Renamo

Ce document est le manuscrit français de l'ouvrage de Michel Cahen Les Bandits. Un historien au Mozambique, 1994, Paris, Publications du Centre culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, juillet 2002, 354 p., ISBN : 972-8462-28-X, cartes, index des noms de personnes, de lieux, des dates et thématique. Une version en portugais a également été publiée sous un titre différent : Os outros. Um historiador em Moçambique, 1994, Bâle (Suisse), P. Schlettwein Publishing Foundation, 2003, 230 p., cartes, 3 index, ISBN : 3-908193-13-3, traduction de Fátima Mendonça [la légère différence dans le titre vise à éviter qu'il ne soit pris au premier degré par un lectorat mozambicain pour qui l'appellation « bandits » reste passionnelle].
Résumé : En 1994, dans le cadre du Groupement de recherche sur l’Afrique australe du CNRS, Michel Cahen partit suivre les premières élections pluripartisanes de l’histoire du Mozambique. Le pays sortait d’une terrible guerre civile qui, loin des médias, fit peut-être un million de morts sur environ quinze millions d’habitants. La rébellion de la Renamo (Résistance nationale du Mozambique) luttait contre le régime « marxiste-léniniste » du Frelimo, le Front de libération du Mozambique qui avait arraché l’indépendance aux Portugais en 1975. Et elle le combattait avec le soutien, d’abord, de la Rhodésie de Ian Smith, puis de l’Afrique du Sud alors en plein apartheid. Classique guerre Est-Ouest par acteurs locaux interposés ? Contre-révolutionnaires au service des racistes blancs ? Sans doute, mais… Comment comprendre l’incapacité du gouvernement « populaire » à les vaincre ? Comment comprendre l’expansion des activités de guérilla à presque 80 % du territoire ? Et comment se faisait-il que plus d’un tiers des Mozambicains, en cet automne 1994, s’apprêtaient à voter pour elle ? Michel Cahen, de formation marxiste revendiquée, n’avait aucune sympathie pour la Renamo. Mais il fallait, en historien, comprendre le phénomène. C’est pourquoi il s’intégra à l’équipe de campagne d’Afonso Dhlakama, le chef rebelle candidat aux élections présidentielles, puis visita des zones de vieille implantation « réactionnaire ». Ainsi sont nés ces carnets de route, issus de la visite de près d’une centaine de villes, bourgs, villages et localités de brousse, au cœur de l’actualité mais avec, en permanence, l’histoire du siècle colonial et de ses marginalités qui ressurgit. Ce n’est pas un roman, mais on y découvre des histoires de vie, et les efforts du régime pour repousser des rebelles en mal d’intégration vers la marginalité…

Oxford, Oxford-Sciences Po Research Group, decembrer 2011, 14 p. on ligne <http://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/materials/centres/oxpo/working-papers/wp_10-11/OXPO_10-11f_Cahen.pdf> (working paper OXPO_10-11f).
Written version of a paper delivered at the African History & Politics Seminar, 21 February 2011, directed by William Beinart (Professor of Race Relations, St Antony's College), Department of Politics & International Relations, African Studies Centre and Oxford Research Network on Governance in Africa (Orenga).
Abstract: Renamo has been the subject of controversy since it was created, no doubt by the Rhodesian secret services, and, afterwards, supported by apartheid South Africa to counter the " Marxist-Leninist " Frelimo single-party regime. Nevertheless, by winning more than one-third of the votes in the first pluralist elections of 1994, Renamo proved that it had a social base. After a huge increase in 1999, Renamo was harshly defeated in the 2004 and 2009 elections. Few studies have been produced from field research within Renamo, which is the case of this article based on former field research in 1994, 2000, and more recently 2006, 2007 and 2009. It aims to study the main reasons behind this inability to build an opposition political party capable of mobilizing people against the arbitrary rule of State neo-patrimonialism. Two main reasons are identified: first, in spite of becoming a civilian party, Renamo has maintained a military-style internal rule, in which nobody can develop their own agency; second, Renamo tries to mimic Frelimo, developing a poor form of clientelism when Frelimo is able to develop a rich one, closely linked with State patronage. Renamo has not been able to develop through day-today activity of a " trade-unionism " kind, mobilizing people to demand rights within the Republic rather than favours from the Master.

Violent Becomings conceptualizes the Mozambican state not as the bureaucratically ordered polity of the nation-state, but as a continuously emergent and violently challenged mode of ordering. In doing so, this book addresses the question of why colonial and postcolonial state formation has involved violent articulations with so-called ‘traditional’ forms of sociality. The scope and dynamic nature of such violent becomings is explored through an array of contexts that include colonial regimes of forced labor and pacification, liberation war struggles and civil war, the social engineering of the post-independence state, and the popular appropriation of sovereign violence in riots and lynchings.

Renamo’s recent upsurge against the Mozambican Frelimo-led government after 22 years of relative stability has challenged the country’s often celebrated disarmament, demobilization and reintegration process (1992–1994). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Maringue (Sofala province), the location of the rebels’ wartime headquarters and a post-war Renamo stronghold, this paper shows that while the DDR program supposedly ended Renamo’s command and control structure, the former rebel network continued to be a central feature of ex-combatants’ social worlds. Former Renamo combatants spend most of their time in the company of their ‘colleagues of the trenches’ and engaged in relationships of dependency with political Renamo leaders and former commanders. These relationships were not only shaped by the former military structure, but also by friendship, marriage, and patronage dynamics, providing ex-Renamo combatants with physical and economic safety, a sense of belonging and economic possibilities.
Recent events in Mozambique suggest that the post-conflict continuation of informal wartime networks is a threat to peace and a failure of demobilization. Nevertheless, the fieldwork conducted in Maringue reveals that the dismantling of the command and control structure is often in vain, as it may be worthwhile for ex-combatants to maintain ties with their former military group for various reasons. Therefore, I argue that it may be useful to consider these networks based on the former armed group in processes of violence reduction, also in the development of DDR programs, as these may offer possibilities for the re-positioning and transformation of (former) armed actors.

This chapter focuses on how religious imaginaries have fueled and contained grievances and political violence in post-conflict countries. Contrary to long-held beliefs that religion and religious practices would wane with the rise of twin processes of secularization and modernization, diverse religious movements have emerged worldwide and expanded their grasp of public affairs (Casanova 1994; Ellis and Ter Haar 2004). In colonial and postcolonial Africa, diverse religious groups-from Christians and Islamists to a miscellaneous of African syncretic groups-have been instrumental to stoking resistance movements, mobilizing the masses against oppression, maintaining combative morale among soldiers, and devising violent persecution of rival religious groups (Ellis and Ter Haar 2004; Kastfelt 2005; Morier-Genoud 2019; Pels 1999; Ranger 1993; Taylor 1999). Diverse religious groups and practices have also been instrumental in post-conflict peacebuilding processes (Igreja and Dias-Lambranca 2009; Kastfelt 2005). The regional focus of this chapter is the Gorogosa District (province of Sofala), which was the epicenter of the Mozambican Civil War (1976-1992) between the Frelimo government and the Rename rebels. The civil war was intercalated by periods of severe drought and famine that claimed many lives (Igreja 2019). Following two decades of relative peace (1992­, 2012), the region was again beset by military violence involving the same rival groups. The chapter contextualizes the role of religious beliefs and practices in violence, peacemaking, and post-conflict processes among formal and informal groups.

Este "discussion paper" apresenta o contexto da corrida presidencial moçambicana de outubro de 2014. O paper concentra-se ainda na descrição dos perfis dos principais partidos, seus candidatos e respectivas políticas externas. Uma previsão dos resultados da eleição presidencial é apresentada no final do artigo.

Depois de o presidente moçambicano F. Nyusi ter apresentado ao Parlamento o entendimento alcançado entre ele o presidente da Renamo, Afonso Dhlakama (31 de Fevereiro de 2018), esta entrevista faz o ponto da situação: as razões de a Renamo ter aceito um compromisso que não é satisfatório para ela, as potencialidades, os perigos do lado do partido do poder (a Frelimo) bem como do lado da Renamo e da base social dela. Esta entrevista foi também publicada no blogue LAMenpalre (Bordéus): <https://lamenparle.hypotheses.org/715>.

The analysis of Mozambique's recent history as a "failure of socialism" is in fact a huge overestimate of the weight of political discourse in characterising a regime. What was structuring was the ideal of the nation-state and not the "socialist transition": it was the authoritarian injection policies of the "Mozambican nation" into populations that did not feel it that fuelled the pro-South African Renamo rebellion.

Note that the title translation of the original French version ("L'échec du socialisme au Mozambique? Querl échec? Quel socialisme?) is not good: it must have been "Failure on Socialism in Mozambique – What Failure ? What Socialism ? ".

Original franch version: « L’échec du socialisme au Mozambique... Quel socialisme ? Quel échec ? », Le marxisme aujourd’hui, Grenoble, n°10, juillet 1992, pp.46-59.

"Desde o regresso de Afonso Dhlakama às encostas da serra da Gorongosa, em 2012, e o recomeço da insurgência armada da Renamo, em Abril de 2013, que o futuro político de Moçambique se apresenta incerto e com poucas perspectivas de estabilizar no curto-prazo. Enquanto que a Renamo estiver motivada para pressionar o Governo no sentido de obter mais cedências,1 o executivo e a Frelimo enfrentam um dilema: deverão ceder mais terreno a Dhlakama, como forma de o acomodar, ou recusar e assim provocar novos confrontos armados?"

"(...)a Renamo representa sem dúvida uma ameaça real à Frelimo. Contudo, as cartas na mesa mostram que há mais em jogo do que as ambições das duas maiores forças políticas moçambicanas. A pressão dos actores internacionais com interesses imediatos em Moçambique irá ditar até que ponto é que os dois lados do espectro político poderão continuar numa rota de colisão. Até lá os dois manter-se-ão firmes na sua posição e pequenos confrontos, quer armados ou puramente políticos, serão seguramente inevitáveis. Mas, no fim, alguém terá de ceder.

Ce document est le manuscrit français de l'ouvrage de Michel Cahen Les Bandits. Un historien au Mozambique, 1994, Paris, Publications du Centre culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, juillet 2002, 354 p., ISBN : 972-8462-28-X, cartes, index des noms de personnes, de lieux, des dates et thématique. Une version en portugais a également été publiée sous un titre différent : Os outros. Um historiador em Moçambique, 1994, Bâle (Suisse), P. Schlettwein Publishing Foundation, 2003, 230 p., cartes, 3 index, ISBN : 3-908193-13-3, traduction de Fátima Mendonça [la légère différence dans le titre vise à éviter qu'il ne soit pris au premier degré par un lectorat mozambicain pour qui l'appellation « bandits » reste passionnelle].
En 1994, dans le cadre du Groupement de recherche sur l’Afrique australe du CNRS, Michel Cahen partit suivre les premières élections pluripartisanes de l’histoire du Mozambique. Le pays sortait d’une terrible guerre civile qui, loin des médias, fit peut-être un million de morts sur environ quinze millions d’habitants. La rébellion de la Renamo (Résistance nationale du Mozambique) luttait contre le régime « marxiste-léniniste » du Frelimo, le Front de libération du Mozambique qui avait arraché l’indépendance aux Portugais en 1975. Et elle le combattait avec le soutien, d’abord, de la Rhodésie de Ian Smith, puis de l’Afrique du Sud alors en plein apartheid.
Classique guerre Est-Ouest par acteurs locaux interposés ? Contre-révolutionnaires au service des racistes blancs ? Peut-être, mais… Comment comprendre l’incapacité du gouvernement « populaire » à les vaincre ? Comment comprendre l’expansion des activités de guérilla à presque 80% du territoire ? La guérilla, quels que soient ses sponsors, n’avait-elle pas réussi, d’une certaine manière, à exprimer la crise d’une société agressée dans son être ? Ne faisait-elle vraiment que dynamiter ponts, écoles et dispensaires, que massacrer femmes et enfants ? Comment pouvait-elle agir si, comme le disaient le régime et nombre d’observateurs étrangers, son armée était formée exclusivement de jeunes raptés ? Et comment se faisait-il que plus d’un tiers des Mozambicains, en cet automne 1994, s’apprêtaient à voter pour elle ?
Michel Cahen, de formation marxiste revendiquée, n’avait aucune sympathie pour la Renamo. Mais il fallait, en historien, comprendre le phénomène. Et donc aller voir Satan, ces « Khmers noirs » qui maintenant disaient qu’ils étaient un parti politique démocratique ! C’est pourquoi M. Cahen s’intégra à l’équipe de campagne d’Afonso Dhlakama, le chef rebelle candidat aux élections présidentielles, puis visita des zones de vieille implantation « réactionnaire ».
Ainsi sont nés ces carnets de route, issus de la visite de près d’une centaine de villes, bourgs, villages et localités de brousse, au cœur de l’actualité mais avec, en permanence, l’histoire du siècle colonial et de ses marginalités qui ressurgit. Les régulos (chefs traditionnels), les clandestins, les émigrés, de vieux Portugais du fin fond de la brousse, des opportunistes, des mères si jeunes avec leurs bébés dans le dos. Les ressentiments ethniques, le « communisme » qui prend la figure de directeurs d’usine privatisée…Et les gros hélicoptères ukrainiens bourrés de militants et d’armes qui sautent de meeting en meeting avec le líder, par-dessus les inselbergs, ces « pains de sucre », comme celui de Rio, qui pullulent dans le pays.
Ce n’est pas un roman, mais on y découvre des histoires de vie, et les efforts du régime pour repousser des rebelles en mal d’intégration vers la marginalité…

This article aims to contribute to the debate about the recent remobilisation of Resistência Nacional Moçambicano (Renamo), by presenting an analysis of its low- and mid-ranked veterans' post-war relationships with fellow veterans and with the Renamo leadership. It argues that former Renamo combatants' participation in post-war Renamo networks has been central for their re-integration into Mozambican politics but, at the same time, may be regarded as a source of frustration and political discontent. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Maringue, central Mozambique, the article shows that, in scholarship on armed groups, these relationships are characterised by dependency, loyalty and expectations, often referred to as ‘big-man dynamics’. The article engages critically with this concept, showing how Renamo veterans' position vis-à-vis the Renamo leadership is largely characterised by ‘waiting’. It demonstrates that Renamo veterans regard the Renamo party and the state as ‘exclusive caretakers’, which are expected to take care of the ex-combatants. However, Renamo's leaders have largely failed to meet their followers' expectations, resulting in frustration, several (though rare) cases of ‘defection’ to other political parties, but more generally a status of ‘waithood’. This analysis provides a critical exploration of the post-war dynamics of former armed groups, and sheds some light on Renamo's recent remobilisation from the perspective of the former Renamo combatants.

“Não somos bandidos”. A vida diária de uma guerrilha de direita: a Renamo na época do Acordo de Incomati (1983-1985), Lisbonne, Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, décembre 2019, 400 p., ISBN : 9789726715429,  <https://www.ics.ulisboa.pt/livros/nao-somos-bandidos>

Resumo da contracapa. Em 28 de agosto de 1985, o quartel-general da Resistência Nacional de Moçambique (Renamo) situado na Casa Banana foi atacado pelas forças zimbabweanas e moçambicanas. Parte dos seus arquivos fora apreendida. Nestes, havia a copia manuscrita de milhares de mensagens rádio, decifradas, entre o Estado-Maior General da guerrilha e os grupos locais. Michel Cahen pôde estudar 3401 dessas mensagens datadas de 1983 a 1985. Isso forneceu informações sobre os mais variados aspetos da vida diária desta “guerrilha de direita”: implantações, estruturação e equipamento militar, hierarquia, natureza e duração dos combates, «batalha para a população» pelos dois campos, recrutamentos, deserções, baixas, centralização das mercadorias e repressão do mercado negro dentro da guerrilha, escolas e hospitais em zona da Renamo, bruxaria, relações com os civis e com as milícias (mudjibas), relações sexuais, psicologia dos combatentes, etc. É a primeira vez que a Renamo pôde ser estudada com base em documentos internos.

Michel Cahen é historiador no centro “Les Afriques dans le monde” (CNRS/Sciences Po Bordeaux), especialista da África colonial portuguesa e analista político dos atuais Países africanos de língua oficial portuguesa. Além desses terrenos, interessa-se também pelas problemáticas lusofonia e lusotopia, fascismo e colonialismo, marxismo e nacionalismo, etnicidade e democracia política, subalternidade e colonialidade, racismo e luso-tropicalismo.

Article from the paper presented at the conference "'Desafios para Moçambique', Dez anos pensando no país, 19-20 de Setembro de 2019", 31 p. held at Instituto de estudos sociais e económicos (Maputo). Analysis of the electoral manifestos of Frelimo, Renamo, MDM, Nova Democracia and Podemos for the elections of 15 October 2019. The article was therefore written prior to the 15 October 2020 elections. The point is to show that, beyond nuances, there is no break in political culture between the five manifestos, which means that no opposition party has succeeded in developing an alternative political culture to that of Frelimo. Online on the IESE website on 20 October 2019, En ligne sur le site de l’IESE (volume entier) : <https://www.iese.ac.mz/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Desafios-2020_online.pdf>.

Artigo de "intervenção" publicado num semanal moçambicano e depois no blogue do meu centro de pesquisa. Nos primeiros meses de 2015, a tensão político-militar em Moçambique era forte. Quis analisá-las do ponto de visto do historiador e perceber o fundamento das posições da Renamo.

Resumo: A presente tese rem como objectivo fazer uma abordagem diferenle£ 1 analise do conjunto de fenémenos politico, economico e social que ocorreram no pals depois da independéncia (I975-l_992). O periodo referido e os acontecimenlos que o marcaram sao ...

Long-term critiques, especially from anthropology, of the effects of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) category has raised awareness of trauma’s bodily, ritual, cultural or collective aspects of violence. Although acknowledging this critique, in this paper it is argued that such alternative foci are unhelpful if eclipsing crucial oral practices. Specifically, I re-emphasise the importance of the spoken in post-conflict settings such as that following the Mozambican civil war (1976-1992) where the ongoing formation of competing accounts are analyzed as constituting Bakhtinian speech genres that address and deliberate on lingering violence. Two points are stressed: Firstly, such speech genres, I argue, is central to not only collectively addressing past sufferings but also to engage in redressing bellicose violence through re-inscribing the domain of meaning. Secondly, an analysis of these speech genres further reveals them to constitute formative and crucial events opening up to what Allen Feldman calls ‘the social being of narrative truth’ more generally.

Article de conjoncture sur les dangers imminents de reprise de la guerre civile au Mozambique, publié à l’occasion de la Europeen Conference on African Strudies, Paris, 8-10 juillet 2015, AEGIS-IMAF-LAM. Une version abrégée de ce texte a été publié par le journal Le Monde, 8 juillet 2915:
<http://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2015/07/08/mozambique-une-guerre-civile-si-evitable_4675068_3212.html>

Efforts to reintegrate combatants following Mozambique's civil war concentrated exclusively on avoiding a return to violent conflict. Though conflict has not resumed, two challenges to long-term security remain: first, involvement among certain combatants in organized criminal activity; second, political instability from the continuing politicization of reintegration issues. Mozambique's reintegration programme, in aiming only to avoid a return to war, failed to address these two issues. This has hurt Mozambique and has repercussions for southern Africa and the international community.

A Valuable Source for the Study of a Right-wing Guerrilla: The Cadernos de Gorongosa of Renamo (Mozambique, 1983–1985)
<https://www.sources-journal.org/386>
On August 28, 1985, the headquarters of the “anti-Marxist” Mozambican guerrilla group (Resistência Nacional de Moçambique, Renamo) was stormed by Zimbabwean and Mozambican government forces. Renamo was able to evacuate the base but lost part of its archives, including what later became known as the Cadernos de Gorongosa (i.e. the Gorongosa Notebooks). The Mozambican government security services were quick to study them to prove that, despite the Nkomati Accords (1984), South Africa kept on supporting the Mozambican rebellion.
The author was able to work through some of these Cadernos, consisting of thousands of handwritten messages—these were decoded transcripts of communications between the commander-in-chief and regional and local guerrilla groups. This makes it possible to study the daily life of this “right-wing guerrilla.” The article reproduces some of these messages, which are now available for consultation in Lisbon.

Twenty years after the Mozambican war ended, a return to arms from 2013 by the opposition movement Renamo served to revitalize support for the party in the 2014 election, and put pressure on the Frelimo government to consider demands for constitutional change. Building on existing research on post-war politics and on recent economic change, this article addresses the question of how Renamo obtained civilians’ approval for renewed armed action in the south of Sofala province, the region where conflict broke out in 2013. I argue that popular legitimacy for Renamo's challenge to the state is constituted in a narrative about Renamo that is congruent both with present-day grievances against the state and with understandings of local history dating to the anticolonial struggle that challenge the nationalist history on which Frelimo hegemony rests. Renamo has adapted this narrative in such a way as to claim a historic role for itself in defending the interests of central and northern Mozambique and in struggling for an inclusive and democratic state. In this way, Renamo has gained support for its renewed armed actions, not only among those politicized by Renamo in the earlier war but more broadly among civilians in the region.

Publié dans Yann GUILLAUD & Frédéric LETANG, Du social hors la loi. L'anthropologie analytique de Christian Geffray, Marseille, IRD Éditions, 2009, 336p. : 73-88, ISBN : 978-2-7099-1661-5.
Version écrite de la communication prononcée au colloque "Autour de Christian Geffray" (organisé par l’IRD), Aubervilliers, L’Usine Liquide, 14 et 15 décembre 2002. L’article part de l’analyse des grandes avancées, et des quelques insuffisances, de l’ouvrage pionnier de C. Geffray, La Cause des armes. Anthropologie d’une guerre civile (Paris, Karthala, 1988), pour montrer la trajectoire sociale de la rébellion "anti-marxiste" mozambicaine ; dans une seconde partie, est tentée une interprétation plus large de la Renamo comme expression politique instable d’une "plèbe" typique de l’ultra-périphérie du capitalisme, alors que l’ancien parti "marxiste" est devenu l’expression naturelle du capitalisme mozambicaine.

Een essay (2007) geschreven i.h.k.v een sollicitatie. Handelt over het verband tussen armoede, sociale uitsluiting en collectief trauma. In dit essay beredeneer ik op welke wijze herinneringspolitiek schade toebrengt aan de consolidatie van democratie. Het huidige discours over het verleden kan opgevat worden als een uitsluitingsmechanisme en vormt een belemmering voor de armoedebestrijdingsbenadering van het UNCDF. Het samenspel armoede, collectief trauma en het staatsmonopolie op het verleden blokkeren de articulatie van de belangen van marginale arme burgers.