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L I M I N A

Socialism in Mozambique?The ‘Mozambican Revolution’

in Critical Perspective

David Robinson

Mozambique’s achievement of independence, under the leadership of theFront for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), on 25 June 1975, was a pivotal moment in th e country’s history. Afte r what i s often implicitly

regarded as a r evolution against the Portuguese colonial government,Felimo’s project of ‘scientific socialism’ and ‘popular democracy’ waswelcomed and celebrated in the writings of many left-wing observers inthe West. However, this study will challenge the key assumption of muchof the historiography of Mozambique: that the change in government markedthe beginning of Mozambique’s transformation into a socialist state. Itwill be argued here that despite a long struggle against a repressive regime,there was no revolution in Mozambique. Furthermore, while Frelimo hadinitially aligned itself with socialist ideals, the pursuit of socialism had allbut ended when Frelimo declared itself to be a ‘Marxist-Leninist VanguardParty’ at the time of its Third Congress in 1977. Frelimo’s political visionhad been tempered by the realities of the country’s material conditions of underdevelopment and an unorganised, politically unenthusiastic worker population: the byproducts of Portuguese colonialism.

Mozambique’s achievement of independence on 25 June 1975 wasa pivotal moment in the country’s history, a pause between thecrushing oppression of Portuguese colonialism and the devastatingwar of destabilisation Mozambique would suffer until the early1990s. For the revolutionaries of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo), this transitional moment was the time to


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demonstrated that Frelimo’s particular socialist perspective wasformed by the material conditions of underdevelopment and fascistrepression that existed under Portuguese colonialism. It will then

be argued that these conditions combined with Frelimo’s politicalvision and the non-revolutionary conditions of independence tosupplant the struggle for socialism with one for socially-progressivenational development.5

Although a socialist resistance to Mozambique’s colonialadministration did not coalesce until the o rganisation of Frelimo inthe 1960s, the formative roots of this resistance trace back to theembryonic liberal-nationalist opposition of the 1920s and 1930s.Until the late nineteenth century Mozambique served a role in thePortuguese economy as a coastal outlet for procuring slaves fromfurther inland.6 The ebb of the slave trade in the late 1800s sappedthe dynamism of the northern slave economy, so at the turn of thecentury the colony transferred its capital city from MozambiqueIsland to Lourenco Marques in the south, with the hope of integrating Mozambique into South Africa’s newly booming miningindustry. 7 When Portugal entered a period of liberalism in 1910, thecolonies were permeated by some of this more enlightened

philosophy, which encouraged embryonic political and industrialorganising within the African population. As early as 1911. liberalpolitical groups such as the União Africano (African Union) beganorganising, and between 1913 and 1921 African workers organiseda series of strikes and work stoppages to demand better workingconditions. Seven major strikes by port workers succeeded inwinning concessions from white employers between 1918 and 1921.8

Another liberal organisation, the Gremio Africano (African Guild),formed in the mid-1920s and later transformed into the Associacão

Africana (African Association). Later still, a more radical groupemerged from the African Association in the form of the Centro

Associativo dos Negros de Mocambique. Other groups formed in theearly 1930s representing the interests of Muslims and Indians within

the colony.9 The tradition of resistance in rural Mozambique alsocontinued in this period. From 1917 to 1921 a pan-Zambezianinsurrection united 15 000 armed men in a trans-ethnic allianceagainst the Portuguese. This insurrection was eventually crushed,and after this time the colonial state became too strong for thesetypes of rebellion to transpire. Other rural Africans chose to migratefrom Portuguese-controlled areas rather than fight, and by 1919 morethan 100 000 Mozambicans had resettled in Nyasaland.10

both celebrate the victory of their long fought struggle and to lookforward to a bright new future. Their intention, as Frelimo’s firstcabinet announced, was that

all vestiges of colonialism and imperialismwould b e destroyed with a view to eliminatingthe system of exploitation of man by man, and

to erecting the political, material, ideological,cultural and social basis of the new society. 1

Frelimo’s project of ‘scientific socialism’ and ‘popular democracy’was welcomed by many left-wing Western observers, and celebratedin books such as Barry Munslow’s Mozambique: The Revolution andits Origins, John Saul’s A Difficult Road: The Transition to Socialism in

Mozambique, Allen Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman’s Mozambique:From Colonialism to Revolution, and Joseph Hanlon’s Mozambique:The Revolution Under Fire.2 The common assumption of these workswas that a revolution had occurred in Mozambique and that a projectof transition to socialism was taking place, an assumption that

became implicit in much of the subsequent literature on the country

whether for or against the Frelimo government. In the final chapterofRevolution and Counterrevolution: Mozambique’s War of Independence1964-1974, Thomas Henriksen poses the question, ‘[h]ow did aMarxist-orientated revolution take place in Mozambique whose

backward economy and s ocial development would seem to haveprecluded it?’ Henriksen argues, with a zeal imbued by theexcitement of anti-colonial v ictory, that ‘the new “child” of socialismin Mozambique was in reality a Caesarean birth because the eastAfrican country had not matured into a proletarian stage of capitalism’. 3 Despite this, the revolution was enabled by the processwhereby, ‘Mozambique’s rural revolt fostered social tensionallowing for the radical fringe to assume control and direction foran apocalyptic battle, a purification of society towards a

marxian millennium’.4

This study will challenge the key assumption of progressivehistories of Mozambique: that the Mozambican revolution hadmarked the b eginning of a transition to socialism. Instead it will beargued that there was no revolution in Mozambique, and that thestruggle for socialism came to an end by the time of Frelimo’s ThirdCongress in 1977, the point at which Frelimo declared itself a‘Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Party’. By examining the historicaldevelopment of anti-colonial resistance in Mozambique, it will be


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minority of Africans were able to reach high school level, but eventhey were subject to discrimination within the school system. Inthis environment these students (some of whom were in their latetwenties) developed embryonic nationalist ideas and beganorganising amongst themselves. In 1949 secondary students formedthe Nucleo dos Estudantes Africanos Secundarios de Mozambique(NESAM), which worked alongside the still existing Centro

Associativo in spreading ideas of nationalism and resistance amongsturban youth. Some of these students, including Eduardo Mondlane,the future president of Frelimo, persisted despite being arrested andquestioned about their activities.15 Alongside this rise of studentresistance was some clandestine organising by workers, deprivedas they were of effective representation through the fascist-controlledunions. In 1947 anger at working conditions, poverty, and politicalrepression sparked a series of strikes in the docks and plantationsaround Lourenco Marques, culminating in an abortive uprising in1948. The Portuguese administration conducted a severe crackdownon the dissidents involved. The next series of dock strikes did notoccur until 1956 and again ended with terrib le repression in which49 participants were killed.16

In the countryside, resistance grew in parallel to that in urbanareas. By the mid-1950s half a million Africans were under obligationto grow cotton and sell it at the low prices set by the colonialadministration. 17 Continuing low-level opposition took the form of widespread crop sabotage and quota non-compliance, but a numberof larger events also punctuated this resistance. In 1947, 7000 womenat Buzi organised a strike, in which they refused to take theadministrator’s cotton seeds. In Gaza Province in 1955 and 1958cotton producers organised large-scale boycotts until cotton priceswere increased.18 The most significant events of rural revolt,however, occurred at the Mueda plateau in Cabo Delgado, wheresections of the population regularly traversed the border withTanganyika, where they came into contact with rebellious ideas.

Across the border the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU)was promoting the organisation of indigenous farming cooperatives,and this inspired the formation in 1957 of the African VoluntaryCotton Society of Mozambique, based in the Mueda region. Underthe leadership of Lazaro Nkavandame, a licence was negotiated withthe local administration and a cooperative was established thatexempted members from forced labour. The cooperative quicklygrew to 3000 members and between 1957 and 1960 it tripled thecotton production that had been achieved under colonial

By the mid-1930s the lobbying of indigenous associations andorganised labour fell on increasingly hostile ears, and the fascistsympathies of the colonial regime led to intimidation and infiltrationof these groups. Those org anisations that did continue functioningin this period cloaked their political agitation in the guise of social,cultural and sporting activities. At least one anti-colonial newspaper

began production in the early 1930s, but was shut down in 1936 asPortugal’s fascist leader Antònio Salazar tightened his grip on thePortuguese government and began implementing his programmefor the Estado Novo (New State). The political repression of this timeeffectively prevented any overt opposition activity until theconclusion of World War Two.11 Part of Salazar’s Estado Novo projectwas to integrate the colonies into the Portuguese economy as asource of cheap materials, a new economic orientation that wouldlay the foundations for Mozambique’s economic and politicaldevelopment over the remainder of the century. Three sources of revenue came to form the b asis of the Mozambican economy: massmigrant labour in the South African mines, transport linkages

between landlocked states and Mozambique’s ports, and the exportof agricultural produce and plantation crops. Agricultural exports

came to account for 50 per cent of foreign revenue, and wereparticularly important for Portugal’s textile industry. As HansAbrahamsson and Andres Nilsson recount,

export production was based mainly on forcedlabour, where [indigenous] farming familiescould choose between either cultivating a certainarea with cotton or the man being sent to doplantation or construction work for threemonths of the year.12

This quasi-feudal system of forced labour disrupted normal farmingactivities, reduced the output of food crops for African consumption,

and led to periodic famines. It also necessitated increased policesurveillance and persecution to ensure that labour obligations were being fulfilled.13 The structure of the colonial economy meant that‘the whole territory was infrastructurally neglected. This type of economy required few investments in the infrastructure of industrialdevelopment in order to function.’14

Following the end of World War Two, a resurgence of anti-colonial politics occurred amongst the generation of school studentswho were growing up in a radicalising Africa. Only a privileged


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Tanganyika’s socialist President Julius Nyerere. UDENAMO,MANU and UNAMI merged on 25 June 1962 to form the Frente deLibertacão de Mocambique (Frelimo), a front aligned with variousideologies, but united more specifically around a vaguely leftist,nationalist platform.26 Frelimo’s early agitation included covertindustrial organising in Mozambique’s ports, which led to a seriesof strikes in Lourenco Marques, Beira and Nacala in 1963. Againthe strikes were brutally repressed and ended with the deaths andarrests of many participants. The experience of repression againstworking-class org anisation significantly influenced the formationof Frelimo’s political perspective. As Mondlane observed,

its failure and the brutal repression whichfollowed in every instance … discouraged boththe masses and leadership from consideringstrike action as a possible effective politicalweapon in the context of Mozambique.27

Later, when Frelimo attempted to set up urban cells, the remnantsof the student organisation NESAM mobilised to form their

organisational structure, but the colonial administration quicklysuppressed them, banning NESAM and smashing Frelimo’sembryonic urban branches by arresting members or driving theminto exile.28 In total 1500 Frelimo supporters based in LourencoMarques and Swaziland were arrested, and sympathisers in SouthAfrica and Southern Rhodesia were clamped down upon by theirrespective police forces. This inability to operate effectively in urbanareas, due to the repressive nature of the fascist regime, forcedFrelimo to direct its attentions towards a rural campaign of guerrillawarfare, and impelled the group to develop a self-understandingin which it was the vanguard of the revolution.29 Part of thepreparation for Frelimo’s guerrilla campaign involved sendingapproximately 250 men, including Frelimo’s future president

Samora Machel, to train in the newly independent Algeria. A trainingcamp was also established in southern Tanganyika, whereTanganyikan soldiers and Chinese advisers trained guerrillas insmall arms, explosives and tactics. 30

Frelimo launched its armed struggle on 25 September 1964 innorthern Mozambique, with less than 300 trained guerrillas,combining hit-and-run attacks on Portuguese outposts with politicalmobilisation of the local populace. Using this strategy Frelimo grewrapidly and created a number of liberated zones in the north of Cabo

supervision.19 Not all the white plantation owners appreciated thisindigenous competition, however, and consequently some blackcooperative farmers were harassed and arrested.20 Undeterred, thecooperative continued until 1960 when the beginning of Tanganyika’s transition to independence (which came to fruition in1961) spread anti-colonial ideas into Mueda. This further radicalisedthe rural population, so w hen the provincial governor visited theregion on 16 June 1960 he was met by a peaceful protest demandinggreater indigenous rights. In response the governor ordered hissoldiers to fire into the crowd, resulting in the massacre of between500 and 600 protesters. Following the Mueda massacre thecooperative collapsed and many anti-colonial activists leftMozambique to form resistance organisations in exile.21 The first of these exile groups, which formed in 1960 in Salisbury, was the UniãoNacional Democratica de Mocambique (UDENAMO). Two otherprominent groups formed in 1961: the Mozambique AfricanNational Union (MANU) in Tanganyika, and the União Africana de

Moca mbiq ue Indep ende nte (UNAMI) in Malawi. All threeorganisations established headquarters in Dar es Salaam, which inthe 1960s was quickly becoming the revolutionary capital of

southern Africa, hosting radical organisations from various countriesincluding South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia, Nyasaland,22 and theRepublic of Congo.23 The suppression of liberal and socialdemocratic forces within Mozambique had only driven dissidentsto more radical political positions and convinced them that forcewould be required to defeat Portuguese colonialism.

While other imperial powers in Africa responded to growingradicalisation by facilitating independence in their colonies, Portugalhad no intention of doing so. In the 1960s Portugal’s population of nine million had one of the lowest per capita incomes in Europe, andits predominantly agricultural economy suffered from endemicunemployment and under-employment. Portugal imported mostof its manufactured goods, with the exception of textiles, for which

Portugal was heavily reliant on the cheap cotton grown in thecolonies.24 Unlike other Metropoles, Portugal had little chance of maintaining neo-colonial relations with its colonies afterindependence, so when revolt began in Angola in 1961, politicalrepression was intensified throughout Portugal’s African territories.This repression increased the number of refugees flooding intoTanganyika, which motivated the exile groups to form a united frontand absorb new members. Encouragement to unify also came froma number of newly forming international organisations25 and from


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Knot, the largest operation of the war, w hich swamped northernMozambique with 35 000 soldiers and pummelled the liberatedzones with 15 000 tonnes of bombs deployed from aircraft. Afterseven months the offensive was called to a halt because, despiteexpending vast resources, it had killed less than 100 Frelimoguerrillas.38 By this time Portugal had deployed a total of 150 000soldiers in its African colonies and was devoting a huge proportionof its national budget to these conflicts. Portugal’s African wars onlyserved to radicalise returned veterans, destabilise the fascist regime,and by 1974 had led to the deaths of 13 000 soldiers and thewounding of 65 000 others. Meanwhile, Frelimo and its sisterorganisations in Angola and Guinea-Bissau continued to growin strength.39

In the period following Mondlane’s death, explicitly Marxistactivists came to dominate Frelimo’s leadership and Samora Machel

became President. Machel’s own assertion was that his Marxismwas born of life experience rather than theoretical insight. Accordingto Margaret Hall and Tom Young, ‘Frelimo’s protean ignorance of the great books (dismissed by Frelimo’s leaders as irrelevantacademic affectation) extended to the actual economic and political

experiences of the Marxist states (however defined)’.40

It is alsoapparent that

Frelimo’s usage of marxisant terminology wasreshaped to articulate national and racialconcerns. Concepts of class were not used in anysense of economic agents generated by a modeof production, nor were they deployed in anykind of “class analysis” in the conventionalsense. Rather, they designated a whole series of colonial experiences, including statushierarchies and notions of racial inferiority anddivision. Ideas of exploitation referred not to

economic relationships but rather to experiencesof racial humiliation and unfair anddiscriminatory treatment. Machel’s repeatedreferences to “exploitation” concern unfairtrading practices of the kind perpetrated onAfrican peasants by traders; they were alwaysabout unfair exchange … as Henrikson put it,“Frelimo castigates capitalism more as a wickedinstinct than as a mode of production”. 41

Delgado and Niassa provinces.31 Drawing on the 45 000 Mozambicanrefugees who had sought sanctuary in Tanganyika,32 Frelimo had

boosted its forces to 8000 guerrillas by 1967, and formed local militiasin the liberated zones. In comparison, the Portuguese had 70 000troops fighting against the insurgency.33 Frelimo held its SecondCongress in 1968, the same year that it opened a second front inTete province from bases in Zambia. The congress was actuallyconvened inside Mozambique in July of that year, within a liberatedzone of Niassa province. These liberated zones had basic social,educational and administrative infrastructure and were secureenough for the meeting of the entire Frelimo leadership, as well asdelegates from all over Mozambique, and representatives from theAfrican National Congress (ANC), the Movimento Popular Libertacãode Angola (MPLA), and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union(ZAPU).34 By the time of the Second Congress Frelimo’s politics hadshifted towards a socialist position, due to its ideological coherence,factional manoeuvring, and the financial and military support of communist countries which was in stark contrast to the choice of NATO to back Portugal.35 Mozambique’s history of exploitativecolonial-capitalism and the socialist orientation of many other

African liberation movements also fuelled the influence of Marxismin Frelimo. A 1968 interview with President Mondlane in Algeriademonstrates the rising influence of socialist ideology withinFrelimo. In this interview he said:

because the conditions of life in Mozambique,[and] the type of enemy [that] we have, permitno other alternative. It is impossible to create acapitalist Mozambique. It would be ridiculousfor the people to fight to destroy the enemy’seconomic structure and then reconstruct it forthe enemy. … We are going to construct asocialist system and there now exists a wealth

of experiences from various socialist countriesthat we shall study carefully. … The training of politico-military cadres includes instructionabout s ocialism.36

The next year Eduardo Mondlane was assassinated in a bomb-blast, blame for which has been attributed to the Portuguese Secret Police(PIDE).37 Taking advantage of the internal division that followedMondlane’s death, the Portuguese launched Operation Gordian


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Lisbon by the Moviment o das Forc as Arma das (Armed ForcesMovement) on 25 April 1974. The ascendant Junta of NationalSalvation, led by General Antònio de Spìnola, pushed for a rapidend to Portugal’s wars and the complete independence of thecolonies under the existing anti-colonial movements. The factionalconflict that lingered in Lisbon until July was mirrored inMozambique, with political instability and mass desertions fromthe army. Progressive elements of the white population beganadvocating Frelimo’s platform, and successfully lobbied for reformof the DGS, having 600 secret police arrested by colonial authoritiesfor murder and torture.48 More reactionary elements of the settlerpopulation were also stirred to action and the Lusaka negotiationfor a transitional government, held between Frelimo and Portugueseauthorities in early September, was a spark which provoked anabortive coup in Lourenco Marques. On 7 September 1974 membersof the Frente Independente de Convergência Ocidental (FICO, whichmeans ‘I stay’ in Portuguese) and the ‘Dragons of Death’ (aparamilitary organisation consisting of fascist commandos andsecret police) launched a rebellion. They took over the airport andradio station, broadcast calls for an uprising, and freed

approximately 100 secret police from gaol.49

Some black membersof the new National Coalition Party, many of whom had split fromFrelimo in the 1960s, now resented a hand-over of power to theirpolitical opponents, and supported the call for rebellion. This onlyserved to convince Frelimo that the black opposition parties werethe puppets of the old regime and the neighbouring racist states of South Africa and Rhodesia, giving Frelimo an excuse to excludethem from power after independence.50 Portuguese forces quelledthe rebellion, but inter-racial conflict continued throughout themonth, with 77 blacks and 14 whites killed in mob violence. Thischaos heightened fear within the white population and acceleratedtheir exodus.51 Further rioting in October led to 50 deaths and thewounding of 160 others, but on some occasions the colonial

authorities’ attempts to prevent the riots were more destructive thanthe riots themselves. In one recorded incident soldiers dispersed a black crowd using live fire, killing 115 and injuring 600 more.52

A transitional Frelimo government was established in LourencoMarques on 25 September 1974 and set about organising in villages,neighbourhoods and workplaces to maintain the functioning of infrastructure, and prevent racial conflict and settler sabotage. Theinstitutions that facilitated this transfer of power were the GruposDinamizadores (Dynamising Groups). As Hanlon writes:

The moral and psychological, rather than materialist, understandingof Marxism that Machel exhibited was vague and flexible enoughto allow Frelimo to maintain ideological cohesion later inMozambique’s history, even while actual events (such as the

bureaucratisation of the state and eventual transition to capitalisteconomics) were vastly divergent from its original vision. This formof Marxism is apparent in some statements by Machel, such as onemade in a 1973 speech that asserts:

It so happens that we were all born into anexploitative society and have been profoundlyimbued with its ideology and culture. This iswhy an internal fight against what we believeto constitute our moral framework is difficultand may at times seem impossible. Divestingourselves of the exploitative ideology andculture and adopting and living, in each detailof everyday life, the ideology required for therevolution is the essence of the fight for thenew man.42

Following Operation Gordian Knot, Frelimo regrouped andexpanded its area of operations into the provinces of Manica andSofala. By 1974 they had established a base in the mountainous areaof Gorongosa and were directing attacks on the economicallyimportant Beira corridor.43 Frelimo now commanded 11 000guerrillas, had that many again still in training, and more than20 000 supporters organised into local militias and supply lines. Inaddition more than 70 000 people lived in Frelimo’s liberated zones.44

Meanwhile, the Portuguese had attempted to stem Frelimo’sinfluence by forcing up to a million people into fortified villages,predominantly in the province of Cabo Delgado.45 The PortugueseSecret Police (now known as the DGS) also continued their work

destroying networks of resistance. It is known that between 1971and 1974, 865 political prisoners were killed by the DGS and another3000 gained their freedom only upon Mozambique’sindependence.46 In total, 10 000 dissidents had been arrested between1967 and 1973.47

Despite Portuguese counter-insurgency efforts, Frelimo’scampaign continued to expand. But the harbinger of independencefor Mozambique was neither F relimo’s success in guerrilla warfare,nor a revolution against the colonial-capitalist order, but a coup in


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unions democratised after 1975, were alsodissolved in 1979, having been progressivelyreplaced since 1976 by “production groups”.55

Taking into account both of these understandings of the DynamisingGroups, it can be seen that a tension existed between their potentialas organs of direct democracy and their role as state institutions.They may in fact have replaced pre-existing and more democraticworkers’ committees, and thus b een the first step in eroding directworkers’ power. If the Dynamising Groups had formed as part of arevolutionary process (the archetype of such structures being thesoviets of Russia’s 1917 revolution) then the members’ ‘revolutionaryconsciousness’56 would have ensured the solidification of theDynamising Groups as organs of workers’ power, and perhaps as arevolutionary proto-state. Instead, the initial period of Frelimo ruleconsolidated the power of the party, while party activists attemptedto mobilise the population and instil the revolutionary consciousnessthey lacked.

When Mozambique declared independence on 25 June 1975,Frelimo inherited an under-developed and unstable country. Ninety-

five per cent of Mozambique’s 12 million citizens were illiterate andthe country had only one black doctor and one black agronomist.The working class was overwhelmingly white, many of whom weresuspected of still being hostile to the regime, and white workersoperated the economically vital ports and railways.57 The Africanindustrial working class numbered only 150 000 and were mostlylow-skilled and disorganised workers.58 Mozambique’s limitedcapitalist development and the racial division within the workingclass were factors that seriously limited the prospects for a successfulsocialist project. The major destabilising factor that Frelimo facedupon independence was the mass exodus of Portuguese settlers.By the end of 1976 the settler community had shrunk from 250 000to about 20 000, creating an acute shortage of technicians and

professionals. Adding to this loss was the vandalism the leavingsettlers targeted at goods and machinery they could not take withthem.59 As a result of this exodus, businesses collapsed, tens of thousands of domestic servants were left unemployed, and thehousing boom and tourist industries collapsed.60 Adding toMozambique’s economic crisis, South Africa lowered the numberof Mozambican migrant workers it would accept, cut levels of railtraffic through Mozambican ports, and supported a process of rapidcontainerisation of goods which could only be handled at South

The GDs took over more and more officialfunctions from t he steadily collapsing colonialapparatus. In a form of workers’ control, theyran abandoned factories. In villages andneighbourhoods, they served as councils, courts,police and social workers. In rural areas, theyreplaced the Portuguese-appointed règulos. …More than anything else, it was the GDs thatintroduced Mozambique to Frelimo and to“peoples’ democracy”, and it was the GDs thatkept the country running.53

Though no revolution had occurred in Mozambique, theDynamising Groups held potential to become the structures forworkers’ control of the economic and political direction of society.According to Abrahamsson and Nilsson:

The dynamising groups were direct democraticorgans, whose members were elected at publicmeetings in residential areas, factories and rural

areas. For a long time it was the dynamisinggroups that in practice held power in thecountry. They were link ed to Frelimo and therewere always Frelimo members within thesegroups, but during the turbulent period a localdynamising group was able to develop far-reaching autonomy.54

While most Frelimo-sympathetic observers saw the establishmentof Dynamising Groups as an expression of workers’ power, Frenchacademic Michel Cahen implys that these groups were, in fact, thefirst step in subjugating working-class organisation. Accordingto Cahen:

When [Frelimo] arrived in the capital(September 1974), it announced the dissolutionof the elected workers’ committees which hademerged, and replaced them with “dynamisinggroups”, which were party structures. … TheAcademic Association, a dynamic studentorganisation, was dissolved and replaced by theparty youth organisation; the old corporate


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more than double its export earnings. The Rhodesians, in retaliation,launched a series of raids, causing damage in Mozambique’s westernprovinces, and Rhodesian and South African forces created theMozambique National Resistance (Renamo), though at the time itonly numbered a few hundred g uerrillas.65 The Rhodesian Ministryof Information’s Directorate of Psychological Warfare also began

broadcasting the anti-Frelimo Voz de Africa Livre from Gwelo on 5 July 1976.66

It is within this context that Frelimo was gradually building agovernment structure inside the shell of the colonial bureaucracy,and began dividing up the functions of the Dynamising Groups

between new state bodies and departments. ‘Production Councils’responsible for increasing both production and productivity werecreated inside workplaces, and official mass women’s and youthorganisations were formed. Peoples’ assemblies were also created,with democratic structures reaching from local councils to a nationalparliament.67 How democratic these new structures were is open todebate, but it is clear that these were all moves away from directworkers’ control of society. In the absence of a revolutionary workingclass, Frelimo had become integrated with the existing state, had

become bureaucratised, and had eroded what direct power workersdid possess. Frelimo’s own attempts to radicalise the populationhad been only partially successful. As Mark Simpson describes,

[b]y 1977 … Frelimo had lost faith in these massmobilisation processes, and at the Third PartyCongress held in February a decision was takento rein in these organisations [the dynamisinggroups].68

Ironically, Frelimo sounded the end of the socialist project inMozambique in the very statement that announced their intentionto lead it, when the Third Congress proclaimed:

The Party’s historic mission is to lead, orient andeducate the masses, thus transforming thepopular mass movement into a powerfulinstrument for the destruction of capitalism andthe construction of socialism.69

In order to lead the revolution, Frelimo declared its transformationfrom a ‘mass party’ into a ‘vanguard party’, a change that reduced

Africa’s more modern harbours.61 In this atmosphere Frelimo begansome nationalisation in late 1975 and early 1976, but found that mostof the state takeover of industry was due to the total abandonmentof businesses by their white owners. In these cases, the DynamisingGroups stepped in to run the businesses. A programme of ‘socialising’ the countryside was also planned, with the goal of creating state farms and transferring peasants into communalvillages. The aims of these projects were the facilitation of rapid

jumps in technology, the creation of a rural working class, and theconstruction of workable democratic institutions and socialinfrastructure. In reality this programme predominantly took theform of the state merely taking control of abandoned plantationsand fortified villages created by the Portuguese.62 The distinction

between ‘nationalisation’ and ‘socialisation’, it should be made clear,is that nationalisation transfers control of production to the state,while socialisation t ransfers control of production to the workersand their communities. Whether Frelimo’s programme was reallyone of ‘socialisation’, or actually one of ‘nationalisation’, can beargued according to one's opinion of the Dynamising Groups’nature. Since the Dynamising Groups played such an important

role in managing the economy during this transitional period, theinternal tension between workers’ control and state direction createdambiguity about the true nature of this process.

The project of socialising (or nationalising) the countryside wasnot very successful and a black market flourished, which distributedup to half of all rural produce. The disintegration of the Portuguesetrading network left farmers without many of the consumer goodsthey relied upon. Plans for rapid technological advancement wereundercut by a lack of currency to buy spare parts, fuels andchemicals, and the lack of technical expertise was crippling.63 Inaddition, as Bridget O’Laughlin notes,

one reason why the state [could not] make the

ex-capitalist farms profitable is precisely becausethe victory of Frelimo ended the highlyexploitative system of labour recruitment onwhich their profitability rested.64

In 1976 Mozambique put its economy under even further stress bychoosing to implement UN sanctions and support the guerrillacampaign against Rhodesia. These sanctions preventedMozambique earning some US$500 million over the next four years,


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workers and managers, and from above by theFrelimo regime itself.72

This vision aimed for conquest of the state by a benevolent minorityand held only a limited place for workers’ power. Though Frelimoclaimed to advocate ‘scientific socialism’, its true vision was quitedivergent from some of Marx’s basic tenets: that socialist revolution‘is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immensemajority, in the interest of the immense majority’,73 and thevision that

the proletariat will use its political supremacyto wrest, by degrees, all capital of the

bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e. of theproletariat organised as the ruling class. 74

When power was handed to Frelimo in 1974 the opportunitywas presented for the implementation of its vanguardist vision, buta transitional period ensued in which Frelimo’s genuine attemptsat mass mobilisation combined with practical necessity to producea truncated form of workers’ power. Since the transfer of power didnot occur through revolution, and Mozambican workers had littlepolitical experience or confidence, they had not developed therevolutionary consciousness that would motivate them to defendthe limited power they had and struggle for total control over themeans of production by their class. The failure of the working classto attain revolutionary consciousness under Frelimo’s guidance onlyconfirmed their vanguardist vision. Thus Frelimo carried it to itslogical conclusion, centralised power in the state, and launched itsproject of modernisation. The flexibility of Frelimo’s ideology,mentioned earlier in this study, worked in synergy with themodernising rather than socialist goals of the state to allow

Mozambique to make a seamless transition to capitalism in the late1980s via IMF structural adjustment programmes. With thistransition Mozambique finally bid goodbye to even the rhetoric of socialism, and its leaders embraced the new religion of neo-liberaleconomics. Despite the hegemonic position of neo-liberal discoursein the post-Cold War period, resistance to this discourse has becomemanifest on every continent in recent years. Resistance inMozambique, in the form of strikes and political protests, has pouredscorn upon the nation’s own process of structural adjustment. So,

membership, while increasing the elitist and detached nature of theparty machine. Most importantly, however, the officialtransformation into a vanguard party at the Third Congress markedthe end of the transitional period in which Mozambican workersdid have significant control over production, and indicated thatpower had become centralised in the state apparatus.70

Frelimo’s rule in the decade following the Third Congress, if attimes incompetent and destructive, was predominantly benevolent.A large portion of national resources was devoted to education andhealth services, while workers had job security and some democraticsway over government policies. However, regardless of Frelimo’srhetoric, its project w as no longer a socialist one. While socialismmay have been its distant goal, Frelimo’s immediate project wasthe expansion of industrial production and ‘the creation of a ruralworking class’: changing the mode of production rather than therelations of production. The aim was one of socially-progressivenational development, to elevate Mozambique from its quasi-feudalunderdevelopment into a modern capitalist society, while improvingsocial services and inculcating the population with socially-progressive ideology.71 The material conditions of the Mozambicaneconomy, Frelimo’s political vision, and the lack of a revolutionaryseizure of power, all influenced the evolution of Mozambique’ssocialist project into this form. Colonial underdevelopment had leftMozambique as an adjunct to the Portuguese economy, withpredominantly rural production and a small, weak working class.This working class then remained politically impotent due to fascistrepression, lack of even basic education, and internal division alongracial lines. In the post-World War Two period an educated minorityformed resistance groups in exile and turned to tactics of guerrillawarfare once their attempts at urban organisation and industrialagitation had been quashed by the fascist state. Failure to organisein the cities, combined with the general weakness of the workingclass, helped produce Frelimo’s ‘vanguardist’ political vision

in which

peasant-based guerrillas would drive out thecolonial (or settler) power, whereupon the state– now headed by the revolutionaries – wouldcreate the material base for ”socialism”. This”socialism” would be guaranteed by a rapidlydeveloping economic base, controlled from

below by ”collect ive sel f- manageme nt” by


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and subordination, domestic rulers were allowed to retain the right to some of theirown culture, traditions and religious worship. This was not always successful.Frequently th e traditional rulers did not acc ept this subordination, and as a rule thePortuguese then appointed other families or clans to t hese f unctions.’15Mondlane, p.112.16 ibid., p p.115-116.17 ibid., p.85.18Isaacman & I saacman, p.66.19Hanlon, Mozambique, pp.23-24.20

Abrahamsson & Nilsson, p.22.21Hanlon, p.24.22Nyasaland became the independent state of Malawi in 1964.23Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique, p.119. The Republic of Congo has beenknown, since 1997, as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Before this, it was knownas the Republic of Zaire.24ibid, p.76.25Such as the Conferência das Organizacões Nacionalistas das Colònias Portugueses(Conference of Nat ionalist Organisations of t he P ortuguese Colonies).26Mondlane, p.119. Paraphrasing Frelimo’s f irst president Eduardo Mondlane, J osephHanlon writes that, ‘Frelimo remained a very loose grouping of exile organizationswhich distrusted each other and w ere already inf iltrated by PIDE [Portuguese Sec retPolice]. The first years were marked by infighting, intrigues, purges, and defections.“Almost immediately after the closing session of t he First Congress some membersof the central committee began manoeuvring to expel others.” … Within three years,most of those who had founded Frelimo had left. But Frelimo provided an essential

focus for th ose who … were to flee Mozambique’: Hanlon, p.25.27Mondlane, p.116.28ibid., pp.112-113.29Margaret Hall & Tom Young, Confronting Leviathan, Hurst & Company, London,1997, p.14.30Mondlane, p.13.31 ibid., p.139.32Hall & Young, p.14.33Mondlane, p.139.34ibid., p.187. The ANC, t he MPLA, and th e ZAPU are radical, nationalist movemen tsfrom respectively, South Africa, Angola and Rhodesia.35ibid., p.195. Indicative of this socialist ten dency was a resolution passed at the SecondCongress that stated: ‘The Mozambican people are engaged in an armed struggleagainst Portuguese colonialism and imperialism for th eir national independence andthe establishment of a social, democratic order in Mozambique. This struggle is part

of the world’s movement for the emancipation of the peoples, which aims at thetotal liquidation of colonialism and imperialism, an d th e construction of a new societyfree f rom exploitation of man by man.’36Eduardo Mondlane, ‘“The Evolution of FRELIMO”, an interview w ith Aquino deBraganca, Algiers, 1968‘, in Aquino de Braganca & Immanuel Wallerstein ( eds), The

African Liberation Reader: Documents o f the National Liberat ion Movement, vol. 2, ZedPress, London, 1982, p.121.37Iain Christie,Samora Machel: A Biography, PANAF, London, 1989, pp .57-58. The bombwas disguised as a book that exploded when the cover was opened. The hitmanCasimiro Mont eiro, who had previously killed a Portuguese anti-fascist leader, fought

although Mozambique remains materially underdeveloped and theprospects for revolutionary change today seem remote, perhapsthere still remains hope for socialism in this African state.Mozambique has a long tradition of fighting against all odds, and if its history teaches us anything, it is that this struggle will continue.

Notes

1 João M. Cabrita, Mozambique: The Tortuous Road to Democracy, Palgrave, Basingstroke,2000, p.108.2Barry M unslow, Mozambique: The Revolution and its Origins, Longman, Harlow, 1983;

John Saul, A Difficult Road: The Transition to Socialism in Moz ambique, Monthly ReviewPress, New York, 1985; Allen Isaacman & Barbara Isaacman, Mozambiqu e: F romColonialism to Revolution 1900-1982, Westview Press, Boulder Colorado, 1983; JosephHanlon, Mozambique: The Revolution Under F ire, Zed Press, London, 1984. Otherexamples include J .H. Mittelman, Underdevelo pment a nd the Transition to Socialism in

Moz ambique and Tanz ania , Academic Press, New York, 1981; and Thomas H.Henriksen, Revolution and Count errevolution: Mozambique’s War of I ndependence 1964-1974, Greenw ood Press, Westport Connecticut, 1983.3Henriksen, pp.205-206.4ibid.5The distinction between the two is that the socialist project aims to establish a

democratic system of control over the means of production, so workers direct theeconomic and political directions of society, while socially-progressive nationaldevelopment may not dev olve control of p roduction to the w orking class.6A small Portuguese settler population maintained an existence virtually autonomousfrom Portugal in its coast al enclaves, while control of t he inland was divided betweenPortuguese landowners and African feudal authorities with the military power t odeter Portuguese advancement.7Hans Abrahamsson & Andres Nilsson, Mozambique: The Troubled Transition: FromSocialist Construction to Free Market Capitalism, Zed Books, London, 1995, p.16.8 Isaacman & Isaacman, pp.69-71.9Eduardo Mondlane,The Struggle f or M ozambique , Zed Press, London, 1969, pp.105-107.10Isaacman & Isaacman, pp.64-67.11Mondlane, p p.105-107.12Abrahamsson & Nilsson, p.18.13

Mondlane, p.85.14 Abrahamsson & Nilsson, p.20. Salazar also aimed to complete the process of conquest that had begun in the seventeenth century and finally gain authority overthe e ntire territory of Mozambique. Th ough Portuguese populations did not existthroughout the w hole country, the regime expanded its control through th e co-optionof indigenous authorities. As Abrahamsson and Nilsson note, ‘th rough the institutionof local regents (regulos ) and “land guards” (cabos de terra), the Portuguese attemptedto involve in their colonial project that type of authority which had deep roots inMozambican culture and history, and thereby exploit Mozambican society’straditional principles of legitimacy for t he exercise of power. In exchange for allegiance


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62ibid., p.98.63ibid., p.110.64ibid., p.116.65Minter, pp.32-33. In the 1980s Renamo’s campaign of destabilisation led to thedeaths of up to a million people and th e displacement of millions of others.66Hall & Young, p.118.67Hanlon, p.135.68Mark Simpson, ‘Foreign and Domestic Factors in the Transformation of Frelimo‘,The Journal of M odern African Studies, vol. 31, no. 2, 1993, p.317.69

Isaacman & I saacman, p.121.70Marina Ottaway, ‘Mozambique: From Symbolic Socialism to Symbolic Reform‘,The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1988, p.222. The extent of thisstate power should not, however, be overemphasised. Ottaway asserts: ‘Thegovernment-party apparatus – in short, the state – was poorly organised and lackedpersonnel, experience, skills and money. As a consequence, it had little effectivecontrol over either the economy or the society … the socialist sect or remained v erysmall, and the vanguard party never quite mate rialised. … The Government h as avery limited capacity to affect what act ually happens. It can draw up plans, makelaws, and issue decrees, but it cannot implement them; and it can set up institutionsof all sorts, but it cannot make them operational.’71Michel Cahen’s understanding of Frelimo’s s tate is slight ly more critical: ‘Thesocialcharacter of this elite, its total separation from peasant or even urban artisan production,its concentratio n in the south (that is, in t he service economy for the British hinterland),its ethnic distance from the main groups of the country – all combined with a situationcharacterised by armed confrontation against a dictatorship that was not simply

colonial but also fascist – in my view explains its ”capture” by a very specific marxism.It w as hard to imagine th e Mozambican state in its own image: auniversalistic , modernstate, unencumbered by the domestic mode of production of the peasantry, in whichthe state itself – site of the elite’s own social reproduction – had a central economic role,characterised by a pathological mistrust of all manifestations of rural or urban socialmovement which it did not know; with the Portuguese language (its own!) as aunifying force and destroyer of ethnic identity; committed to a radical anti-tribalismcloaking the general hostility of the south Creole elites towards the old northernCreole elite, marginalised elements and to ”traditional” structures; and, finally,

proclaiming the nation.’ Cahen, p.50.72Pete Binns, ‘Revolution and State Capitalism in the Third World‘, InternationalSocialism , series 2, vol. 25, 1983, p.44.73Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), ForeignLanguage Press, Beijing, 1973, p.47.74 ibid., p.59.

for Franco in Spain, and was wanted for murder in Britain, has been accused bysome authors of being the PIDE assassin. It has also been suggested that he laterworked with the Resistência Nacional Mo cambicana (Renamo) in its ‘anti-communist’insurgency in Frelimo-ruled M ozambique.38ibid., p.59.39Hall & Young, p.21.40ibid., p.68.41ibid., p.66.42Samora Mac hel, “Sharpening the Class Struggle”, speech given at the Symposium

in Homage to Amilcar Cabral, Conakry, 31 January 1973, in Braganca & Wallerstein,p.104.43Hanlon, p.36.44Hall & Young, p.30. Some sources claim muc h larger numbers of u p to a millionpeople.45ibid., p.27.46ibid., p.21.47Isaacman & I saacman, p.103.48Hall & Young, pp.36-39.49William Minter, Apartheid’s Contras: An Inquiry int o the Roots of Wa r in Angola and

Mozambique, Zed Books, London, 1994, p.11.50Hall & Young, pp.43-44.51Minter, pp.11-12. According to Hall & Young, p.45, 5000 Portuguese settlers fledMozambique between 11 and 17 September alone.52Hall & Young, pp.44-46. The large number of arrests made duri ng this t urbulentperiod led to the establishmen t of prison camps to house inmates. These were th e

embryos of future re-education camps, where the prisoners cultivated fields andundertook c lasses for political instruction and literacy.53Hanlon, p.49.54Abrahamsson & Nilsson, p.78. ‘Their tasks largely corresponded to the tasks of peoples’ power in the liberated areas. They had to atten d to whatever was presentingproblems for the population. In factories the dynamising groups came to play aspecial role in that they were also forced to attempt to take responsibility formaintaining production, even if the prev ious owners made off. But t hey also had th eideological task of raising the workers’ class c onsciousn ess.’55Michel Cahen, ‘Check on Socialism in Mozambique – What Check? WhatSocialism?‘,Review of African Political Economy , vol. 20, no. 57, 1993, p.51.56Revolutionary consciousness refers to t he cognisance of oppression th rough society’sinstitutions and th e vehement desire to rebel against and totally disassemble thesestructures.57Alex Vines, RENAMO: From Terrorism to Democracy in Mozambique?, James Currey,

London, 1996, p.8.58Isaacman & Isaacman, p.161. It should be noted that literate black Mozambicansactually made up 30% of t he skilled working class, but th ey predominantly belongedto the class of assimilados and their loyalty mostly lay with the colonial regime. Manyof t hem fled alongside their white c ounterparts. In addition, a radicalised p ortion of the white working class did genuinely support the new Frelimo government, butnumbers there are unclear. See also Hall & Young, p.50.59Isaacman & I saacman, p.145.60Hall & Young, p.50.61Hanlon, p.216.