. His singular, exciting, cosmopolitan, and engaged life has thus far attracted less international attention than could be expected, even though, over the last decade, also on account of his centennial in 2020, a growing national and international scholarship is developing around several facets of Mondlane’s biography. One aspect that is still relatively unexplored is his academic training and many years spent abroad studying in South Africa, Portugal, and the United States. His international training and showing how this had a profound impact on his performance as leader of Frelimo.
Article
History of Malawi
Joey Power
The boundaries of Malawi in the early 21st century are rooted in European imperial expansion of the late 19th century and the establishment of the British Central African Protectorate (1891–1907) and, later, the Nyasaland (1907–1964) Protectorate. In 1953, Nyasaland was merged with Northern and Southern Rhodesia to constitute the Central African Federation. African opposition to this led to violent disturbances in 1953 and 1959. A state of emergency was declared in March of 1959 and the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), the largest African political party in the protectorate, was banned and many of its leaders detained. The NAC was replaced by the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) during the state of emergency. The state of emergency ended in June of 1960 and party leader Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda led the MCP to a territorial election victory in 1961. Vows to end the “stupid federation” were realized in 1963 with the secession of Nyasaland from it. Nyasaland became the independent state of Malawi in July 1964 under an MCP-majority government.
Within months of independence, the government and party unity were rocked by a “cabinet crisis” in which key ministers differed with Dr. Banda over foreign policy and domestic politics. Many key leaders resigned or were dismissed and thereafter left the country. This initiated a thirty-year period of autocratic rule that only ended in the early 1990s as a result of internal protest and international financial pressure. A 1993 referendum prompted a return to multiparty governance, and the 1994 elections led to the ouster of the MCP/Banda regime. Since then, Malawi has maintained a multiparty political structure, albeit with enduring challenges wrought by colonial and autocratic legacies.
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History of South Africa’s Bantustans
Laura Phillips
With the passing of the Bantu Authorities Act in 1951, the apartheid state set in motion the creation of ten bantustans, one of South Africa’s most infamous projects of racial ordering. Also known as “homelands” in official parlance, the bantustans were set up in an attempt to legitimize the apartheid project and to deprive black South Africans of their citizenship by creating ten parallel “countries”, corresponding to state designated ethnic group. The bantustan project was controversial and developed slowly, first by consolidating “native” reserve land and later by giving these territories increasing power for self-governance. By the 1980s there were four “independent” bantustans (Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, and Bophuthatswana) and six “self-governing” ones (Lebowa, Gazankulu, KwaNdebele, Qwaqwa, KaNgwane, and KwaZulu).
While a few bantustan leaders worked with the anti-apartheid liberation movements, the bantustans were largely rejected as political frauds governed by illegitimately installed chiefs. They acted as dumping grounds for surplus cheap African labor and allowed the apartheid government to justify large-scale forced removals from “white” farmlands and cities. But the bantustans were also incubators of a black middle class and bureaucratic elite. Despite the formal dissolution of the bantustans in 1994 and their reincorporation into a unitary democratic state, the rule of chiefs and the growth of this black middle class have a deep-rooted legacy in the post-1994 era. As several contemporary commentators have noted, South Africa has witnessed the “bantustan-ificaton” of the post-apartheid landscape.
Article
History of UNITA in Angola
Justin Pearce
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) was the last of three movements to take up arms against Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, when Jonas Savimbi led a breakaway in 1966 from the longer-established National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA). Confined to the territory’s peripheries, its impact was limited, and a pact made in 1973 with the colonial army would later sully its reputation. Once the 1974 Portuguese revolution permitted civilian mobilization, UNITA drew upon nationalist sentiment that emerged from the mission schools of the Central Highlands to establish a skilled cadre within the movement.
As independence approached in 1975, FNLA, UNITA, and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) competed for control. UNITA was bolstered by South African military support until 1976, but as the MPLA gained control of the state, UNITA switched to a strategy of guerrilla warfare. Renewed South African support in the 1980s helped sustain UNITA, by that time based in its “bush capital,” Jamba, where it was able to realize its ambitions to rule, albeit within limited territory. Throughout this period, UNITA depended on a monopoly of force in much of rural Angola, a social contract that involved provision of public goods, and the promulgation of an ideology that positioned UNITA as the representative of the Angolan nation with state-like prerogatives and responsibilities.
Following a peace settlement, UNITA contested the 1992 elections expecting victory. As the MPLA was declared the victor, UNITA remobilized its forces and consolidated control over much of the interior. Following a further failed attempt at a settlement in the mid-1990s, government counterinsurgency at the end of the decade undermined UNITA’s rural support. Savimbi’s death in 2002 prompted UNITA’s surviving generals to accept peace on the government’s terms. UNITA faced difficulty in establishing itself as a civilian party in a political space dominated by the MPLA. During the 2010s it achieved a gradual increase in electoral support by reactivating its networks in the Central Highlands and finding common cause with popular grievances in Luanda.
Article
Indians in South Africa
Goolam Vahed
The first persons of Indian descent in South Africa arrived as slaves transported there by the Dutch East India Company during the 17th century and were integrated into the “Cape Coloured” and “Malay” populations. Most Indians in South Africa are descendants of migrants who arrived in substantive numbers from 1860 as indentured workers on the sugar plantations of the British colony of Natal and free migrants who followed from the 1870s. After completing their indentures, many chose to remain in Natal, moving off the plantations and making lives for themselves as market gardeners and hawkers. The period after 1920 witnessed the rapid urbanization of Indians and the entry of many into industrial work. The merchant class, while hounded by racist legislation, consolidated a presence in both urban and rural areas. Despite government threats of repatriation, Indians were eventually accepted as citizens in 1961, albeit without the vote and subject to discriminatory legislation. In the first half of the 20th century Indians relied on India for redress. From the 1950s, they built nonracial alliances with the majority African population and played vital roles in the antiapartheid liberation movement. However, when nonracial democracy loomed, over 60 percent of Indians voted for the former white minority parties in the first democratic elections in 1994. Many were concerned about the implications of majority rule. This angst reflected that relations between Africans and Indians had been strained at particular historical junctures as Indians tried to negotiate a political identity within a field of Black consciousness, nonracialism, and African Nationalism. The rubric of “Indian” has been challenged in the postapartheid period by rupturing along religious, ethnic, and class lines. However, it is difficult to escape race identity since “Indian” continues to be a racial, as well as legal and political, identity in South Africa. This, together with many Indians’ relatively privileged position vis-à-vis Africans and rising xenophobia and Afrophobia in a context of widespread poverty, continues to subject many to concerns about their place in the fabric of South African society. This has powered a steady trickle of business and professional emigration. The working classes on the other hand remain embedded in a township “place” identity.
Article
International Solidarity with FRELIMO in Mozambique during the Liberation Struggle
Corrado Tornimbeni
Nationalism in Mozambique was characterized by a plurality of leaders who competed for influence both within and outside the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO). Each of them tried to gain political support at a continental and international level, and, eventually, the leadership that rose to power within FRELIMO by the end of the 1960s and early 1970s prevailed over other components of Mozambican nationalism both on the field of the liberation war and at the diplomatic level. This leadership was highly cosmopolitan and implemented a vibrant diplomacy within the mechanisms of the Cold War worldwide.
FRELIMO was supported by newly independent African governments that were active in promoting the independence of African people in countries still under colonial rule (e.g., Tanzania, Algeria, Zambia), and then by governments from the Eastern bloc of the Cold War as well as by solidarity committees in the West (e.g., United States, Sweden and Nordic countries, United Kingdom, Italy). Within these contexts, FRELIMO secured a key political legitimacy as the genuine liberation movement of Mozambique, joined by other movements of the Portuguese colonies, South Africa, Namibia, and Southern Rhodesia—and opposed by a rival group of liberation movements from those countries. This status was also recognized among such important international organizations as Conferência das Organizações Nacionalistas das Colónias Portuguesas (CONCP), Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation (AAPSO), World Peace Council (WPC), Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and, eventually, the UN. Probably, the networks of solidarity with FRELIMO that developed in the West played a key role in the defeat of the Portuguese regime and in establishing the independence of Mozambique, since a number of Western European countries were formally allied with Portugal within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance.
Article
Joshua Nkomo
Eliakim Sibanda
Joshua Nkomo was a dominant force in the anticolonial independence movement in colonial Rhodesia between 1949 and 1980, and then a major political figure in independent Zimbabwe from 1980 until his death on July 1, 1999. Four historical themes emerge, however, themes that form the context of Nkomo’s life and work and that have intersected in the larger story of Zimbabwe’s independence. First is the politics of the state, which revolves around the question of state power and who controls it, and which has ethnicity as its subtext. Second is the struggle over property ownership, pitting the haves against the have-nots, which has informed class formation. Third is the politics of land, which has likewise informed the nature of class formation and political cleavages. Fourth is the theme of ethnicity and race, especially pitting one ethnicity or race against another. Nkomo rose from a railway welfare officer to lead a militant union, and then three political parties between 1957 and 1987. He made significant contributions to the downfall of a white supremacist colonial regime in Zimbabwe. After independence, the anticolonial revolutionary became a statesman who championed both reconciliation and social justice until his death in 1999. After independence, Nkomo, would become a Member of Parliament, Minister of Home Affairs, and rose eventually to be Vice-President of Zimbabwe.
Article
The Land Question in South Africa: 1913 and Beyond
Cherryl Walker
Since 1913, the “land question” in South Africa has revolved around the major inequalities in access to and rights over land between the black majority and the white minority of the population, and how these disparities should best be understood and overcome. The roots of this inequality are commonly traced back to the promulgation of the Natives Land Act in June 1913, which provided the legal framework for the subsequent division of the country into a relatively prosperous white heartland and a cluster of increasingly impoverished black reserves on the periphery. Historians have cautioned against according this legislation undue weight within the much longer history of colonization, capitalist penetration, and agrarian change that has shaped modern South Africa. The spatial divide of white core and black periphery has, however, been central to the political economy of 20th-century South Africa. Beginning in the 1950s, the apartheid government attempted to maintain white hegemony, drive an urban–industrial economy, and deflect political resistance by turning these reserves into the ethnic “homelands” of African people. This involved increasingly repressive policies of urban influx control, population relocation, and the tribalization of local administration in the reserves.
Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the post-apartheid state has struggled to develop an effective land reform program that can address the crosscutting demands for land redistribution, local development, and representative government that this history has bequeathed. For many analysts, these ongoing challenges mean that “the land question” remains unresolved; for others it means that the question is itself in need of reformulation. In order to review these developments, a three-part periodization is used to organize the discussion: (1) the segregation era (1910–1948), (2) the apartheid era (1948–1990), and (3) the transition to democracy and the post-apartheid era that began in 1990.
Article
Legacies of South Africa’s Apartheid Wars
Gary Baines
South Africa’s Apartheid Wars had a profound effect on shaping the postcolonial landscape of the region, as well as the country itself. This much is evident from the difficulties encountered by the liberation movements in making the transition to government. The armed struggle and the experience of exile left a deep imprint on these movements and shaped them as political organizations. They have not been able to divest themselves of internal hierarchical structures, as well as intolerant and authoritarian tendencies. On the other hand, the counterrevolutionary war waged by the apartheid state’s security nexus delayed decolonization and shaped the political culture considerably. The militarization of South African society undermined civil-military relations, contributed to a legacy of corruption in the defense sector, and proved detrimental to the practices of governance.
The integration of the armed formations of the state and the liberation movements into new national armies were fraught processes. Reconciliation became the byword in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa, but only the latter established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as an exercise in nation-building. However, cohesion and consensus remain elusive as the fault lines of colonial and apartheid society are still very much in evidence. Moreover, the governments of the region harbor resentment about South Africa’s dominance of the region and remain suspicious of its intentions. Therefore, relations between these states, and groups within them, are still prickly. The conflicts might be over but the countries of the region are still having to deal with contestations over their remembrance and commemoration.
Article
Mia Couto
Irene Marques
Mia Couto (b. 1955) is a contemporary Mozambican writer and biologist. Writing in Portuguese, Couto is the most prolific writer from Mozambique, and his works have been translated into more than thirty languages. He is the author of over thirty books, including poetry, short stories, chronicles, creative essays, novels, and children’s and young adult books. His works have won several national and international prizes and have been adapted to film, theater, and television. His topics cover Mozambican culture and religion, ontologies and epistemologies, orality, Portuguese colonialism, anticolonial resistance, wars of liberation, personal and collective identity, postcolonial nation building, civil war, memory, trauma, violence and amnesia, neoliberal international agendas of development, cultural syncretism, African “authenticity,” corruption, women’s oppression and agency, and gender fluidity. He is considered a highly innovative writer, known for inventing a plethora of neologisms; his literary creations show an intrinsic link between orality, poetry, and an evolving and dynamic language that draws heavily from the multiple cultural and linguistic realities of Mozambique. This creative linguistic manipulation is primarily present in his earlier work. However, Couto’s script is far from being a mere play on aesthetics—it is a literature fundamentally preoccupied with political, cultural, historical, and pragmatic matters, reflecting important aspects of Mozambique’s past and present historical and sociopolitical contexts.
Article
Namibia since Independence
Henning Melber
The Republic of Namibia was a latecomer in the decolonization of Africa. Its trajectory has also been exceptional in other ways. The first three decades after independence in 1990 were characterized by the political hegemony of a former liberation movement as government in a multiparty constitutional democracy under the rule of law. In contrast to other anticolonial movements, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO of Namibia) consolidated and further entrenched its power in successive national, and regional and local, elections until 2014 and 2015, respectively. But the presidential and National Assembly election results in November 2019 and those of the Regional and Local Authorities in November 2020 marked a rupture. The shifting grounds indicate a gradual erosion of the party’s credibility. Contributing factors were the lack of delivery in governance and, in particular, the effects of growing socioeconomic constraints. An initial period of economic growth based on resource extraction mainly benefited the old and new elites in collusion with international companies. The policies of those in government and control over the state displayed the limits to socioeconomic transformation for the majority of people, who had expected more material benefits from self-determination. As a result, there has been a growing lack of trust in governance, and new contestants have entered the political sphere. It remains to be seen how this new political landscape will shape the country’s social contract and democratic contestation.
Article
Pepetela
Alexandra Santos
Pepetela (b. 1941) is one of the most awarded Angolan writers and a successful creator of the myths and epics sustaining Angolan identity in the symbolic domain. He has played many roles throughout his life, from revolutionary socialism ideologist to guerrilla fighter, government member, university professor, and civic activist. Most notably, he is a prolific writer; his dozens of novels, chronicles, plays, and fables constitute an incomparable testimony to 20th-century Angola. His writing articulates a strong sociological awareness with a world vision that feeds on the ideological currents of nationalism and socialism. This surprising junction makes the basis for literary works in which the struggle for independence, the construction of the Angolan nation, the socialist revolution, and social analysis assume great relevance, as does the quest for the symbolic roots of national identity. Pepetela has been the most thorough explorer of Angolan historical sources and autochthonous myths, from which he assembled narratives that are considered foundational to the nation. His work is the object of numerous academic essays in several languages. Just as importantly, he is a favorite among readers worldwide.
Article
Political Complexity North and South of the Zambezi River
Maria Schoeman
Complexity flourished in several regions north and south of the Zambezi during the second millennium ce. Four of these localities are explored here: the Greater Shashe-Limpopo region, the Zimbabwean plateau, the Upemba depression–Katanga area, and the Maravi state. Politics in all four regions were fluid, and processes of fusion and fission sporadically reconfigured these socio-political landscapes. Fluidity also manifested in the relocation of political centers as political loyalties were realigned, economic networks shifted, and, in the more recent period, colonial expansion affected southern Africa. Political fluidity, however, does not mean population discontinuities. Settlement and material culture distribution patterns in the Greater Shashe-Limpopo region suggest that networking between communities was vital to the development of complexity in the region. This included interaction between first peoples and newcomers, which has also been noted in the Mutapa, Khami, and Venda polities. There also was substantial continuity in local Upemba populations throughout the occupation sequence, irrespective of the configuration of political control.
Political power was closely entwined with economic wealth in these regions. Economic commodities, however, varied. In the Greater Shashe-Limpopo region and on the Zimbabwean plateau, cattle were important objects in the accumulation of wealth. In these economies cattle had intrinsic value but were also used to facilitate other forms of wealth generation, such as trade and mining. Cattle keeping played a less significant role north of the Zambezi. In the Upemba basin, salt and metal production furnished important trade goods, but trade in these products did not drive the development of complexity. In contrast, the expansion of Maravi political power was entangled with Indian Ocean trade networks.
Article
Portuguese Colonialism in Africa
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo
The Portuguese colonial empire was the first and the last European empire overseas, from the conquest of Ceuta (1415), in Morocco, North Africa, until the formal handover of Macau to the People’s Republic of China (1999). From the coastline excursions in Africa and the gradual establishment of trade routes in Asia and in the Indian Ocean and the related emergence of the Estado da Índia (the Portuguese empire east of the Cape of Good Hope), to the colonization projects in the Americas, namely, in Brazil, and, in the second half of the 19th century, in Africa, the Portuguese empire assumed diverse configurations. All of these entailed expansionist projects and motivations—political, missionary, military, commercial—with changing dynamics, strongly conditioned by local circumstances and powers. In Africa, actual colonization was a belated and convoluted process, which started and ended with violent conflicts, the so-called pacification campaigns of the 1890s, and the liberation wars of the 1960s and 1970s. In Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe, the Portuguese enacted numerous modalities of formalized rule, based on political, military, and religious apparatuses. These forms of control engaged with and impacted on local societies differently. However, until the very end, coercive labor and tax exactions, racial discrimination, authoritarian politics, and economic exploitation were the fundamental pillars of Portuguese colonialism in Africa.
Article
Samora Moisés Machel, 1933–1986
Colin Darch
Samora Moisés Machel was born in 1933 in Portuguese-ruled colonial Mozambique and trained as a nursing auxiliary. He joined the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Mozambique Liberation Front, or Frelimo) soon after its foundation in 1962. After military training in Algeria, he quickly became commander of the group’s armed forces, and when Eduardo Mondlane, Frelimo’s first leader, was assassinated in 1969, he was appointed president the following year. A talented but authoritarian politico-military strategist, he improved discipline within Frelimo and led it in the negotiations for unconditional independence that followed the April 25, 1974, coup in Portugal. At independence on June 25, 1975, he became the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique, a one-party state dedicated to radical social transformation. Machel was a convinced Marxist, which he attributed to his experience of racism and discrimination under Portuguese rule, and in February 1977, Frelimo officially became a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. In the immediate post-independence period, Frelimo launched broad educational and health programs while attempting to shepherd the rural population into large “communal villages” where production could be organized along cooperative lines and social services provided at scale. However, the liberation war in neighboring Rhodesia, along Mozambique’s long western flank, destabilized these programs, especially after the Rhodesians set up and supported a domestic rebel movement, the Mozambique National Resistance (the MNR or Renamo), which carried out sabotage operations in the late 1970s. After Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, South Africa adopted Renamo, which began gradually to develop support based on local resentment of government policy. The war dragged on and even intensified throughout the early 1980s, despite the signing by Mozambique and South Africa in 1984 of the Nkomati Accord, supposedly ushering in an era of good neighborliness. The conflict imposed crippling costs on Mozambique’s economy and society. In October 1986, Machel died in an air disaster at Mbuzini. Machel was a man of sharp intelligence and a gifted and persuasive orator, who as president was nevertheless intolerant of opposition. In 1994, several years after his death, the Frelimo government negotiated a pluralist dispensation with Renamo, having by that time effectively abandoned its socialist project.
Article
South Africa’s African National Congress in Exile
Colin Bundy
The African National Congress (ANC) operated in exile for just over three decades, from 1960 to mid-1990. It developed from a flimsy and inexperienced “external mission” to an exiled organization caring for thousands of full-time members and maintaining an army, Umkontho weSizwe (MK), which by the 1980s numbered about 5000 soldiers. Based predominantly in Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola (though with members and offices in many other countries), the exiled movement established schools, hospitals, farms, and factories; it published and broadcast energetically; it lobbied for international support and established a diplomatic presence in dozens of countries. By the late 1980s, it was clear to the apartheid regime that it could not defeat or ignore the ANC but must enter negotiations with the organization. Equally, it was clear to the exiled leadership of the ANC that armed struggle relying on Soviet bloc funding was no longer feasible. Negotiations, and not military victory or seizure of power, was the only available option.
The ANC was pushed to the brink of survival but recovered, cohered, and regrouped, especially after 1976 when its membership and influence increased substantially. By 1990, through a combination of popular support inside South Africa and international solidarity, the ANC was swept to the status of government-in-waiting. Yet the exile experience was by no means an uninterrupted success story. The organization was variously beset by factionalism, rank-and-file disquiet, security failings, and an armed wing that saw little armed action. The ANC’s exile experience has generated controversy: over its relations with the South African Communist Party in exile; its human rights record, especially in the MK camps; and a political culture shaped by secrecy, militarism, and hierarchy. The “reinvention” of the organization in exile was a striking achievement—and it came at a cost.
Article
Southern Africa before Colonial Times
John Wright
Perspectives on southern Africa’s past in the eras before the establishment of European colonial rule have been heavily shaped by political conflicts rooted in South Africa’s history as a society of colonial settlement. The archive of available evidence—archaeological finds, recorded oral materials, and colonial documents—together with the concepts used to give them meaning are themselves products of heavily contested historical processes. Archaeological evidence indicates that Homo sapiens, descended from earlier forms of hominin, was present in southern Africa at least 200,000 years ago, but many members of the South African public reject evolutionary notions of the past. From about 200 bce onward, groups of hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and farmers were in constant contact in southern Africa. A widespread European settlerist view, based on deep-seated stereotypes of warring races and “tribes,” is that they were permanently in conflict: historical evidence shows that in fact they interacted and intermingled in a range of different ways. Interactions became yet more complex from the mid-17th century as settlers from Europe gradually encroached from the southwest Cape Colony into most of southern Africa. In some areas, settler graziers sought to wipe out groups of hunter-gatherers, and to break up pastoralist groups and enserf their members; in other areas, particularly in the shifting colonial frontier zone, mixed groups, including settlers, made a living from raiding and trading. In the 19th century, groups of settler farmers sought to subjugate African farmers, and seize their land and labor. Contrary to a common view, they had only limited success until, in the later 19th century, Britain, the major colonial power in the region, threw its weight decisively behind British settler expansion. Other Europeans—traders and missionaries in particular—worked with Africans to make profits and save souls. Some Africans sought to resist loss of land and sovereignty; others sought to take advantage of the colonial presence to seek new political allies, loosen ties to chiefs, find wage work, produce for the market, join churches, seek a book education, and incorporate Christian ideas into their politics. Even before they came under colonial domination, many chiefs sought to move from a long-established politics based on alliance making to a politics based on what Europeans called “tribal” rule.
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