Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:57:21.932Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forgetting from Above and Memory from Below: Strategies of Legitimation and Struggle in Postsocialist Mozambique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2011

M. Anne Pitcher
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines two opposing strategies – one used by government officials and businesses, the other expressed by urban workers – that have emerged in postsocialist Mozambique. On the one hand, government officials and businesses have pursued a deliberate strategy of what several writers in other contexts have called ‘organized forgetting', whereby they seek to airbrush the socialist past from history. They have revised the country's ideological orientation, built new coalitions of support among domestic and internal investors, and remade the ruling party's legitimacy following the abandonment of socialism and the transition to a free‐market democracy. On the other hand, some urban workers have revived and repackaged the language of socialism to protest against the effects of neo‐liberalism. Relying on collective and individual memories of socialism, they denounce ‘exploitation', ‘recolonization', ‘injustice’ and ‘inequality’ as they struggle to understand, resist or modify the impact of structural adjustment and privatization. I argue that, although the end of socialism has allowed a plurality of voices to surface in Mozambique, such discursive pluralism is characterized by increasing power inequities. The consolidation of capital and the ideological pronouncements that accompany it may ultimately silence the now dissident language of the socialist past.

Résumé

Cet article examine deux stratégies opposées, l'une utilisée par les fonctionnaires et les entreprises, l'autre exprimée par les travailleurs urbains, qui sont apparues dans le Mozambique postsocialiste. D'un côté, les fonctionnaires et les entreprises ont poursuit une stratégie délibérée de ce que plusieurs auteurs dans d'autres contextes ont appelé l'«oubli organisé», dans laquelle ils cherchent à effacer de l'histoire le passé socialiste. Ils ont révisé l'orientation idéologique du pays, formé de nouvelles coalitions de soutien parmi les investisseurs domestiques et internes, et refait la légitimité du parti au pouvoir après l'abandon du socialisme et la transition vers une démocratie de marché. De l'autre côté, certains travailleurs urbains ont relancé et mis à jour le langage du socialisme pour protester contre les effets du néolibéralisme. S'appuyant sur les mémoires collectives et individuelles du socialisme, ils dénoncent Sexploitation», la «recolonisation», l'«injustice» et l'«inégalité», alors qu'ils s'évertuent à comprendre ou à modifier l'impact de l'ajustement structurel et de la privatisation, ou à y résister. L'article soutient que, bien que la fin du socialisme ait permis l'émergence d'une pluralité de la parole au Mozambique, ce pluralisme discursif se caractérise par un accroissement des inégalités de pouvoir. La consolidation du capital et les déclarations idéologiques qui l'accompagnent risquent à terme de réduire au silence le langage aujourd'hui dissident du passé socialiste.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 76 , Special Issue 1: African Socialisms and Postsocialisms , February 2006 , pp. 88 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agence-France Presse.2001. ‘ Mozambique’s aluminium giant sacks over 400 striking workers’, 8 October. Accessed on http://web.lexis-nexis.com on 4 November 2002.Google Scholar
Aminzade, R. 1981. Class, Politics and Early Industrial Capitalism: a study of mid-nineteenth century Toulouse, France. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Bie, R. 2000. ‘Sindicatos vão à concertação com o governo de “calças na mão” ‘, Savana, 5 May.Google Scholar
Boyarin, J. 1992. Storm from Paradise: the politics of Jewish memory. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Buck-Morss, S. 1995. ‘The city as dreamworld and catastrophe’, October 73 (Summer): 3–26.Google Scholar
Castel-Branco, C. 1994. ‘Problemas estruturais de industrialização: a indústria transformadora’, in Castel-Branco, C. (ed.), Moçambique: perspectivas económicas. Maputo: Imprensa Universitária.Google Scholar
Chilundo, A. 2001. Os camponeses e os caminhos de ferro e estradas em Nampula (1900–1961). Maputo: Promédia.Google Scholar
Chissano President Joaquim Alberto, 2000. ‘Um momento inolvidável na história de Moçambique’, Savana 7: 337, 23 June, Special Supplement, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. 1999. Politics without a Past: the absence of history in postcommunist nationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Confino, A. 1997. ‘Collective memory and cultural history: problems of method’, American Historical Review 102: 1, 386–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Correia, Ivo. 2003. Former CFM employee. Interview. Maputo. 1 July.Google Scholar
Creed, G. 1999. ‘Deconstructing socialism in Bulgaria’, in Burawoy, M. and Verdery, K. (eds), Uncertain Transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Debouzy, M. 1990. ‘In search of working-class memory: some questions and a tentative assessment’, in , Marie-Nö Bourguet, Lucette Valensi and Nathan Wachtel (eds), Between Memory and History. New York: Harwood Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
de Salema, E. 2001. ‘Trabalhadores “chorões” Chissano filosófico’, Savana, 4 May.Google Scholar
de Vletter, F. 1998. no title. Study done for the Technical Unit for Enterprise Restructuring, Ministry of Finance, Mozambique. Mimeo.Google Scholar
Diário de Moçambique. 2003. ‘ Nível de desemprego é elevado apesar do fluxo de investimentos’, 1 May.Google Scholar
Ellis, S. 2002. ‘Writing histories of contemporary Africa’, Journal of African History 43: 1–26.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J. 1993. ‘De-moralizing economies: African socialism, scientific capitalism and the moral politics of “structural adjustment” ‘, in Moore, S. (ed.), Moralizing States and the Ethnography of the Present, American Ethnological Society Monograph Series, no. 5, Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Fonseca, R. 2001. ‘We are the subjects and agents of change’, Xitimela 6 (4) (June): 4–5.Google Scholar
Frates, L. 2002. ‘Memory of Place, the Place of Memory: women’s narrations of late colonial Lourenço Marques, Mozambique’. Ph.D. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Gémo, O. 1997. ‘Trabalhadores denunciam salários de fome no pais’, Notícias, 2 May.Google Scholar
Gengenbach, H. 1998. ‘“I’ll bury you in the border!”: women’s land struggles in post-war Facazisse (Magude District), Mozambique’, Journal of Southern African Studies 24 (1) (March): 7–36.Google Scholar
Gengenbach, H. 1999. ‘Where Women Make History: pots, stories, tattoos, and other gendered accounts of community and change in Magude District, Mozambique, c. 1800 to the present’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Gengenbach, H. 2000. ‘ Naming the past in a “scattered” land: memory and the powers of women’s naming practices in southern Mozambique’, Working paper no. 234, African Studies Center, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Hall, M. and Young., T. 1997. Confronting Leviathan: Mozambique since independence. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Hanlon, J. 2005. ‘ Mozambique Political Process Bulletin’. Election e-mail special issue 33 (3 January). http://www.mozambique.mz/awepa/issues.htm. Accessed on 4 January 2005.Google Scholar
Harrison, G. 1996. ‘Democracy in Mozambique: the significance of multi-party elections’, Review of African Political Economy 67: 19–35.Google Scholar
Hibou, B. 2000. ‘The political economy of the World Bank’s discourse: from economic catechism to missionary deeds (and misdeeds)’, Les Etudes du CERI (Centre d’études et de recherches internationales), 39 (March 1998), English translation (January).Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. 1964. Labouring Men: studies in the history of labour. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Honwana, A. 2003. ‘Undying past: spirit possession and the memory of war in southern Mozambique’, in Meyer, B. and Pels, P. (eds), Magic and Modernity: interfaces of revelation and concealment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Inview. 1999. no. 121. 16 November/December.Google Scholar
Isaacman, A. 1996. Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: peasants, work and rural struggle in colonial Mozambique, 1938-61.. Portsmouth NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Isaacman, A. 1997. ‘Historical amnesia, or, the logic of capital accumulation: cotton production in colonial and postcolonial Mozambique’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15: 757–90.Google Scholar
Isaacman, A. and Isaacman, B. 1983. Mozambique: from colonialism to revolution, 1900-1982.. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
James, D. 1997. ‘Meatpackers, Peronists, and collective memory: a view from the south’, American Historical Review 102 (1), 404–12.Google Scholar
Koenker, D. 1981. Moscow Workers and the 1917 Revolution.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kundera, M. 1980. ‘Afterword: a talk with the author by Philip Roth’, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Michael Henry Heim. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Machel, President Samora 1975. Mozambique: revolution or reaction?. Oakland, CA: LSM Information Center.Google Scholar
Machel, President Samora 1978. ‘Discurso na sessão de abertura da reunião com os antigos prisioneiros políticos da PIDE/DGS (1978-3-21)’. reprinted in CEDIMO, 1979-01-02.Google Scholar
Manjate, J. 2000. ‘Governo promete efectiva implantação dos tribunais’, Notícias, 2 May.Google Scholar
Manning, C. 2001. ‘Competition and accommodation in post-conflict democracy: the case of Mozambique’, Democratization 8/2 (Summer) 140–68.Google Scholar
Akinyele, I. B. 2002. The Politics of Peace in Mozambique.. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Matusse, H. 1997. ‘Sindicatos em Moçambique: proletários, uní-vos!’, Notícias, 18 March).Google Scholar
Metical. 2000. Editorial. 694. 22 March.Google Scholar
Moçambique. 1997-1999. Various issues.Google Scholar
Mozambique 1975.‘Viva, Viva Frelimo’ Mozambique National Anthem.Google Scholar
Mozambique 1980. Constitution of the People’s Republic of Mozambique.Google Scholar
Mozambique 1987.‘Strategy and program for economic rehabilitation, 1987-1990’ Report prepared by the Government of Mozambique for the Meeting of the Consultative Group for Mozambique, Paris, July 1987. Maputo, June.Google Scholar
Mozambique 1990. Constitution. Maputo.Google Scholar
Mozambique 2002.‘Patria Amada’ Mozambique National Anthem.Google Scholar
Mozambiquefile. 2002.‘May Day rally disrupted’ 311 (June) 4–68.Google Scholar
Munslow, B. (ed.), 1985. Samora Machel: an African revolutionary. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Notícias. 2000.‘Inspecção do Trabalho é passiva e vulnerável à atitude dos patrões’ 14 November.Google Scholar
Notícias. 2001.‘Reivindicação dos trabalhadores levanta sinais de crise nos CFM- Sul’ 13 July.Google Scholar
Notícias. 2001.‘Despedimentos reduzem nível de filiação nos sindicatos’ 1 December.Google Scholar
Notícias. 2002.‘Sindicatos sentem-se excluídos do processo’ 2 May.Google Scholar
Notícias. 2003.‘Desvinculados dos CFM querem 7% de volta’ 17 January.Google Scholar
Notícias. 1994-2003.Google Scholar
Organização dos Trabalhadores Moçambicanos. 1983a.‘Estatutos’.Reprinted in Notícias, 22 December.Google Scholar
Organização dos Trabalhadores Moçambicanos. 1983b.‘Estatutos’.Reprinted in Notícias, 27 December.Google Scholar
Penvenne, J. 1995. African Workers and Colonial Racism: Mozambican strategies and struggles in Lourenço Marques. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Pereira, J., Raimundo, I., Chikwanha, A., Saute, A. and Mattes, R.. 2003. ‘ Eight years of multiparty democracy in Mozambique: The Public’s View’, Afrobarometer Working Paper no. 30 (August). http://www.afrobarometer.org. Accessed 17 November 2003.Google Scholar
Perry, E. 1994. ‘Labour divided: sources of state formation in modern China’, in Migdal, J., Kohli, A. and Shue, V. (eds), State Power and Social Forces: domination and transformation in the Third World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pitcher, M. A. 2002. Transforming Mozambique: the politics of privatization, 1975–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pitcher, M. A. 2003. ‘Sobreviver à Transição: o legado das antigas empresas coloniais em Moçambique’, Análise Social, xxxviii, 168, 793–820.Google Scholar
Rungo, J. 2002. ‘CFM altera missão do objectivos’, Domingo, 18 August.Google Scholar
Ryan, M. 1988. ‘The politics of film: discourse, psychoanalysis, ideology’, in Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Salela, E. 1997. ‘Era uma vez o 1o de Maio’. Letter. Notícias, 2 May.Google Scholar
Saúte, N. and António, B.. 2001. ‘Programa de racionalização da força de trabalho’, Xitimela 6 (10) (June): 30–35.Google Scholar
Sheldon, K. 2002. Pounders of Grain: a history of women, work and politics in Mozambique. Portsmouth: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Sidaway, J. and Power, M.. 1995. ‘Sociospatial transformations in the “postsocialist” periphery: the case of Maputo, Mozambique’, Environment and Planning A 27 (4): 1,463–91.Google Scholar
Simbine, E. 2000. ‘Trabalhadores afluem ao desfile e “evitam” discursos’, Notícias, 2 May.Google Scholar
Sitoi, I. 2002a. ‘Direitos dos trabalhadores na legislação laboral moçambicana’, Notícias, (1). 20 April.Google Scholar
Sitoi, I. 2002b. ‘Direitos dos trabalhadores na legislação laboral moçambicana’, Notícias, (2). 22 April.Google Scholar
Sitoi, I. 2002c. ‘Direitos dos trabalhadores na legislação laboral moçambicana’, Notícias, (Concl.). 23 April.Google Scholar
South African Press Association. 2001. ‘South Africa; joint venture wins award for Mozal’, Africa News Service, 6 November. Accessed on http://web.nexis-lexis.com on 4 November 2002.Google Scholar
Tempo . 2003. Various issues.Google Scholar
Uaene, R. and Tembe, A.. 1996. ‘As privatizações não são um fracasso’, Tempo, 29 September.Google Scholar
West, H. 1997. ‘Sorcery of Construction and Sorcery of Ruin: power and ambivalence on the Mueda Plateau, Mozambique (1882–1994)’. Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
Xinhua News Agency. 8 August 2001. ‘ Mozambique’s Railway Workers Continue Strike’. http://web.lexis-nexis.com. Accessed 25 November 2002.Google Scholar
Xinhua News Agency. 13 August 2001. ‘ Mozambique’s Strike Brings Maize Milling’s Operations to Standstill’. http://web.lexis-nexis.com. Accessed 25 November 2002.Google Scholar
Xinhua News Agency. 12 October 2001. ‘ Mozambican President Criticizes Aluminum Smelter’s Strike’. http://web.lexis-nexis.com Accessed 4 November 2002.Google Scholar
Xitimela. 1997. ‘ The workers will not be abandoned’. 2, 4 (December), 24.Google Scholar
Xitimela 1999–2000. ‘ Legado do século’, 5, 8–9: 73–137.Google Scholar
Xitimela 1997–2001.Google Scholar