Mozambique’s election results reflect a practical solution to the country’s crises, not moral amnesia, argues Ross Herbert
RENAMO’S relative electoral success in Mozambique is a riddle worth analysing. Yet the article by Eddie Koch and Joe Hanlon (November 25 – December 1) does more to cloud than clarify.
Perplexed about how Renamo could win a third of the presidential and parliamentary vote, they write that many people voted for Renamo out of fear of an Angola scenario and of magic spells cast to enable the party to divine the contents of secret ballots. However, the major explanation for the outcome is that the Western powers that brokered the election, the media and voters suffered under a collective “moral amnesia” that left them unable to “remember and condemn” the mutilations, rapes and recruiting of soldiers by Renamo.
After a month in Mozambique reporting on the elections, I found few afflicted with moral amnesia.
They remember Renamo’s wartime atrocities. They scoffed at Afonso Dhlakama’s last-minute pull out. They talk about the likelihood that Renamo, fresh from the bush, would be unprepared to take over the government. They also remember the heavy-handed Marxist experiments of Frelimo, which ran the country as a one-party state. They remember the corruption. The use of government as a larder for the southern provinces to the exclusion of the north.
Although Frelimo achieved an overall victory, many in the party were stunned by the results. In the central four provinces, which contain more than 60 percent of the population, Renamo out-polled Frelimo by 15 to 30 points. Dhlakama did less well than his party. Frelimo, similarly, did significantly worse than its presidential candidate, Joaquim Chissano. Several party members said that Frelimo hardliners had believed their own propaganda that Renamo was nothing more than a troop of bandits.
Journalists perpetually try to frame events in clear terms of right and wrong. They write stories that implicitly ask what should be done about it. Therein lies the prejudice. Journalists pile events on to their moral scales and try to reach a conclusion about who is to blame. Surely Renamo was more heinous than Frelimo and everyone should know that?
Journalists go wrong because they view an election foremost as a public verdict on recent history, a referendum on who deserves the blame.
It may be easier to write a column portraying Renamo as pure evil, but it does nothing to add to the public understanding. Renamo had strong support particularly among the rural, least educated people. How did those supporters come to accept the violence and still support Renamo?
Steeped in Marxist ideology, Frelimo tried aggressively to transform the country. In addition to its economic failures, it attacked nearly everything non-Marxist, particularly local culture. Coming-of-age ceremonies were banned. Traditional leaders and healers were suppressed as backward. Marriage customs were put down.
Irae Baptista, a social anthropologist and advisor to Frelimo who just completed a study of Mozambique’s political transformation from the formation of Frelimo in 1962, put it this way: “When Rhodesia came to recruit people for Renamo, it was like a hot knife through butter.”
To traditionalists, Frelimo’s policies were tantamount to declaring war on Mozambique’s soul. Once arms were taken up, there were atrocities on both sides. Perhaps people didn’t have absolute statistics on the numbers of mutilations or political murders. But no one I met forgot what happened.
Over and over in Maputo, I heard statements from election officials, development workers and journalists about how uneducated Mozambicans were and how little they understood the concept of democracy.
But Mozambicans know there is no way to adjudicate every claim of war crimes. The election was about about ensuring that northerners, traditionalists, non-Portuguese speakers, Muslims, Catholics, the illiterate and rural people get a seat at the political table. A practical outcome that, while imperfect, is the best that any realistic person could hope for under the circumstances.
The worst mistake would be to dismiss Renamo as illegitimate and its supporters as mere amnesiacs.
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