tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/samora-machel-33056/articlesSamora Machel – The Conversation2022-07-03T08:10:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1856482022-07-03T08:10:30Z2022-07-03T08:10:30ZBook on Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe’s legacy has many flaws<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/470799/original/file-20220624-17-oop0y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe died in 2019. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Development studies professor David Moore’s new <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/mugabes-legacy/">book</a>, Mugabe’s Legacy: Coups, Conspiracies and the Conceits of Power in Zimbabwe, attempts to understand the legacy of <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Robert_Mugabe">Robert Mugabe</a>, who led Zimbabwe from 1980 to 2017, when he lost power in a military coup. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-b-moore-285501">Moore</a> maintains that Mugabe’s legacy revolves around what he terms “the three Cs”: coups, conspiracies and conceits of political power. He shows that “the three Cs” have their origins in the perilous politics of the independence struggle, in which Mugabe was a key participant.</p>
<p>The book consists of a prologue and 10 chapters. The first chapter seeks “to erect a conceptual structure on which the Zimbabwe ‘facts’ will sit”. Chapters two to five set out “the making of Mugabe and his legacy” in the liberation struggle years. Chapters six to nine trace the independence time trajectory of Mugabe’s political career through to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-military-coup-is-afoot-in-zimbabwe-whats-next-for-the-embattled-nation-87528">2017 coup</a>. Chapter ten examines Zimbabwean politics after Mugabe’s fall from power and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-49604152">death in 2019</a>.</p>
<p>The scholars <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003026280/personality-cult-politics-mugabe-zimbabwe-ezra-chitando">Ezra Chitando</a>; <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Robert+Mugabe">Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut</a>; <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/11424894/mugabe">Stephen Chan</a>; and <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-47733-2">Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Pedzisai Ruhanya</a>, among others, have debated the legacies of Mugabe’s 37-year rule. </p>
<p>Moore largely ignores the contributions of these important contending studies about Mugabe’s legacies. This is subnormal academic practice. Consequently, the precise ways in which his book surpasses or buttresses competing works about Mugabe’s legacy are indistinct.</p>
<p>Bar an interview with the veteran nationalist politician Edgar Tekere (who had a mammoth lifelong axe to grind with Mugabe) in 2004, Moore did not interview anybody else in Zanu-PF who knew Mugabe well, or worked closely with him for an extended period. For that reason, the book is bereft of exceptionally revealing findings about Mugabe’s leadership, legacy and the politics of Zanu-PF. Moore’s main sources are unremarkable diplomatic cables in Western archives and material already in the public domain such as newspaper articles, NGO reports and published books. They do not make for a groundbreaking book.</p>
<h2>Missing the point</h2>
<p>We live in an age where the decolonisation of the knowledge agenda has, rightly, come to the fore in the academy. In light of this, I expected arguments about Mugabe’s leadership developed by black Zimbabwean scholars based in Zimbabwe to be central to Moore’s analysis. In place of debates about Mugabe by black Zimbabwean scholars, he has the thought of 20th century Italian Marxist intellectual-politician <a href="https://globalsocialtheory.org/thinkers/gramsci-antonio/">Antonio Gramsci</a> as his book’s central point of reference. </p>
<p>Moore invokes Gramsci <em>ad infinitum</em>, without ever properly contextualising his ideas or making clear their illuminating pertinence in debates about Mugabe’s legacy. Nor does Moore use his study of Mugabe’s legacy to extend and refine Gramscian theories. My comprehension of Mugabe, his legacy and Zanu-PF was not enhanced in any novel way after all that Gramsci. </p>
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<p>Discussion of real and imagined coups is an important theme in Moore’s book. This is presented as a key component of Mugabe’s legacy. But, Moore does not engage relevant coup and military rule literature in order to enhance our understanding of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup, and for the coup to advance broader studies about the nature and effects of coups, such as work by <a href="https://yalebooks.co.uk/page/detail/?k=9780300040432">Samuel Decalo</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/african-government-politics-and-policy/when-soldiers-rebel-ethnic-armies-and-political-instability-africa?format=HB&isbn=9781108422475">Kristen Harkness</a>, <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/10989/seizing-power">Naunihal Singh</a>, <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-polisci-032211-213418">Barbara Geddes</a> and <a href="https://www.ohioswallow.com/book/In+Idi+Amin%E2%80%99s+Shadow">Alicia Decker</a>, among others.</p>
<p>Moore states that he finds coup literature “boring” because it consists of “conservative tracts on the primordial-like prebendal and neo-patrimonial coupishness of Africans” (page 164). Serious coup scholars will bristle at his characterisation of their work as “conservative”, and defined by a propensity to regard Africans as innately prone to coup making because of personalised patronage-based politics. </p>
<p>Moore cursorily engages the African studies scholar <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9248.1973.tb01413.x">Ali Mazrui’s 1973 article</a>, called Lumpen Proletariat and Lumpen Militariat: African Soldiers as New Political Class, about the consequences of coups, to underline why he finds coup literature “boring” and unhelpful.</p>
<p>The problem with this is that Mazrui’s article is dated and was hardly authoritative even in 1973. Moore depicts a crude caricature of a diverse, sophisticated, instructive and evolving coup and military rule literature.</p>
<h2>Portrayal of women</h2>
<p>Feminist scholarship has done much to challenge patriarchal erasure and trivialisation of women in political science. Moore’s book does precisely what feminist scholars have critiqued for decades now. It is laden with unquestioned patriarchal notions and gendered trivialisations that impoverish the study of politics.</p>
<p>Moore writes as if nothing can be gained analytically by treating women (Zimbabwe’s former <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Grace_Mugabe">first lady Grace Mugabe</a>, specifically) seriously. By this I mean methodically tracing, listening to and understanding women’s actual political incentives and experiences. </p>
<p>Moore employs sexist tropes when discussing Grace Mugabe’s role in politics and the 2017 coup. For example, he describes her as “the volatile former secretary”, “the woman who whipped her son’s girlfriend” and “incendiary Grace”. Yet there is no mention of the equally notable emotional volatility of the powerful political men – Mugabe, <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Constantino_Chiwenga">Constantino Chiwenga</a>, <a href="http://www.swradioafrica.com/Documents/Dzinashe%20Machingura.pdf">Dzinashe Machingura</a>, <a href="https://www.colonialrelic.com/biographies/joshua-nkomo/">Joshua Nkomo</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/samora-machel">Samora Machel</a> and <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Josiah_Tongogara">Josiah Tongogara</a> – who he discusses in his book.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Moore did not unearth any treasures in his research of Mugabe’s legacy. He has not even drawn a map that might lead us to an enhanced understanding of the making of Mugabe and his legacy, the politics of Zanu-PF, and coups and their corollaries.</p>
<p><em>Blessing Miles Tendi is the author of <a href="http://www.milestendi.com/books">The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe - Mujuru, the liberation fighter and kingmaker</a></em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/185648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blessing-Miles Tendi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Moore did not unearth any treasures in his research of Mugabe’s legacy. He has not even drawn a map that might lead us to them.Blessing-Miles Tendi, Associate Professor in the Politics of Africa, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1634352021-07-18T07:47:40Z2021-07-18T07:47:40ZHow Frelimo betrayed Samora Machel’s dream of a free Mozambique<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408677/original/file-20210628-17-1xx8348.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Samora Machel, Mozambique's founding president. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sahm Doherty/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Forty-six years ago, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/death-samora-machel">Samora Machel</a>, the leader of Mozambique’s liberation movement and the country’s first president, stood before a euphoric crowd at Machava Stadium and <a href="https://cedis.fd.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/DECLARA%c3%87%c3%83O-DE-INDEPEND%c3%8aNCIA-DE-MO%c3%87AMBIQUE-DE-25-DE-JUNHO-DE-1975.pdf">declared</a> the</p>
<blockquote>
<p>complete and total independence of Mozambique. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He inspired the people of Mozambique to imagine and build a new nation in which development, social justice, and solidarity with – and care for – the oppressed took centre stage.</p>
<p>Four decades later, Machel’s declarations ring hollow. His words and the new dawn they heralded have since disintegrated.</p>
<p>I’m a Mozambican political sociologist. I have been a keen observer of the country’s changing economic, social and political structures since the early 1990s. </p>
<p>The declaration of independence in 1975 proclaimed a social contract that contained the ideals of freedom. These included economic and social justice, eradication of hunger and poverty, health and education for all, equality of all people regardless of ethnicity, race and gender, emancipation of women, the rule of law and human rights. </p>
<p>But Frelimo has squandered the enormous political capital it enjoyed at independence. The party remains in power by using violence, intimidation, <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr41/1019/2019/en/">harassment and threats</a>. Generalised <a href="https://cipmoz.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CIP-Custos_da_Corrupcao.pdf">lawlessness</a> characterise Mozambique today.</p>
<p>Governance crises and deep rooted <a href="https://cipmoz.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CIP-Custos_da_Corrupcao.pdf">corruption</a> permeate all aspects of political, economic and social life. <a href="https://www.iese.ac.mz/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/CIESE19-BernhardWeimer.pdf">Popular discontent</a> with the Frelimo government is on the rise. This explains the armed conflict in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/08/24/mozambique-opposition-group-raids-hospitals">central</a> and <a href="https://www.dw.com/pt-002/guerra-em-cabo-delgado-erro-hist%C3%B3rico-que-a-frelimo-n%C3%A3o-consegue-remediar/a-57226829">northern</a> regions. </p>
<h2>The context</h2>
<p>Mozambique was the first country in southern Africa to become <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Southern-Africa/Independence-and-decolonization-in-Southern-Africa">independent</a> through armed insurrection. This threatened the white minority regimes of Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe) and <a href="http://psimg.jstor.org/fsi/img/pdf/t0/10.5555/al.sff.document.crp2b20027_final.pdf">South Africa</a>. Both feared that Mozambique would become a haven for the liberation movement guerrillas of the respective countries. It was, therefore, in their interests to topple the Frelimo government. </p>
<p>As Mozambique celebrated independence the regime of Ian Smith in Zimbabwe conducted air raids in southern and central Mozambique. Civilians were killed and communication systems, <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/tomzgroup/pmwiki/uploads/3004-1979-04-KS-a-DIR.pdf">bridges and crops were destroyed</a>. </p>
<p>The Rhodesian regime also teamed up with Portuguese malcontents who still had interests in Mozambique, to create a surrogate terrorist movement, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Apartheids-Second-Front-Africas-Neighbours/dp/0140523707">Renamo</a>.
When the Rhodesian regime fell and Zimbabwe became <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/history-of-Zimbabwe">independent in 1980</a>, the South African apartheid regime stepped in to finance Renamo’s operations. Its 16-year war of destabilisation consisted of acts of terrorism that produced <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mozambique-Revolution-Under-Joseph-Hanlon/dp/0862322448">profound psychological trauma</a>. </p>
<p>The war of destabilisation and natural disasters created the need for foreign aid. Working with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Frelimo introduced structural adjustments in 1987. These programmes involved <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Peace-without-Profit-Rebuilding-Mozambique/dp/0852558007">economic liberalisation and deregulation</a>. </p>
<p>The programmes involved widespread privatisation of state-run companies, massive layoffs and unemployment and cuts in government spending on social services. The cost of food, water, housing, electricity, transport and telecommunications went up. Poverty and inequality increased.</p>
<p>At the same time Frelimo elites set about building an extensive patronage system. </p>
<h2>Natural resources</h2>
<p>In my view Frelimo political elites have presided over the natural resource mismanagement, looting and environmental crimes. </p>
<p>In the past 20 years many rural communities have been <a href="https://mistra.org.za/mistra-publications/land-in-south-africa/">forcibly removed from their homes</a> to make room for agribusiness, mining, oil and gas companies. </p>
<p>In addition, natural ecosystems have been plundered. The deforestation of central and northern regions has left areas subject to vicious cycles of droughts, <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news-feature/2019/04/24/how-rampant-deforestation-made-mozambique-more-vulnerable-cyclone-idai">cyclones and floods</a>.</p>
<p>In 2013, the Environmental Investigation Agency <a href="https://eia-international.org/wp-content/uploads/EIA-First-Class-Connections1.pdf">investigation</a> found that 93% of logging in Mozambique was illegal. </p>
<p>But the most marked exploitation of natural resources followed the discovery of large reserves of natural gas in Palma district, Cabo Delgado province.</p>
<p>Local rural communities have been dislocated and impoverished. The transfer of the Afungi peninsula in Palma district, where the French company Total has been constructing its liquefied natural gas infrastructure, was marked by government threats, intimidation, coercion and <a href="https://landportal.org/fr/library/resources/industria-extractiva-e-comunidades-locais">lack of transparency</a>. </p>
<p>Without just compensation and meaningful free, prior and informed consent, communities that for centuries relied on fishing for their livelihood were <a href="https://landportal.org/fr/library/resources/industria-extractiva-e-comunidades-locais">evicted from their fishing grounds forever</a>.</p>
<h2>State of human rights</h2>
<p>The Mozambican declaration of independence committed the new nation to upholding the rights enshrined in international and regional human rights covenants. Yet, human rights organisations document violations of fundamental human rights protected under international law year after year. </p>
<p>In Cabo Delgado, nearly 1 million internally displaced people are in <a href="https://www.emergency-live.com/stories/mozambique-islamist-attacks-create-humanitarian-crisis-in-cabo-delgado-1-2-million-people-without-health-care/">desperate need</a> of having their basic needs met. This includes shelter, water, sanitation and education. </p>
<p>Those suspected of aiding the enemy are disappeared, tortured and <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr41/3545/2021/en/">killed</a>. </p>
<p>Journalists attempting to cover the conflict face intimidation and harassment, arbitrary arrests, and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/02/21/mozambique-media-barred-insurgent-region">torture</a>.</p>
<p>The 1975 declaration of independence also proclaimed the complete “emancipation of women”. But most women in Mozambique live under deplorable conditions, stripped of their rights, humanity and <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/news/freeing-women-and-girls-violence-mozambique">dignity</a>.</p>
<h2>Poverty and inequality</h2>
<p>In the declaration of independence, Frelimo proclaimed that the new government would fight and eliminate all the “faces of colonialism and underdevelopment”. These included diseases, illiteracy and hunger. It said health services network would be extended throughout the country. Frelimo also <a href="https://cedis.fd.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/DECLARA%C3%87%C3%83O-DE-INDEPEND%C3%8ANCIA-DE-MO%C3%87AMBIQUE-DE-25-DE-JUNHO-DE-1975.pdf">promised to</a> promote the spread of education at all levels.</p>
<p>These promises have not been met. The Frelimo government has overseen <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/46420748_Poverty_is_not_being_reduced_in_Mozambique">growing poverty and inequality</a>. It presides over low human development indices, especially in rural areas, particularly in the central and northern regions. Among these are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>health (child mortality, nutrition),</p></li>
<li><p>education (years of schooling, enrolment), </p></li>
<li><p>living standards (water, sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, floor, assets), and </p></li>
<li><p>unemployment (notably of youth). </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Corruption is rife. An egregious example was the revelation of the country’s biggest ever financial scandal in 2016. Senior government officials acquired secret and illegal loans from Switzerland’s Credit Suisse International and Russia’s VTB Capital. It later emerged in court that <a href="https://cipmoz.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Privinvest-informa-ao-tribunal-ingle%CC%82s-que-pagou-milho%CC%83es-de-do%CC%81lares-a-Filipe-Nyusi.pdf">more than US$17 million had been paid in bribes</a> to the Frelimo party and two serving ministers at the time – defence and finance.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>The ideals of the struggle for freedom outlined in the 1975 declaration of independence are lost and forgotten. </p>
<p>In my view Frelimo has made a mockery of the ideals of liberation. Mourning, not celebration, is suitable for the occasion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Matsinhe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Frelimo, which governs Mozambique, has squandered the enormous political capital it enjoyed at independence. It now remains in power through violence, intimidation, harassment, and threats.David Matsinhe, Losophone Research Specialist/Adjunct Professor in African Studies, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/684402016-11-08T13:10:50Z2016-11-08T13:10:50ZHow are elections really rigged, Mr Trump? Consult Robert Mugabe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145023/original/image-20161108-16691-16j16vc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Philimon Bulawayo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“The Donald’s” claim that the American elections are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/25/donald-trump-rigged-election-bush-gore-florida-voter-fraud">rigged in his opponent’s favour</a> (while it appears that in fact <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/this-election-is-being-rigged-but-not-by-hillary-clinton-w448638">his supporters</a> are doing as much as they can to jimmy the great contest) is reminiscent of many African opposition leaders’ claims.</p>
<p>They, however, are usually proffered after the elections’ results displease them.</p>
<p>Some of these unhappy losers’ claims are as wild as Trump’s – whose fantasies are relatively common in a long history of his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/08/opinion/campaign-stops/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics-is-back.html?_r=0">country’s paranoid political style</a>. But an unsavoury proportion are close to the bone. </p>
<p>Liberal democrats the world over have been disappointed with the results of the nearly three post-Cold War decades of democracy promotion in Africa. Then, given the fall of the Berlin Wall, they thought the continent’s benighted souls could no longer fall prey to the promises of Soviet versions of communism.</p>
<p>This disenchantment is not due to African democracy producing a feared wave of <a href="https://www.zedbooks.net/shop/book/disciplining-democracy">fiscally irresponsible populism</a>, but because it hasn’t prevented <a href="http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/25597#.WCGMIdV97IV">a re-ignited wave of authoritarianism</a>. </p>
<p>Those who have called “foul” to the winners of Zimbabwe’s nine national elections since Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe National African Union–Patriotic Front replaced Ian Smith’s minority regime in 1980 have more cause than most to
complain.</p>
<p>Mugabe and ZANU-PF are masters of an <a href="http://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/717">arsenal of coercion and chicanery</a> – and a modicum of well-manipulated consent – that is well-honed to take to the trenches come election time.</p>
<p>ZANU-PF’s electoral armoury, combined with the opposition’s own goals, has produced a complex and contradictory accumulation of wealth, power, and paranoia. This will be hard to crack in the tenth Zimbabwean election, due in 2018. That one may not be as easy to take as those in the past, <a href="https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2016/10/31/mugabe-faces-doom-in-2018-tsvangirai">given the ruling party’s fracturing</a> as its ever-older leader’s powers wane. But the much splintered parties trying to take advantage of ZANU-PF’s cracks <a href="http://www.zimeye.net/tsvangirai-mujuru-marriage-questioned/">will have to get their unity act together quickly</a>. They had also better examine ZANU-PF’s history of guaranteeing that its power doesn’t get diminished by a mere election or two conducted free of rigging by any means possible. </p>
<p>Furthermore, much of what has traditionally been conceived as “southern” political and ideological discourses are now overlapping with what used to be called the “north” (or the “centre” of global capitalism) as it becomes riven with inequality and the world’s marginalised enter its former centre. </p>
<p>Thus Trump-style demagogues take on the practices of dictators everywhere, moulding the languages of disenfranchisement and resentment into authoritarian populism. Mugabe-politics are becoming <a href="http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/79_01_hall.pdf">a global phenomenon</a>. Their electoral tactics will follow.</p>
<h2>History of election victory by any means</h2>
<p>The Zimbabwean ruling party has a long history of election victory by methods ranging from well organised violence to ballot box stuffing to media manipulation. So too did its predecessors. The white minority regimes rigged elections by creating a myriad of justifications and variations <a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo19722744.html">to keep the numbers of “qualified” black African voters low</a>. </p>
<p>In the late fifties and early sixties, <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-urban-roots-of-democracy-and-political-violence-in-zimbabwe.html">the first black unions and nationalist parties</a> were rent with violence. This extended from leadership selection to control over foreign funding (necessary to organise elections of any sort). And of course there were plenty of sticks, stones and firebombs when the nationalist movement split into two parties. </p>
<p>As nationalism started full stride in 1964 the leader of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) signed “Joshua Nkomo, Life President” <a href="http://www.universityofpretoria.co.za/media/shared/85/Strategic%20Review/Vol%2036(1)/05-moore_pp47-71.zp39515.pdf">to a letter</a> to a British Secretary of State. </p>
<p>Seven years later, as the struggle upped the ante into full arms, ZANU’s guerrilla leader gained votes for his choice on the “war council” by standing in front of his chosen candidate and his followers duly lined up behind him. No <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2011.638153?journalCode=cjca20">secret ballot there</a>. </p>
<p>A few years later, threatened by a group of radical youth, Mugabe persuaded the guerrilla army’s host, Mozambican president Samora Machel, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306522030_The_ZIPA_moment_Dzino_Mugabe_and_Samora_Machel">to shunt its leaders into prison</a>. Thus suitably moderate in terms of Cold War politics, the liberation party swept its way to the 1980 victory. The many complaints about intimidation – and worse – didn’t dent the <a href="http://www.universityofpretoria.co.za/media/shared/85/Strategic%20Review/Vol%2036(1)/05-moore_pp47-71.zp39515.pdf">British-led transitional team’s haste</a> to wipe their hands of their embarrassing semi-colony.</p>
<p>With state power from 1980 to now, ZANU-PF has learned even more lessons. As Norma Kriger <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518631">has chronicled</a>, all Zimbabwe’s elections up to 2000 were rife with coercion, rarely acknowledged by academics, other observers, and important states. </p>
<p>The lessons learned then helped in future strategies. As Tim Scarnecchia <a href="http://repository.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/handle/10566/1017">notes</a>, during <em>Gukurahundi</em>– the “spring storms” that washed away thousands of Ndebele people suspected of harbouring treasonous intent – the Zimbabwean rulers learned to keep local and global great powers on side. </p>
<h2>The new millennium</h2>
<p>The 2000 parliamentary election was unprecedented. ZANU-PF was challenged seriously by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), with deep roots in civil society resistance. The ruling party’s 1997 deal with the land-hungry war veterans’ association created the perfect weapon against those thought to have made an alliance with the new opposition: white farmers. </p>
<p>Invasions of large scale commercial farms became a new component of election strategy (not least because they housed farm workers, seen to be stoked against ZANU-PF). These were accompanied by restrictive “public order” and media legislation, along with “green bombers” in the militias helping eliminate vote-gathering challengers.</p>
<p>By the presidential election of 2002 the techniques included gerrymandering to add rural votes to the urban areas, which tended to support the MDC, reducing the number of polling booths in cities and snail-like processing on the election days. At the same time the gamut of alterations to the tally included restrictive registration and the usual tricks at the counting stage.</p>
<p>On the foreign front, the sitting South African president <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00713.x/abstract">wrote a missive to his party</a> that was scathingly critical of political affairs to his north. To accuse a political party of having only the “lumpen-proletariat” (the marauding war vets) as a support base is nasty indeed. </p>
<p>Although Thabo Mbeki told whomever was listening in Zimbabwe’s “revolutionary party” to follow the precepts of free and fair elections, his quiet diplomacy did not waver. He did in fact send a second mission to investigate the contest. But it took the Mail and Guardian newspaper years to win its court case and reveal the critical <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2013-02-22-00-khampepe-report-worries-zanu-pf-officials">Khampepe report</a>. </p>
<p>The 2005 challenge was relatively mild. But the rulers’ pique was still such that it went on a rampage to destroy thousands of informal traders’ stalls and mildly illegal housing, displacing an estimated 700,000. <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2005/07/zimb-j16.html">Operation Murambatsvina</a>
was a prime example of urbicide.</p>
<p>Three years later (just before Mbeki’s final deposition) the MDC almost won the “harmonised” March 2008 contest. This included cities, parliament (with a Senate, the establishment of which caused the opposition to split into two parties) and the presidential race.</p>
<p>The official election commission spent nearly six weeks reckoning a 47% victory for the long suffering pretenders to power. But the new constitution forced a run-off to reach the required 50% plus triumph. </p>
<p>Mugabe and his military took no chances: the violence they meted out was so severe that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai abandoned the race. ZANU-PF’s victory was too hollow for their continental peers: Mbeki’s <a href="http://www.brill.com/products/book/south-africa-after-apartheid">last presidential foreign policy feat</a> was to usher in <a href="http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com/index.php/store/history-and-%20politics/the-hard-road-to-reform-detail">a “government of national unity”</a>. This combined the brutal victors with the more innocent co-governors, who took up the poisoned chalice of sharing an already deeply corrupted state. </p>
<p>If 2008’s blend of extreme violence and regional complicity wasn’t election rigging, what could be?</p>
<p>By the July 2013 electoral charade, ZANU-PF had learned all the tricks. The government of national unity’s “roadmap” election reforms was never completed. When the key South African mediator Lindiwe Zulu mooted postponing the race until the field was level (or maybe advising the MDC to pull out), Mugabe told Jacob Zuma to shut the “<a href="http://www.news24.com/Archives/City-Press/Mugabe-calls-Zumas-SADC-envoy-a-street-woman-20150430">street woman</a>” up. The latter complied. </p>
<p>A sneaky Israeli election management company was hired to play sophisticated games (were there actually <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2014/04/11/new-details-mugabes-extra-votes/">a million extra votes</a>?) The voter’s roll was never published. When the race began, there were <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2013.858543">reminders of 2008</a>. </p>
<p>Most tragically, unity talks among the opposition party amounted to nothing, and the main MDC seemed to implode. One usually well-informed observer claimed the MDC <a href="http://www.theafricareport.com/Southern-Africa/zimbabwe-reading-between-the-political-lines.html">had not bothered to register voters</a>. As Phillan Zamchiya <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03057070.2013.858546">put it</a>, the match was a technical knockout.</p>
<p>All in all, if the Donald Trumps of the world want to find out how the masters of manufacturing elections work, they had better visit Zimbabwe before their internecine struggles close them down.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David B. Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If the Donald Trumps of the world want to find out how the masters of manufacturing elections work, they had better visit Zimbabwe before their internecine struggles close them downDavid B. Moore, Professor of Development Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/621302016-07-12T17:08:31Z2016-07-12T17:08:31ZOld soldiers, old divisions are central in new Mozambique conflict<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129607/original/image-20160706-12743-1azkzmu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 10,000 people have fled the conflict in Mozambique to take refuge in Malawi.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Justin Pearce</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Peace in <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/af/profiles/Mozambique/SecInfo.html">Mozambique</a> lasted 20 years, between 1992 and 2012.</p>
<p>Following three years of skirmishes, conflict has escalated since 2015. The Mozambican Defence Force has been trying to <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_302-12Nov15-disarming_Renamo-IMF_loan.pdf">destroy</a> the military bases belonging to the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the principal opposition to the ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) in parliament. </p>
<p>At least 10,000 people have fled Mozambique and sought <a href="https://www.issafrica.org/iss-today/mozambiques-success-story-under-threat">refuge in Malawi</a>, testifying to attacks perpetrated mostly by government soldiers. The conflict has served to consolidate local support for Renamo, which had previously fought the government from 1976 to 1992.</p>
<h2>Pragmatic peace</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cfr.org/mozambique/general-peace-agreement-mozambique/p24232">1992 Rome Accord</a>, which ended the 16-year war, was greeted at the time as a model of pragmatism. To overcome the misgivings of Renamo’s leader, <a href="https://global.britannica.com/place/Mozambique/Peace-in-Mozambique#ref932106">Afonso Dhlakama</a>, the accord allowed him to retain armed bodyguards.</p>
<p>Other Renamo soldiers were to have been integrated into the police. When this didn’t happen, they <a href="http://ijtj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/09/ijtj.ijv004.full.pdf+html">stayed loyal to Dhlakama</a>. Renamo’s electoral support <a href="https://www.eisa.org.za/wep/moz1999background2.htm">peaked in 1999</a> and then declined: the challenge of the opposition party trapped in a system where loyalty requires redistributing state largesse. Then-President <a href="http://live.worldbank.org/experts/he-joaquim-chissano">Joaquim Chissano</a> appeased Dhlakama only through diplomacy and patronage.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=813&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129856/original/image-20160708-24060-78g4us.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1022&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Things changed with the election of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Armando-Guebuza">Armando Guebuza</a> as president in 2004. Not only did Guebuza reject Chissano’s <a href="http://ijtj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/04/09/ijtj.ijv004.full.pdf+html">conciliatory attitude</a> towards Dhlakama; his presidency also saw state capture by a section of the Frelimo elite at a time when Mozambique’s economy was being transformed by the <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_Bulletin_53_coal-gas.pdf">coal and gas industries</a>.</p>
<p>The emergence of a visibly wealthy elite while most people remained poor was a grievance that Renamo was later to exploit. In 2009, Dhlakama relocated to the northern city of Nampula where, in 2012, Renamo soldiers <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2013.840087">clashed with police</a> at Renamo’s provincial headquarters. Dhlakama retreated to his wartime redoubt at Satungira in the Gorongosa National Park in Sofala province. Meanwhile, Renamo soldiers were quietly establishing bases in rural areas across the central provinces.</p>
<h2>An army of ageing combatants</h2>
<p>The next phase of the crisis began with a gathering of Renamo men in Muxúnguè, a town on the north-south arterial road through Sofala province. Residents of the town recalled that by the end of March 2013 several hundred were camped out at the local Renamo office and conducting marching drills. </p>
<p>The men were all at least 40 years old. A peculiar feature of this conflict has been Renamo’s reliance on ageing combatants from the civil war, rather than recruiting fresh blood. On April 3, police fired teargas to disperse the men. The next day, Renamo attacked the police station before retreating to an unknown location in the bush <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_214_Renamo_attacks_8Apr2013.pdf">outside the town</a>.</p>
<p>Later that year, Renamo began systematically to ambush vehicles on the national road <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_218_2_dead_in_Renamo_attacks_21June2013.pdf">south of Muxúnguè</a>. Civilian casualties were few, but the threat to the economy alarmed the government. The defence force began counterinsurgency operations against farming communities that it suspected of supporting Renamo.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129838/original/image-20160708-24071-10g4q9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Negotiations got under way, mediated by Mozambican civil society, but with little apparent enthusiasm from either side. Renamo’s demands centred on three main points. First, it should have the right to <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_251-15Apr2014_IMF%26education_talks-deadlock.pdf">appoint officers</a> to the defence force equivalent to those appointed by the government. This was a provision of the Rome Accord, ignored in recent years as retired ex-Renamo officers were replaced by government (in effect, Frelimo) nominees. </p>
<p>Second, Renamo demanded measures to deal with <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_241-election_accord-12Feb2014.pdf">electoral malpractice</a>. Finally, Renamo wanted power to be <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/technology/mozambique/sites/www.open.ac.uk.technology.mozambique/files/files/Mozambique_282-19March2015_Renamo_autonomous_provinces_proposal.pdf">devolved to the provinces</a>; this would create a patronage base for Renamo – and for that reason would be hard for Frelimo to accept. </p>
<p>The negotiations resulted only in a truce to allow elections to go ahead as scheduled in October 2014. The results revealed a <a href="http://www.saiia.org.za/opinion-analysis/renamos-gambit-forcing-the-issue-after-the-mozambique-2014-elections">resurgence in support</a> for Renamo and for Dhlakama.</p>
<h2>Conflicting historical narratives</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/africa/africanperspectives/2016/06/30/mozambiques-flare-up-of-conflict-is-an-unresolved-elite-power-struggle">Interviews</a> I did in Sofala during the lull that followed the 2014 election, as part of an ongoing research project, gave some clues as to why so many central Mozambicans regard an armed Renamo as a preferable alternative to the status quo.</p>
<p>When people talked about local history, they evoked divisions going back to the independence struggle in the 1960s. In contrast to Frelimo’s official history of undivided nationalism, people in Sofala recall a fractious alliance between leaders from different parts of Mozambique.</p>
<p>They remember a pastor from Sofala called <a href="http://macua.blogs.com/moambique_para_todos/2010/01/suponho-nunca-ter-sido-tornado-publico-na-sua-totalidade-o-documento-apresentado-por-uria-simango-em-novembro-de-1969-e.html">Uria Simango</a>, who as Frelimo vice-president was expected to succeed <a href="http://www.oberlin.edu/alummag/oampast/oam_spring98/Alum_n_n/eduardo.html">Eduardo Mondlane</a>, who was killed in 1969. The fact that Simango was outmanoeuvred by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/samora-machel">Samora Machel</a>, a southerner who led Mozambique to independence in 1975, is understood as part of a pattern of southern domination over the rest of Mozambique.</p>
<p>After independence, Frelimo’s attempts to relocate peasants to communal villages engendered support in Sofala for a Renamo that promised to reverse the collectivisation policy. When people speak of their own poverty today, they contrast it with wealth being amassed by the southern elite. </p>
<h2>Frelimo’s crisis of legitimacy</h2>
<p>When police demand bribes from farmers taking produce to market, people interpret this as symptomatic of a state that predates on central Mozambicans and has no legitimacy to rule. This suggests a reason why, when Renamo guerrillas reappeared in villages in recent years, they were welcomed by people who harboured long-held resentments.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129857/original/image-20160708-24101-zx5rbw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Armando Guebuza, president from 2004 to 2014.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Segar</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Refugees from Mozambique’s <a href="http://www.internationalresourcejournal.com/mining/mining_july_11/mozambique_s_new_mining_epicentre.html">Tete province</a> whom I interviewed in Malawi this year also saw the state as a predatory force. But unlike people in Sofala, they had no historic allegiance to Renamo. When Renamo established bases in Tete in 2012 many were apprehensive, but warmed to Renamo’s men, who explained they had come to bring “democracy”.</p>
<p>Trouble began only after the <a href="http://www.saiia.org.za/opinion-analysis/renamos-gambit-forcing-the-issue-after-the-mozambique-2014-elections">2014 elections</a>. People initially believed Renamo had won, then were confused when they heard Frelimo’s candidate, Filipe Nyusi, had become president. </p>
<p>Refugees said they had expected Renamo to take power for two reasons, each based on a misunderstanding of democracy that Renamo had apparently encouraged. First, because Renamo had a majority in more than half of Mozambique’s provinces, it ought to run the country. Second, they insisted that “democracy means alternation of power”: the fact that Frelimo has been in power since 1975 was reason enough for a change.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/129858/original/image-20160708-24074-1ekwmxj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mozambican refugee outside a makeshift shelter at Kapise camp in Malawi’s Mwanza district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Eldson Chagara</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Village ‘chiefs’ and ‘secretaries’</h2>
<p>Renamo began during 2015 to assert its presence by appointing “chiefs” and “secretaries” in villages, in parallel with the Frelimo appointees who represent the state as well as the party. Not surprisingly, this alarmed the government, which in late 2015 began a new push to defeat Renamo.</p>
<p>Accounts from throughout central Mozambique reveal a consistent strategy. Government troops would try to expel Renamo, and then attack nearby civilians, accusing them of supporting Renamo. They burnt houses, sometimes with the occupants inside. They burnt grain stores, assuming these to be supplies for Renamo.</p>
<p>Some people were shot, others captured and interrogated. Women and men were raped. Renamo soldiers have been more restrained, targeting Frelimo officials. The Mozambican army is currently trying to take Renamo’s Satungira headquarters, but mountainous terrain gives the guerrillas an advantage.</p>
<p>What is happening in Mozambique is not exactly a popular uprising. It was ignited by Dhlakama’s desire for a share of political power, and its associated wealth, in a situation where the state is synonymous with Frelimo. The Rome Accord deserves some blame for centralising politics while allowing an opposition movement to retain access to the means of violence: 20 years later, Dhlakama realised his soldiers were the only asset he had left.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the recent uprising could not have happened without popular support – support that Renamo mobilised by presenting ideas about history and democracy in a way that resonated with real grievances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Pearce receives funding from The Leverhulme Trust and The Newton Trust.</span></em></p>Mozambican civilians are again bearing the consequences of war between the government and opposition party Renamo. How has Renamo mobilised popular support for a new uprising?Justin Pearce, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Politics and International Studies & Research Associate of St John's College Cambridge, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.