Renamo and Mozambique
Renamo and Mozambique
- Corinna JentzschCorinna JentzschLeiden University
Summary
The history of independent Mozambique is a history of war and peace, and it is closely intertwined with the history of the main opposition movement Renamo (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana), which formed as an armed movement and transitioned into a political party. Mozambique gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975 after a ten-year liberation struggle. The main liberation movement Frelimo (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) became the ruling party and introduced far-reaching social, economic, and political reforms. These reforms generated discontent, which contributed to the formation of opposition movements in the center of the country. From the late 1970s onwards, an armed movement, later known as Renamo, gained ground in central Mozambique and fought a guerrilla war against the Mozambican government. Renamo received support from Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and apartheid South Africa who sought to undermine Frelimo aid to liberation movements in their respective countries. It was only in 1992 that Renamo and Frelimo reached a settlement with the help of international mediators, with a path to multiparty elections in 1994. Since then, Renamo has participated in elections as a political party but has never won a majority in parliament nor was it able to claim the presidency. Political conflict between Frelimo and Renamo has never subsided, with Renamo regularly protesting election results and alleging fraud. Tensions escalated in 2013 and led to low-level conflict in the central region. A ceasefire agreement in 2014 and a unilateral truce by Renamo in December 2016 ended that conflict, but a peace accord was only struck after Afonso Dhlakama—president of Renamo—died of natural causes in 2018. Since then, tensions have remained due to armed activity by a Renamo breakaway movement and a slow demobilization process, and peace remains precarious. Renamo’s transition from an armed movement into a political movement, similarly to Mozambique’s transition from war to peace, has not yet fully materialized.
Subjects
- Economic History
- Political History
The Contested Origins of Renamo
Renamo is a political opposition party in Mozambique, whose origins lie in the sixteen-year war that the country experienced between 1976 and 1992. Renamo’s precise origins are contested and have given rise to much scholarly debate and political polemic. Some claim that Renamo had purely external origins and its emergence was the consequence of a destabilization campaign by Mozambique’s neighboring countries, seeking to force Frelimo to end its support of liberation movements in their own countries. Others maintain that the internal sources of conflict over Mozambique’s political future right after independence were much more important for Renamo’s emergence in the mid-1970s than external support. There is much evidence in Mozambique’s history that shows that significant support from Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa ensured the rebel movement’s emergence and early survival. However, domestic sources of conflict and popular support for the rebels became important in the early to mid-1980s, when the war turned into a civil war, reaching all ten provinces of Mozambique (see figure 1).1
Regional dynamics played an important role in Renamo’s formation in the mid-1970s. Liberation movements in Africa have a history of supporting each other’s struggles. For example, Frelimo and other Mozambican liberation movements received substantial support from independent Tanzania. Once Frelimo was able to hold territory inside colonial Mozambique during the independence struggle, these areas became safe havens for liberation movements in neighboring states such as the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) in Southern Rhodesia. When Mozambique became independent, it also provided support to the African National Congress (ANC) that was fighting the apartheid regime of South Africa. To counter Frelimo’s support of ZANLA and target ZANLA camps inside Mozambique, the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) created local armed units, termed the Selous Scouts.2 When the CIO decided that it was time that these armed units collect more intelligence inside Mozambique and conduct more independent operations against the Mozambican state as a prime supporter of ZANLA, they began recruiting exiled Mozambicans in Rhodesia into what became known as the Mozambique National Resistance, later known under its Mozambican acronym Renamo. Among the recruits were former agents of the Portuguese colonial intelligence organization (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, PIDE), soldiers (among them many Africans), and white Portuguese settlers.3 The CIO’s radio program (Voz da África Livre, “Voice of Free Africa”) mobilized potential political opponents inside Mozambique—those who Frelimo had declared enemies of the state and sent to reeducation camps.4 Renamo’s first independent operations took place in December 1978, and by 1979, the armed group operated from within Mozambique close to the Rhodesian border, staging ambushes on civilian buses and army vehicles and attacking military targets.5
While Rhodesian recruitment and training proved important for Renamo’s emergence, apartheid South Africa’s support ensured Renamo’s survival in the early 1980s. When the Rhodesian war ended and Zimbabwe was created in 1979, the Mozambican state staged an offensive against Renamo and the rebel organization’s future was at peril. The Mozambican army killed Renamo’s first leader, André Matsangaíssa, in 1979, during an attack on the rebel base on top of the Gorongosa mountain in the Sofala province. The army largely destroyed the rebel organization with the capture of the Sitatonga base in the Manica province in June 1980, killing almost three hundred men and capturing three hundred more—most of these men were combatants who had recently moved to Mozambique from Rhodesia.6 After Zimbabwe’s independence and end of its assistance to Renamo, South Africa sought to ensure the movement’s survival for its own counterinsurgency purposes and stepped up its support. South Africa’s goal was to wage a destabilization war against the Mozambican government, as it provided the ANC sanctuary within Mozambique. Following an internal power struggle that killed further Renamo troops and commanders, Afonso Dhlakama became the movement’s new president. Dhlakama was a former Frelimo commander who had been ousted from the army at the same time as his predecessor Matsangaíssa. South African support via training, and the supply of equipment and weapons enabled Renamo to resume activity in most of the sparsely populated areas of the Manica and Sofala provinces by 1981.7
As a result of South African support, Renamo grew quickly in size and strength. The movement grew from seventy-six combatants in September 1977, to two thousand in early 1980, and then to ten thousand in February 1981.8 The war spread from the center of the country to the southern and northern regions, affecting approximately one third of the country by December 1982.9 During the first half of 1982, Renamo re-established its headquarters in the Gorongosa mountains in northern Sofala. Additional support from Malawi facilitated Renamo’s move north, though the Mozambican government negotiated an end to that support, after which Malawi expelled Renamo fighters from their sanctuaries. In response, Renamo started another offensive to move north in early 1983, finally reaching all northern provinces by mid-1984.
The regional context in which Renamo operated made it difficult for the movement to establish its military and political independence from its external sponsors. This challenge shaped the Mozambican government’s understanding of the emerging rebel threat. Frelimo officials labeled Renamo combatants “armed bandits” and “counterrevolutionaries” to delegitimize the movement politically, and emphasized South Africa’s culpability for destabilizing Mozambique. Nevertheless, when Renamo began to build more bases within Mozambique in the early to mid-1980s, it developed closer relations with the local population, which shaped its political profile.10 The head of Renamo’s external relations, Orlando Cristina, and Renamo’s European spokesperson, Evo Fernandes, wrote a “Manifesto and Program of Renamo,” which clearly positioned Renamo as a pro-West, anti-communist organization.11 The devised goals included multiparty democracy, private enterprise, and rule of law.12 In 1980–1981, Orlando Cristina and Renamo’s president Afonso Dhlakama also conducted a tour through Europe to win international support and credibility. Conservative parties in Europe and the United States were particularly interested in supporting Renamo as an anti-communist movement to undermine the supposedly socialist policies of the Frelimo government of Mozambique. In mid-1982, a National Council was formed as a representative political body.13 However, the movement remained primarily a military one, and military considerations overrode political ones until at least the late 1980s when both sides prepared for a potential peace settlement.14
From External Aggression to Civil War
Renamo’s operations during its expansion across Mozambique took on the character of eradicating the new institutions and policies that Frelimo had introduced right after independence. When gaining power in independent Mozambique, Frelimo introduced far-reaching socioeconomic reforms to pursue its revolutionary Marxist-Leninist project. It prohibited religious practice, abandoned traditional authorities, and introduced communal villages and mass organizations to politically educate, organize, and control the population. The government’s stated goal was to create a “new man” in a continuous, socialist revolution, and declared all those who sought to counter the revolution enemies of the state and put many of them in reeducation camps.15 To target Frelimo, Renamo targeted these new institutions and burned communal villages, pillaged and destroyed schools and health posts, and attacked Frelimo party secretaries and military installations.
Though the political implications of its operations gained Renamo some support from those who suffered under Frelimo rule, like traditional authorities and religious leaders, Renamo’s war was guided by military rather than political considerations. The rebel group developed a centralized, strictly hierarchical organization, which proved effective in controlling different units across the vast territory of operations. Afonso Dhlakama was the commander-in-chief, assisted by a fifteen-member military council composed of three chiefs of staff for the northern, center, and southern zones, ten provincial commanders, and Dhlakama’s personal staff. Provinces were subdivided into two to three regional commands. One regional command consisted of a brigade, which consisted of several battalions (about 250 men), companies (100–150 men), platoons (30 men), and sections (10 men).16
The construction of Renamo bases and its interaction with the local population reflected the group’s centralized military hierarchy. Bases were situated in deep forests and close to a river for water supply, and huts were dispersed under trees. A large number of control posts limited access to the center of the base where the main commander stayed. There was a clear separation between Renamo soldiers and the population. The civilian population did not have access to the actual base, but lived in concentric circles around it, thus serving as a disguise for the base and as a “human shield.”17 These bases were part of Renamo’s “control zones.”18 In areas in which the rebels established some territorial control, such as in the center and north of the country, they mobilized the population and educated them politically, albeit in a limited way. In the occupied zones surrounding the bases, the rebels created a political structure which relied heavily on the cooperation of local chiefs (who Renamo called mambos) to encourage the local population to produce food for the rebels and assist in the transport of supplies to the base. In these areas, the population was closely controlled by the mudjiba (also mujuba, majiba, or madjuhba), a police force recruited locally and armed with machetes and knives. The mudjiba worked closely together with traditional authorities to collect food and intelligence for the main base, and at times also went on missions with the rebel force.19 While this form of organization was characteristic of many areas, there were, of course, regional variations.20
The nature of the relationship that Renamo developed with the local population was mostly coercive, though there was significant variation in the forms of violence across regions, often depending on the level of control the movement had over a territory. In the northern regions where Renamo’s “control zones” were more expansive, abduction and forced resettlement of the population to the areas surrounding its bases were more common than atrocities and homicides.21 Nevertheless, Renamo’s provision of public services such as schools and health posts in these areas remained limited. Where control was more precarious, for example in so-called “tax zones,” the movement’s relation with the population was characterized by the coercive collection of food contributions, the abduction of youths for recruitment, and the perpetration of sexual violence against women. There were also “destruction zones” where frequent attacks destroyed villages and sent residents to flee to safer areas.22 Renamo’s use of atrocities and homicides appeared to be more frequent in the South where the government was able to retain more territorial control. In such areas, rebel violence had a clear strategic goal. Renamo sought to communicate the group’s willingness to dominate by “spreading fear” and demonstrating to the government its “power to hurt.”23
Given the coercive nature of its relationship with the population, Renamo attracted few volunteer fighters for its movement. While the rebels could rely on some volunteers, in particular early on from among the Ndau speakers in the Manica and Sofala provinces close to the Rhodesian border, the armed group came to rely mostly on the forced recruitment of youths, including many children.24 Military units often brought the new recruits to bases in unfamiliar areas far away from their homes to make it difficult for them to flee and find their way back home.25 Leaders provided limited political training for those that could read and write and extensive military training for others. Renamo’s promises of immediate economic benefits and future positions of power—and in many cases also the threat of punishment for defection—convinced the abducted to stay with the armed group.26 Recruitment in the early years mainly focused on able-bodied men to join the military units; it was only after Renamo sought more operational and political independence from South Africa in 1984–1986 that the movement actively (and often forcibly) recruited political and administrative personnel.27
Renamo’s use of violence against civilians and coercive rule made it questionable whether the movement really could rely on genuine popular support. At the same time, the movement had been able to stage successful offensives across the central and northern region and occupy vast areas in the Zambézia and Nampula provinces by the mid-1980s, which would have been difficult without support from the local population. Nevertheless, support for the rebels did not necessarily reflect support for their political and military agenda. Renamo was able to tap into and exploit preexisting local conflicts, and local elites increasingly used the main cleavage of the war as a cover to settle local conflicts. This turned the war from an “external aggression” into a “civil war” as it gave communities a stake in the conflict and pitted neighbors against each other.28 For example, in Nampula, youths saw joining the rebels as a means to escape the social structures they perceived as oppressive, and dissident communities supported Renamo in the hope of overcoming their marginalized status within the Frelimo state.29 In Inhambane, preexisting power rivalries led some communities to support Renamo.30 Due to such local drivers of the violence, the war became a highly “fragmented war.”31
In addition to political considerations, there were also important economic interests that encouraged popular support to Renamo. There is evidence that many poor peasants stayed with the rebels to enjoy better livelihoods.32 Furthermore, independent of any political loyalties, there was also the important aspect of security, which led many to support the rebels. As stated by an academic observer in 1984: “In large measure peasants are trying to save their own skin and will support whichever side will protect them.”33 Overall, reasons for supporting the movement were diverse, and a fear of repercussions when fleeing the rebel force and rebel-controlled zones surely played an important role for remaining with the rebels.34
From a Military to a Political Movement
After offensives and counteroffensives denied victory to the incumbent and the insurgent, the two sides found themselves in a military stalemate by 1988.35 The Mozambican government had tried to undercut South African support to Renamo by signing the Nkomati Accord of 1984 with the government of South Africa. However, the rebel movement did not seem weakened thereafter, and was able to expand to the northern region, in part because it continued to receive supplies from South Africa. After President Samora Machel’s death in October 1986 in an airplane crash, the new president Joaquim Chissano stepped up military pressure on Renamo and tried to win the war. The subsequent government offensive aided by Zimbabwean and Tanzanian troops in the Zambézia province in late 1986 and early 1987 drove Renamo into a defensive position. However, the rebels quickly regrouped and countered the offensive. Renamo managed to occupy many district towns across the Zambézia province and perpetrated the infamous massacre of Homoíne in the Inhambane province on July 18, 1987, where more than four hundred people died during the attack and the subsequent fighting.36
When it became clear that the war could only be ended by a negotiated settlement, the government sought the help of the Mozambican Christian Council (Conselho Cristão de Moçambique, CCM). The CCM had already received permission from President Samora Machel to begin a secret dialogue with Renamo after negotiations for a ceasefire in the wake of the Nkomati Accord had failed. In 1988, the council announced the creation of a Commission for Peace and Reconciliation, consisting of representatives of the CCM and the Catholic Church.37 Both parties committed to the peace process in 1989: Frelimo developed a plan of twelve principles for peace negotiations, gave a mandate to its leadership to engage in negotiations with Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Daniel arap Moi of Kenya as mediators, and dropped its commitment to Marxism-Leninism at the Fifth Frelimo Congress in July 1989.38 Renamo members formally approved the movement’s participation in the negotiations at its first congress in June 1989 in Gorongosa.39 Renamo’s delegation to the peace talks in Rome was led by Raul Domingos, the former military chief of staff for the southern region. Frelimo sent Armando Guebuza, interior minister under Samora Machel, to head its delegation in the negotiations. Guebuza would later serve as president of Mozambique from 2005 to 2015.
The peace process proved slow, however, as developments on the battlefield jeopardized progress. In the Zambézia province, communities responded to Renamo’s violence in 1989–1990 by forming a local militia, which was successful in driving the rebels out of long-held district towns in the east of the province, but soon triggered a Renamo counteroffensive that killed the militia leader.40 The Catholic community of Sant’Egidio in Rome hosted the first round of negotiations in July 1990, and a partial ceasefire was signed on December 1, 1990. However, both parties accused each other of violating the ceasefire, and violent activity continued throughout the country. The anticipation of multiparty elections, initially set for 1991, incentivized both sides to bring as much territory as possible under their control.41 In June 1991, party leaders and marginalized army generals’ discontent with the reform and peace process staged a coup against President Chissano, which was aborted but further slowed down the peace process. It took another year until the final and twelfth round of negotiations in June 1992 brought about the signing of the General Peace Agreement in Rome on October 4, 1992.
Apart from a few local exceptions, the peace agreement brought instant peace to Mozambique, which confirmed the strict military hierarchy of Renamo’s organization and the power of its leader. The violence (and related famines) had resulted in an estimated one million deaths and over five million displaced. Moreover, 60 percent of primary schools and 40 percent of health posts were destroyed.42 The peace was ensured by a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission, which sent eight thousand troops to Mozambique (on UN Security Council Resolution 797); the peace agreement put particular emphasis on the demobilization and reintegration of combatants, and demobilization began in March 1994.43 Dealing with over ninety thousand soldiers and combatants—sixty-three thousand government forces and thirty thousand rebel forces—the UN “embarked on one of the most comprehensive reintegration programmes ever attempted in the context of a United Nations peacekeeping operation.”44 Demobilization packages included eighteen months of a monthly subsidy, agricultural tools and supplies, and vocational training and advice, and demobilized combatants could settle with their families wherever they wanted. The Rome agreement stipulated the formation of a national army, which was comprised of thirty thousand soldiers, with former combatants from both the Renamo and Frelimo forces. However, only 12,195 former combatants (8,533 from the Mozambican armed forces (Forças Armadas de Moçambique, FAM/Forças Populares de Libertação de Moçambique, FPLM) and 3,662 from Renamo) volunteered to be integrated into the new army.45
Due to the complexity of the cantonment and demobilization process and the goal to finalize it before elections, Mozambique’s first multiparty elections were only held in October 1994 (though the goal of forming a new army before the elections was still not achieved). Frelimo narrowly won the parliamentary elections, and Joaquim Chissano was elected president with 53 percent of the vote, compared to 33 percent for Renamo’s Afonso Dhlakama (see figure 2).46 The elections meant the end of the UN peacekeeping mission, though parts of the reintegration program continued until 1997, after protests in 1994 and 1995 by discontented ex-combatants in barracks and assembly centers showed that reintegration had not yet been finalized.47
In time for elections, Renamo had completed its transformation from a guerrilla movement into a political party with extensive support from international donors, but also by nurturing a political platform since before the end of the war. When negotiations for a ceasefire after the Nkomati Accord in 1984 failed, the movement created the office of the “political commissar” to explain to combatants, and later also to the population, why there was war and why negotiations with the government might be necessary.48 The political commissars were supported by political delegates who were supposed to create closer links with their communities.49 To have the necessary political skills among its members to fill these political positions, Renamo increasingly targeted well-educated people for recruitment into its ranks.50 For instance, between 1989–1991, Renamo promised one hundred to two hundred secondary school students scholarships to study abroad to incentivize them to join the movement.51 The clandestine urban networks Renamo had developed throughout the war were also crucial in recruiting party delegates after the peace accord.52 But the movement also sought to generate support from abroad, by creating lobbying organizations in foreign countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom, often referred to as Renamo’s “external wing.”53 The Renamo First Congress in 1989 was not only crucial for facilitating the peace process, but also for confirming and formalizing these political administrative changes that the organization had undergone in the years before, and integrating the internal and external wings to ensure more leadership control over external activities.54 Renamo’s success of winning one third of the vote in the 1994 elections demonstrated that, contrary to conventional views of the movement as a purely military one, there was an important pro-Renamo social base.55

Figure 2. Afonso Dhlakama, Renamo leader in Maringue, Mozambique, 1993.
Renamo’s transition into a political party, and the demobilization and reintegration process of its former combatants were considered a success by international donors and an example for future UN missions. However, there were also important shortcomings that shaped the future relations between the conflicted parties. First, during the war, in 1987, Frelimo had tried to bring an end to the war by offering an amnesty to Renamo fighters. After the war, neither side was interested in investigating war crimes and engaging in a truth and reconciliation process. While Renamo’s atrocities were often well known, the Frelimo army had also engaged in severe violence against civilians during the war, but tried to retain its image of the victim of a conflict of foreign aggression. Due to this lack of a national reconciliation process, the social reintegration of former fighters into communities took on a local character and included purification rites and other rituals.56 While such activities may have allowed former fighters to live a civilian life, the neglect of transitional justice has contributed to increased polarization in Mozambique, which has hampered reconciliation and democratization efforts.57 Second, Renamo remained an “armed political party” due to the fact that the 1992 peace agreement allowed Dhlakama to retain an armed force to protect himself and because the movement had not handed in all its weapons.58 The Rome agreement had stipulated that Renamo could retain an armed force for the “immediate personal security of its top leaders” in the period after the signing of the accord until the first multiparty elections.59 This group had never been completely demobilized and was estimated to comprise about 150 men in 2012.60 In addition, the UN mission had failed to verify the destruction of weapons caches in rural areas.61 The incomplete demobilization and destruction of small arms has remained an important concern for the Frelimo government ever since.
As a consequence of the limited nature of the reconciliation and demobilization process, tensions between Frelimo and the new rebel-turned-party have remained a constant feature of postwar politics in Mozambique.62 Renamo alleged fraud in the first elections in 1994 and threatened to boycott parliament. Though the party and its presidential candidate Afonso Dhlakama were able to show strong results in the elections in 1994 and 1999, the party lost some parliamentary seats in 2004, and many more in 2009 (see tables 1 and 2). Its main strongholds proved to be the regions where it had been able to control the most territory during the war—the Nampula, Zambézia, and Sofala provinces. But due to the centralized nature of governance in Mozambique, which meant, for example, that the Mozambican president appointed provincial governors, such support could not be translated into political positions and power. Coming close to winning the presidency in 1999, Dhlakama grew increasingly frustrated about the limits of his political successes. Accusations of election fraud became more forceful after subsequent elections and were accompanied by violent threats—a return of Renamo “to the bush” where loyal war veterans were supposedly waiting for the movement’s leader’s orders.
Frustrations did not just remain at the leadership level. The many promises that Renamo had made during the war created lots of problems after it ended. Combatants and supporters had developed lots of expectations about what kind of life they would be able to lead once the war was over—with access to money and jobs—which Renamo could not fulfill.63 People dependent on Renamo patronage networks were left waiting for the party to take care of them and their future.64
The party did succeed at the municipal level, winning four municipalities when it participated for the first time in municipal elections in 2003, which haunted Frelimo, but it did not manage to build on these successes. Instead, a breakaway party formed in 2009, the MDM (Movimento Democrático de Moçambique), led by former Renamo politicians, who posed a threat to the leadership of Afonso Dhlakama. MDM’s leader, Daviz Simango, had won the mayor’s office in Beira in the Sofala province for Renamo in 2003. As mayor, he was able, with the help of international donors, to implement successful projects for the city’s residents and became a prominent figure, successfully overcoming all obstacles that Frelimo tried to confront him with.65 Simango’s success threatened Dhlakama’s dominance within Renamo, and so Dhlakama supported a different candidate for subsequent municipal elections in 2008, after which Simango was expelled from Renamo. After winning the mayoral elections as an independent candidate in 2008, Simango formed his own party, the MDM. While the new party first enjoyed lots of national and international support and could trigger several defections by prominent Renamo members, it was not able to deliver on its promises. In the wake of Renamo’s resurgence in time for the municipal elections in 2018, some of those defectors returned to Renamo.
Though Renamo’s political performance—in elections, but also as members of parliament—remained disappointing for many, the party did not fall apart but remained an important political force throughout the years. Much of it had to do with the charismatic leadership of Afonso Dhlakama and his ability to sufficiently threaten the Frelimo establishment to remain relevant.66 But Renamo members also developed a strong loyalty to their party, which they rarely gave up as they remained integrated in the party’s social network—and were often shunned by Frelimo-dominated institutions.67 But Dhlakama’s central role for the movement raised questions after the leader’s death in May 2018 about the party’s future under new leadership.
Table 1. Parliamentary Election Results of the Parties Represented in Parliament (Election Results in Percentage of the Vote and Seats)
1994 |
1999 |
2004 |
2009 |
2014 |
2019 |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Frelimo |
44,33 (129) |
48,54 (133) |
62,03 (160) |
74,66 (191) |
55,68 (144) |
70,78 (184) |
Renamo |
37,78 (112) |
38,81 (117) |
29,73 (90) |
17,69 (51) |
32,95 (89) |
22,71 (60) |
MDM |
|
|
|
3,93 (8) |
8,4 (17) |
4,24 (6) |
Source: Secretariado Técnico de Administração Eleitoral (STAE)
Table 2. Presidential Election Results for the Two Main Contending Parties (Results in Percentages of the Vote)
1994 |
1999 |
2004 |
2009 |
2014 |
2019 |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Frelimo |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Joaquim Chissano |
53,30 |
52,29 |
|
|
|
|
Armando Guebuza |
|
|
63,74 |
75,01 |
|
|
Filipe Nyusi |
|
|
|
|
57,00 |
73,46 |
Renamo |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Afonso Dhlakama |
33,73 |
47,71 |
31,74 |
16,41 |
36,60 |
|
Ossufo Momade |
|
|
|
|
|
21,48 |
Source: Secretariado Técnico de Administração Eleitoral (STAE)
From Renewed Tensions to the End of the Dhlakama Era
Renamo’s president Afonso Dhlakama accused Frelimo of vote rigging in all elections after the peace accord. When his party lost a large number of votes in the 2009 elections, he retreated to Nampula city in the North. From there, in 2011, he threatened to reassemble demobilized Renamo combatants in camps and stage large-scale demonstrations to “peacefully” overthrow the government, so that the country no longer “belongs to Frelimo” and can be “returned” to the people.68 In March 2012, Dhlakama’s presidential guard and Frelimo security forces clashed at the Renamo headquarters in Nampula, where hundreds of Renamo supporters had assembled and presumably waited for payment for a “second demobilization.”69 After this clash, Dhlakama returned to Gorongosa to the area of the main Renamo base during the war, where former combatants had been living and waiting for Dhlakama’s orders.
These tensions escalated in 2013, when Renamo-affiliated groups clashed with government forces in the southern province of Sofala. On April 3, 2013, the special intervention force (Força de Intervenção Rápida, FIR) attempted to disperse several hundred former Renamo combatants who had gathered around the local party headquarters in Muxúnguè. Renamo members retaliated with an attack on the local police post and killed a few members of the FIR, and staged ambushes on military and government vehicles on the main highway, EN1, from a base close to Muxúnguè over the following weeks and months.70 Negotiations between Renamo and government representatives led to important adaptations to the electoral law in time for municipal elections in November 2013, an informal truce in July 2014, and a provisional agreement in August 2014 in time for presidential and parliamentary elections the following October. The violence had cost sixty lives and wounded several hundred people.71 Commentaries at the time emphasized that Renamo made the end of these hostilities dependent on changes in the electoral law and the composition of the military in order to position some of the Renamo leadership into senior posts with regular salaries. According to these analyses, Dhlakama was keen to receive a share of the riches of the country that the Frelimo leadership had benefitted from.72
The low-level conflict did not seem to be supported by local communities across Mozambique, but was foremost an elite conflict between Dhlakama and Mozambique’s President Armando Guebuza, resulting in elite bargains that did not benefit the common citizen.73 Communication between the central leadership and party units in rural areas seemed poor, as Renamo members had not heard of Dhlakama’s initial proclamation to stage a “peaceful revolution” in 2011.74 In general, before tensions escalated in 2013, Mozambicans did not want another armed conflict. However, the increasing dominance of the Frelimo party in state institutions and economic structures, political exclusion of the opposition, the unfinished demobilization process that had excluded many former combatants from receiving benefits, and the expectation that newly discovered natural resources would probably only benefit the already-rich encouraged some Mozambicans to consider Renamo’s struggle as legitimate.75
One of these grievances, the proper demobilization of Renamo combatants, has been a recurring theme of contention over the years, and Renamo has used the threat to hamper efforts of demobilization as a tactical move. Renamo forces were able to stage attacks against government infrastructure and military targets in 2013 because the movement had kept an armed force after the 1992 peace accord and could access weapons caches from the war in rural areas.76 The August 2014 agreement sought to demobilize and reintegrate these armed forces into the national army, but this demobilization never materialized due to increasing tensions after the October elections. Although the party and Dhlakama as presidential candidate made significant gains in the 2014 elections (see tables 1 and 2), Dhlakama rejected the results and demanded that Renamo take power in the provinces he claimed to have won, including Manica, Nampula, Niassa, Sofala, Tete, and Zambézia (see figure 3).77 Until he could attain autonomy over these provinces, the Renamo leader made clear, he would not move forward with the demobilization of his forces. The year 2015 saw more clashes between Renamo and government forces, and even two attempts on Dhlakama’s life, after which Dhlakama fled to his hideout in Satungira in the Sofala province and violence escalated again.78 This second round of fighting was more vicious than the first, resulting in an estimated one hundred lives lost, over ten thousand refugees who fled to Malawi, and many internally displaced persons.79
Only one-on-one conversations between Dhlakama and the Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi brought about another agreement to end the violence (see figure 4). A threat to Frelimo’s international reputation after a scandal concerning $2 billion in secret loans in early 2016 facilitated international mediation efforts, but they ended without a deal. Dhlakama declared an informal ceasefire in December 2016 after telephone conversations with Nyusi, and extended the ceasefire several times. After Dhlakama died of illness in May 2018, his successor, Ossufo Momade, continued the conversations, and they signed a peace deal on August 6, 2019 (see figure 5). Electoral reforms introduced the direct election of provincial governors, which responded to a long-held demand by Renamo, and many Mozambican experts, to decentralize power.80 However, by introducing the new office of the provincial state representative, the Frelimo government ensured that it would not concede too much power should the opposition gain hold of provincial governorships. Nationwide elections took place in October 2019, but Renamo did not manage to win the majority in provincial assemblies to elect its candidates for provincial governor. Before, during, and after the voting, Renamo alleged significant fraud such as ballot box stuffing and intimidation of voters. International observer missions expressed severe concerns about the fairness of the elections.81 The second part of the agreement concerned demobilization. Renamo submitted a list of 5,221 fighters eligible for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration. However, the process was interrupted from August 2019 until June 2020 and thus is still ongoing in 2020.82

Figure 4. Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama and Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi meet for the first time since 2015, August 2017.

Figure 5. New Renamo leader Ossufo Momade in May 2018, when he was interim leader after Dhlakama’s death.
Current Challenges and Future Directions
Over the years, Renamo was able to benefit from discontent with a state and economy dominated by the ruling Frelimo party elite. Increased authoritarianism and corruption undermined social and economic progress for Mozambicans, who expressed their frustration in repeated protests and riots against increased food and transport prices in 1995, 2008, 2010, and 2012.83 The Rome agreement was not able to overcome the legacy of unequal access to economic and political resources in a highly centralized state.84 Though institutional reforms had introduced multiparty elections, the state and the Frelimo party further merged and opposition parties perceived electoral rules as means to ensure their political exclusion. The discovery of natural resources had promised new wealth for the (entire) country, but questions and concerns arose about its equal distribution. Overall, while the Rome agreement and accompanying measures laid the foundation for peace and democracy, they represented “only the beginning of a process of democratic transition that was itself—and remains—both the subject and the object of struggle.”85
However, Renamo was never able to fully capitalize on these grievances and gain access to a significant amount of political power and patronage. As a political party, Renamo has been “weak, disorganised and largely ineffective.”86 The party had effectively recruited new members for political positions; only 18 of the party’s 112 parliamentary delegates after the first multiparty elections in 1994 had been combatants during the war. But the first parliamentarians had low education: While 24 percent of Frelimo deputies had a university degree, only 6 percent of Renamo deputies did, and 3 percent of Frelimo deputies had less than a fourth-grade education, compared to 11 percent of Renamo deputies.87 While the party developed a strong group of parliamentarians over the years, it remains to be seen in what ways the party can rejuvenate itself under Momade’s leadership.
Dhlakama’s death represented the end of an era, and it uncovered important internal struggles within the party. When Ossufo Momade was elected by representatives of Renamo as the party’s new leader in January 2019, a breakaway movement was formed in the Sofala province—the Renamo Military Junta (Junta Militar da Renamo). It was led by Mariano Nhongo, a former military general who claimed to be the real leader of Renamo and threatened to disturb voting in October 2019 with violence.88 He declared the peace deal between Momade and Nyusi invalid, as it stipulated the complete demobilization of Renamo’s armed forces and reintegration in existing military and police forces. While the elections were able to take place as planned, the group has been made responsible for several attacks that have taken place since the signing of the most recent peace deal and continued throughout 2019 and 2020. This conflict is representative of a more general struggle Renamo has to deal with, between its political and military wings, and competing priorities and interests of these wings. It remains to be seen whether Ossufo Momade—who has been associated more with the political than the military wing—will be able to unify the party.
Discussion of the Literature
Mozambican historiography is contested and frequently used for political purposes by members of both the government and the opposition, and thus it has generated several important debates with both academic and political implications. The first one concerns Renamo’s origins and whether the armed group had any domestic roots. The former chief of the Rhodesian intelligence service, Ken Flower, wrote an influential book, in which he emphasizes that Renamo directly evolved from Rhodesian counterinsurgent units.89 By contrast, the researcher João Cabrita argues that Renamo’s first leader, André Matsangaíssa, who defected to Rhodesia in 1976, suggested the formation of Renamo to the Rhodesians.90 The two views are not completely contradictory, as no Mozambican armed group operated before 1976, but the Rhodesians might have already planned to create a Mozambique-based group before Matsangaíssa defected.91
The second debate is closely related to the first, as it analyzes the balance of external and internal sources of Renamo’s success. A 1989 review of books on Frelimo’s failed postindependence social and economic reforms and the war in Mozambique triggered a lively dispute over the strength of Renamo’s social base among scholars of Southern African politics.92 The author Gervase Clarence-Smith concluded that it was Frelimo’s villagization program, and the related forced resettlement of peasants, that had generated opposition and support for Renamo. For many of the observers who responded to Clarence-Smith’s review, this statement of culpability of Frelimo’s political project was made too forceful. William Minter argues that Renamo lacked a political project, and without external support, there would have been no war; and Paul Fauvet claims that rebel support was not the strongest in areas with many communal villages.93 Other authors, like Otto Roesch and Michel Cahen, emphasized instead the increasing relevance of grievances among Mozambicans in a state that made it difficult to express dissent peacefully.94 Cahen’s argument was supported by studies such as the path-breaking (and contested) book by Christian Geffray, who analyzed the sources of Renamo support among villagers in the Nampula province.95
The debate on Renamo’s social basis generated research into the internal characteristics of Renamo’s organization and the dynamics of violence.96 Alex Vines wrote a comprehensive account of the origins, goals, structure, and regional and international networks of Renamo, which is still used as a main work of reference.97 The debate also shaped writing on the implications of the evolution of Frelimo’s politics and policies.98 A related question was the nature of Renamo’s organization; whether it built on a network of supporters from the ethnic groups of the Ndau, which would give the war an ethnic, and a more domestic, dimension. Many Renamo leaders came from the Ndau, but this resulted from the location in which Rhodesia recruited fighters for its counterinsurgency force, and leadership later diversified and ethnic tensions subsided.99 In general, the dispute over Renamo’s social base, and whether—or from what point in time onwards—the war can be called a “civil war” rather than a “war of external aggression/destabilization” is still not settled.100
What contributed to these heated debates was Renamo’s atrocities and gruesome attacks against civilians, which, Roesch argues, alienated potential supporters.101 There was a spiritual dimension to the war, and rebel’s use of violence had “ritualistic elements which the perpetrators—who in such circumstances see themselves as some kind of brotherhood socially discrete from the victims—believe provides or imputes value or power into the activity.”102 Commentators doubted that the viciousness of Renamo’s violence could have strategic purposes, as it must have been counterproductive to generate support among the targeted population. This puzzle was taken up by scholars who argue that there was regional variation in Renamo’s use of violence between the North and South—in Frelimo strongholds, Renamo violence was more brutal than in areas in which Renamo had more territorial control.103 In the South, the rebels’ use of violence demonstrated their “power to hurt” to show that the government was not able to protect its citizens.104 Others argue that preexisting conflicts rather than territorial control shaped Renamo’s use of violence, as the rebels were able to exploit those tensions.105 Overall, more evidence has emerged that demonstrates that Renamo was not careless about how combatants treated civilians, even though the leadership endorsed an authoritarian way of handling the population under rebel control.106 Research on Renamo and the war conducted in the 2000s and 2010s has drawn attention to the regional and local patterns of violence, mobilization, popular support, and countermovements to Renamo to review the various explanations.107 However, due to the lack of reliable and detailed information on violence across the country, there is no systematic analysis of the patterns of Renamo violence across regions and over time.
Finally, Renamo’s transition into a political party has also drawn much attention from scholars. Much of the scholarship examines the transformations of institutions and attitudes at the elite level.108 Others focus on the return of fighters into rural societies, often by pointing to the important role of traditional purification and reintegration rituals in light of the lack of a formal reconciliation process.109 Renamo as a postwar political and social movement has also come under increased scrutiny in works that analyze the social networks that still link former combatants with the movement, and the political legitimacy of the movement’s claims.110
The debates within Mozambican studies have influenced Mozambican politics, as they speak directly to the legitimacy or illegitimacy of Renamo as a political movement—and also the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the means by which Frelimo pursues its project of building an independent and unified nation.
Primary Sources
Most of the research on Renamo relies on oral histories and interviews with (former) Renamo members and those who engaged with Renamo. There are, however, a few good collections of written sources. Among important primary sources are those in the National Archive in Maputo, which concern Renamo’s interaction with the government and journalistic reports and commentary on Renamo during the war and afterwards. Several scholars have also worked in provincial archives, but the quality of the archives vary a lot, and it remains difficult to locate them and to be granted access to them.111 Primary documents from Renamo are more difficult to get access to, but there are some private collections, such as that by Michel Cahen who obtained access to several log books from Renamo’s Gorongosa headquarters.112 The website by Colin Darch, Mozambique History Net, also comprises a good collection of primary sources from the war.113
Links to Digital Materials
Curated materials by Colin Darch at Mozambique History Net
Internet discussion network H-Luso-Africa
Further Reading
- Cabrita, João M. Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy. New York: Palgrave, 2000.
- Cahen, Michel. Les bandits: un historien au Mozambique, 1994. Lisboa, Portugal: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2002.
- Cahen, Michel. “Não somos bandidos”: a vida diária de uma guerrilha de direita: a Renamo na época do Acordo de Nkomati (1983–1985). Lisbon, Portugal: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2019.
- Cahen, Michel, Eric Morier-Genoud, and Domingos do Rosário, eds. The War Within: New Perspectives on the Civil War in Mozambique, 1976–1992. Suffolk, UK: James Currey, 2018.
- Clarence-Smith, Gervase. “The Roots of the Mozambican Counter-Revolution.” Southern African Review of Books 2, no. 4 (April/May 1989): 7–10.
- Darch, Colin. “Separatist Tensions and Violence in the ‘Model Post-Conflict State’: Mozambique since the 1990s.” Review of African Political Economy 43, no. 148 (2015): 320–327.
- Finnegan, William. A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.
- Geffray, Christian. La cause des armes au Mozambique: anthropologie d’une guerre civile. Paris: Karthala, 1990.
- Hall, Margaret. “The Mozambican National Resistance Movement (Renamo): A Study in the Destruction of an African Country.” Africa 60, no. 1 (1990): 39–68.
- Honwana, Alcinda Manuel. Espíritos vivos, tradições modernas: possessão de espíritos e reintegração social pós-guerra no sul de Moçambique. Maputo, Mozambique: Promédia, 2002.
- Igreja, Victor, Béatrice Dias-Lambranca, and Annemiek Richters. “Gamba Spirits, Gender Relations, and Healing in Post-Civil War Gorongosa, Mozambique.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14, no. 2 (2008): 353–371.
- Jentzsch, Corinna. “Auxiliary Armed Forces and Innovations in Security Governance in Mozambique’s Civil War.” Civil Wars 19, no. 3 (2017): 325–347.
- Manning, Carrie. “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique: Renamo as Political Party.” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (1998): 161–189.
- Manning, Carrie. The Making of Democrats: Elections and Party Development in Postwar Bosnia, El Salvador, and Mozambique. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
- Minter, William. Apartheid’s Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994.
- Nordstrom, Carolyn. A Different Kind of War Story. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.
- O’Laughlin, Bridget. “A base social da guerra em Moçambique.” Estudos Moçambicanos 10 (1992): 107–142.
- Pearce, Justin. “History, Legitimacy, and Renamo’s Return to Arms in Central Mozambique.” Africa 90, no. 4 (2020): 774–795.
- Roesch, Otto. “Renamo and the Peasantry in Southern Mozambique: A View from Gaza Province.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 26, no. 3 (1992): 462–484.
- Schafer, Jessica. Soldiers at Peace: Veterans and Society after the Civil War in Mozambique. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
- Vines, Alex. Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique. London: Centre for Southern African Studies, 1991.
- Vines, Alex. Renamo: From Terrorism to Democracy in Mozambique. London: Centre for Southern African Studies, 1996.
- Wiegink, Nikkie. Former Guerrillas in Mozambique. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.
- Wilson, Kenneth B. “Cults of Violence and Counter-Violence in Mozambique.” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 527–582.
- Young, Tom. “The MNR/Renamo: External and Internal Dynamics.” African Affairs 89, no. 357 (1990): 491–509.
Notes
1. Michel Cahen, “Is Renamo a Popular Movement in Mozambique?,” Southern African Review of Books 2, no. 5 (December–January 1989): 20–21; and Michel Cahen, “Nationalism and Ethnicities: Lessons from Mozambique,” in Ethnicity Kills? The Politics of War, Peace and Ethnicity in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Einar Braathen, Morten Bøås, and Gjermund Sæther (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
2. Alex Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique (London: Centre for Southern African Studies, 1991), 10; and William Minter, Apartheid’s Contras: An Inquiry into the Roots of War in Angola and Mozambique (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994), 124.
3. Joseph Hanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution under Fire (Totowa, NJ: Zed Books, 1984), 219f. Among those first recruits were many of Renamo’s later leaders. Orlando Cristina, a former PIDE agent who had infiltrated Frelimo in Dar es Salaam, later became Renamo’s secretary general. Renamo’s first president, from 1977 onwards, André Matsangaíssa, was a former Frelimo commander and fled a reeducation camp, which he had been sent to for theft. Evo Fernandes, who had PIDE links, became the first European spokesperson in Lisbon.
4. Benedito Luís Machava, “State Discourse on Internal Security and the Politics of Punishment in Post-Independence Mozambique (1975–1983),” Journal of Southern African Studies 37, no. 3 (2011): 593–609.
5. David Alexander Robinson, “Curse on the Land: A History of the Mozambican Civil War,” PhD diss., University of Western Australia, 2006, 105f.; and Hanlon, Mozambique, 221.
6. Hanlon, Mozambique, 221.
7. Hanlon, Mozambique, 225.
8. João M. Cabrita, Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 149, 154; Robinson, “Curse on the Land,” 122; and Phyllis Johnson and David Martin, Destructive Engagement: Southern Africa at War (Harare, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1986), 19.
9. Joseph Hanlon, “Mozambicans Learn to Live with the Silent War,” The Guardian, December 30, 1982, 5.
10. Michel Cahen, “À la recherche de la défaite,” Politique Africaine 112, no. 4 (2008): 164.
11. Renamo, “Manifeste-programme de la Renamo,” Politique Africaine 30 (1988): 106–111.
12. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 77.
13. The council, headed by Afonso Dhlakama and Orlando Cristina, was comprised of twelve men, representing different departments, and later also regions. See Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 80f.
14. William Finnegan, A Complicated War: The Harrowing of Mozambique (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
15. Machava, “State Discourse on Internal Security.”
16. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 81.
17. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 91; and Christian Geffray, La cause des armes au Mozambique: anthropologie d’une guerre civile (Paris: Karthala, 1990).
18. Robert Gersony, “Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts of Principally Conflict-Related Experience in Mozambique,” Bureau for Refugee Programs, US Department of State, 1988.
19. Gersony, “Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts,” 24; and Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 92–93.
20. Cf. Nikkie Wiegink, Former Guerrillas in Mozambique (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020), Chapter 2.
21. Otto Roesch, “Renamo and the Peasantry in Southern Mozambique: A View from Gaza Province,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 26, no. 3 (1992): 464; Finnegan, A Complicated War, 72; Kenneth B. Wilson, “Cults of Violence and Counter-Violence in Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 534.
22. Gersony, “Summary of Mozambican Refugee Accounts,” 24; and Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 92–93.
23. Wilson, “Cults of Violence,” 533; and Lisa Hultman, “The Power to Hurt in Civil War: The Strategic Aim of Renamo Violence,” Journal of Southern African Studies 35, no. 4 (2009): 821–834.
24. Hanlon, Mozambique, 229. A total of 4,334 Renamo soldiers (19.7 percent of total ex-Renamo fighters) and 3,073 government soldiers were aged between ten and fourteen at the time of their abduction and can be considered child soldiers (Sam Barnes, “The Socio-Economic Reintegration of Demobilised Soldiers in Mozambique: The Soldiers’ View,” UNDP (1997), 17.
25. Cf. Carrie Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique: Renamo as Political Party,” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (1998): 166.
26. Cf. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 95.
27. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique.”
28. Cahen, “Is Renamo a Popular Movement in Mozambique?”
29. Geffray, La cause des armes au Mozambique.
30. Eric Morier-Genoud, “War in Inhambane: Reshaping State, Society, and Economy,” in The War Within: New Perspectives on the Civil War in Mozambique, 1976–1992, ed. Michel Cahen, Eric Morier-Genoud, and Domingos do Rosário (Suffolk, UK: James Currey, 2018).
31. Stephen C. Lubkemann, “Migratory Coping in Wartime Mozambique: An Anthropology of Violence and Displacement in ‘Fragmented Wars,’” Journal of Peace Research 42, no. 4 (2005): 493–508; Jessica Schafer, Soldiers at Peace: Veterans and Society after the Civil War in Mozambique (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Chapter 2; Otto Roesch, “Is Renamo a Popular Movement in Mozambique?,” Southern African Review of Books 2, no. 5 (December–January 1989); Sérgio Inácio Chichava, “Le ‘vieux Mozambique’: étude sur l’identité politique de la Zambézie,” PhD diss., Université Montesquieu/Bordeaux IV, 2007; and Domingos do Rosário, “Les Mairies des ‘autres’: une analyse politique, socio-historique et culturelle des trajectoires locales. Le cas d’Angoche, de l’Île de Moçambique et de Nacala Porto,” PhD diss., Université Montesquieu/Bordeaux IV, 2009.
32. Hans Abrahamsson and Anders Nilsson, Mozambique, the Troubled Transition: From Socialist Construction to Free Market Capitalism (London: Zed Books, 1995), 89–90.
33. Hanlon, Mozambique, 231.
34. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 178.
35. Karl Maier, “The Military Mix,” Africa Report 33, no. 4 (July–August 1988): 56.
36. Finnegan, A Complicated War, 182; Hassane Armando, Tempos de fúria: memórias do massacre de Homoíne, 18 de Julho de 1987 (Lisboa, Portugal: Edições Colibri, 2018); and Morier-Genoud, “War in Inhambane.”
37. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique.
38. See a reproduction of the plan in Appendix 3 in Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique; and Karl Maier, “A Program for Peace,” Africa Report 34, no. 5 (September–October 1989): 56.
39. Africa Confidential, “Mozambique: Renamo Congress Bids for Peace,” Africa Confidential 30, no. 14 (1989): 1–2; and Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 122.
40. Corinna Jentzsch, Violent Resistance: Militia Formation and Civil War in Mozambique (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
41. Africa Confidential, “Mozambique: Renamo Takes the War Path,” Africa Confidential 32, no. 6 (1991): 1–3; and Andrew Meldrum, “Railway of Refuge,” Africa Report 36, no. 3 (May–June 1991): 65.
42. Joseph Hanlon, Peace without Profit: How the IMF Blocks Rebuilding in Mozambique (Portsmouth, NH: James Currey Heinemann, 1996), 15–16.
43. United Nations, The United Nations and Mozambique, 1992–1995 (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1995).
44. Chris Alden, “Making Old Soldiers Fade Away: Lessons from the Reintegration of Demobilized Soldiers in Mozambique,” Security Dialogue 33, no. 3 (2002): 341–356.
45. Alex Vines, “Renamo’s Rise and Decline: The Politics of Reintegration in Mozambique,” International Peacekeeping 20, no. 3 (2013): 380.
46. Brazão Mazula, ed., Moçambique: dados estatísticos do processo eleitoral, 1994 (Maputo, Mozambique: STAE, 1997).
47. Alden, “Making Old Soldiers Fade Away,” 345.
48. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 177.
49. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 179–180.
50. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 166.
51. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 174. The scholarships never materialized.
52. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 185.
53. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique.
54. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 181.
55. Cahen, “Nationalism and Ethnicities,” 172.
56. Victor Igreja, Béatrice Dias-Lambranca, and Annemiek Richters, “Gamba Spirits, Gender Relations, and Healing in Post-Civil War Gorongosa, Mozambique,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 14, no. 2 (2008): 353–371; Alcinda Manuel Honwana, Espíritos vivos, tradições modernas: possessão de espíritos e reintegração social pós-guerra no sul de Moçambique (Maputo, Mozambique: Promédia, 2002); and Victor Igreja, “Multiple Temporalities in Indigenous Justice and Healing Practices in Mozambique,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 6, no. 3 (2012): 404–422.
57. Adam Kochanski, “Justice Deflected: The Uses and Abuses of Local Transitional Justice Processes,” PhD diss., University of Ottawa, 2017.
58. Wiegink, Former Guerrillas in Mozambique, 85.
59. United Nations Security Council, Protocol V, Section III, Paragraph 8 of the “General Peace Agreement for Mozambique,” Rome, October 4, 1992.
60. Vines, “Renamo’s Rise and Decline,” 381.
61. Alex Vines, “Disarmament in Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (1998): 191–205.
62. Colin Darch, “Separatist Tensions and Violence in the ‘Model Post-Conflict State’: Mozambique since the 1990s,” Review of African Political Economy 43, no. 148 (2015): 320–327.
63. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 179.
64. Nikkie Wiegink, “‘It Will Be Our Time to Eat’: Former Renamo Combatants and Big-Man Dynamics in Central Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 41, no. 4 (2015): 869–885.
65. Adriano Nuvunga and José Adalima, “Mozambique Democratic Movement (MDM): An Analysis of a New Opposition Party in Mozambique,” Studies on Political Parties and Democracy, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2011.
66. Simon Allison, “Think Again: Renamo’s Renaissance, and Civil War as Election Strategy,” ISS Today, October 21, 2014.
67. Wiegink, Former Guerrillas in Mozambique.
68. “Dhlakama está de volta, ‘Até mísseis tenho para derrubar aviões,’” Radio Mozambique, Maputo, 2011.
69. “Mozambique: Renamo Kills Policeman in Nampula,” Agência de Informação de Moçambique, March 8, 2012; and “Mozambique: Renamo Demobilised Will Stay in Nampula,” Agência de Informação de Moçambique, March 7, 2012.
70. Justin Pearce, “History, Legitimacy, and Renamo’s Return to Arms in Central Mozambique,” Africa 90, no. 4 (2020): 774–795.
71. Alex Vines, “Prospects for a Sustainable Elite Bargain in Mozambique: Third Time Lucky?,” (Chatham House Research Paper, 2019).
72. Africa Confidential, “Frelimo’s Gold Rush,” Africa Confidential 54, no. 8 (2013): 8–9; and Africa Confidential, “Spoils for All, Please,” Africa Confidential 54, no. 10 (2013): 3.
73. Vines, “Prospects for a Sustainable Elite Bargain in Mozambique.”
74. Authors’ conversations with Renamo members in Nampula province, November–December 2011.
75. Pearce, “History, Legitimacy, and Renamo’s Return to Arms.”
76. Alex Vines, “Disarmament in Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 24, no. 1 (1998): 191–205.
77. “Mozambique: Dhlakama Threatens to Take Power,” Agência de Informação de Moçambique, December 16, 2015.
78. Pearce, “History, Legitimacy, and Renamo’s Return to Arms,” 778.
79. Vines, “Prospects for a Sustainable Elite Bargain in Mozambique.”
80. Bernhard Weimer and João Carrilho, The Political Economy of Decentralization in Mozambique (Maputo, Mozambique: IESE, 2017).
81. European Union, “Preliminary Statement,” Election Observation Mission—Mozambique, October 17, 2019.
82. “Mozambique: Renamo Demobilisation Restarts,” Agência de Informação de Moçambique, June 6, 2020.
83. Luis de Brito, et al., Revoltas da fome: protestos populares em Moçambique (2008–2012) (Maputo, Mozambique: Instituto de Estudos Sociais e Económicos, 2015).
84. Darch, “Separatist Tensions and Violence in the ‘Model Post-Conflict State,’” 325.
85. Darch, “Separatist Tensions and Violence in the ‘Model Post-Conflict State,’” 323.
86. Darch, “Separatist Tensions and Violence in the ‘Model Post-Conflict State,’” 325.
87. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique,” 176.
88. Deutsche Welle, “‘No Peace, No Election in Mozambique’: Renamo Junta Leader Tells DW,” August 28, 2019.
89. Ken Flower, Serving Secretly: Rhodesia’s CIO Chief on Record (Alberton, South Africa: Galago, 1987).
90. Cabrita, Mozambique.
91. Michel Cahen, personal communication; see also Robinson, “Curse on the Land,” 102.
92. Gervase Clarence-Smith, “The Roots of the Mozambican Counter-Revolution,” Southern African Review of Books 2, no. 4 (April–May 1989). The books that Clarence-Smith reviewed were Michel Cahen, Mozambique, la révolution implosée: études sur 12 ans d’indépendance, 1975–1987 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987); Politique Africaine, Mozambique: guerre et nationalismes (Paris: Karthala, 1988); and Peter Meyns, Agrargesellschaften im portugiesischsprachigen Afrika (Saarbrücken, Germany: Verlag Breitenbach, 1988).
93. William Minter, “Clarence-Smith on Mozambique,” Southern African Review of Books 2, no. 5 (June–July 1989); and Paul Fauvet, “Clarence-Smith on Mozambique,” Southern African Review of Books 2, no. 6 (August–September 1989). See also Minter, Apartheid’s Contras.
94. Roesch, “Is Renamo a Popular Movement in Mozambique?”; and Cahen, “Is Renamo a Popular Movement in Mozambique?”
95. Geffray, La cause des armes au Mozambique.
96. Margaret Hall, “The Mozambican National Resistance Movement (Renamo): A Study in the Destruction of an African Country,” Africa 60, no. 1 (1990); Tom Young, “The MNR/Renamo: External and Internal Dynamics,” African Affairs 89, no. 357 (1990); Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique; and Bridget O’Laughlin, “A base social da guerra em Moçambique,” Estudos Moçambicanos 10 (1992): 107–142.
97. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique.
98. Alice Dinerman, Revolution, Counter-Revolution and Revisionism in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Mozambique, 1975–1994 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006); Michel Cahen, “La ‘fin de l’histoire’ … unique: trajectoires des anticolonialismes au Mozambique,” Portuguese Studies Review 16, no. 1 (2008); and Alice Dinerman, “Regarding Totalities and Escape Hatches in Mozambican Politics and Mozambican Studies,” Politique Africaine 113, no. 1 (2009): 187–210.
99. Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique, 84f.; Finnegan, A Complicated War, 66; and Cahen, “Nationalism and Ethnicities.”
100. See the discussion on the internet discussion network H-Luso-Africa from November and December 2005 under the thread “Civil War vs. Post-Independence Conflict.”
101. Roesch, “Is Renamo a Popular Movement in Mozambique?”
102. Wilson, “Cults of Violence,” 531.
103. Roesch, “Renamo and the Peasantry in Southern Mozambique,” 464; Finnegan, A Complicated War, 72; and Wilson, “Cults of Violence,” 534.
104. Hultmann, “The Power to Hurt in Civil War.”
105. Morier-Genoud, “War in Inhambane.”
106. Michel Cahen, “Não somos bandidos”: a vida diária de uma guerrilha de direita; a Renamo na época do Acordo de Nkomati (1983–1985) (Lisbon, Portugal: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2019).
107. Cahen, Morier-Genoud, and do Rosário, The War Within; Corinna Jentzsch, “Auxiliary Armed Forces and Innovations in Security Governance in Mozambique’s Civil War,” Civil Wars 19, no. 3 (2017): 325–347; and Jentzsch, Violent Resistance.
108. Manning, “Constructing Opposition in Mozambique”; Alex Vines, Renamo: From Terrorism to Democracy in Mozambique (London: Centre for Southern African Studies, 1996).
109. Igreja, Dias-Lambranca, and Richters, “Gamba Spirits, Gender Relations”; and Honwana, Espíritos vivos, tradições modernas.
110. Wiegink, Former Guerrillas in Mozambique; Pearce, “History, Legitimacy, and Renamo’s Return to Arms”; and Schafer, Soldiers at Peace.
111. See Chichava, “Le ‘vieux Mozambique’”; do Rosário, “Les Mairies des ‘autres’”; Benedito Luís Machava, “The Morality of Revolution: Urban Cleanup Campaigns, Reeducation Camps, and Citizenship in Socialist Mozambique (1974–1988),” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2018; and Jentzsch, Violent Resistance.
112. Cahen, “Não somos bandidos”: a vida diária de uma guerrilha de direita.
113. Colin Darch, “Mozambique History Net” [blog], November 10, 2011.