The origins of Mozambique's liberalization, a reassessment of FRELIMO's early years

The recent history of Mozambique is one of turbulent change. Having moved through colonialism, scientific socialism and civil war the country has now become a paragon of successful economic and political liberalization. Immoveable amid all these transformations stands FRELIMO, Mozambique's sole ruling party since independence. Its protean nature reflects the changes imposed upon Mozambican society: erstwhile a broad-based liberation movement, first after independence it declared itself a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, now it is widely credited for success of the liberal reforms. This study consists of three distinct parts that aim to contribute to a historical understanding of FRELIMO as an autonomous actor in its country's development. Chapter I addresses the current state of Mozambique and takes issue with deterministic accounts, whether describing FRELIMO's liberalization policy as a foreign ploy or hampered by a culture of patrimonialism alien incompatible with modern rationality. Instead it argues that liberalization is a profoundly political process whose understanding requires knowledge of the local dynamics; its course not wholly idiosyncratic, typically African or Mozambican in nature. FRELIMO was presented once in historiography as modern and nationalist; qualities portrayed as depending on its commitment to Marxism. Such unitary view, unsuited to explain the recent change and post-Marxist present, now requires reexamining. Chapter II reviews FRELIMO's internal struggles, political and administrative organization, economic and foreign policies prior to its Third Party Congress of 1977. Marxist-Leninist vanguardism, generally presented as the result of a collective evolution by the movement, appears from it far from a foregone conclusion suggesting an alternative tradition existed within FRELIMO. Chapter III identifies two groups with distinct 'social trajectories' that influenced their respective world views and have continued to exist within FRELIMO: a small core of committed Marxist, mainly consisting of non-blacks, gathered around President Machel whose ideological perspective was greatly influenced through their contact with the Marxist opposition to the Salazar regime while students in Portugal and a group of Africans associated with the Protestant Missions in Mozambique. The latter represent a more liberal, nationalist modernizing strain within the party that became the principal agent of Mozambique's liberalization.