African Socialism - Viva Moçambique (Part III)

["João Paulo Monteiro" <jpmonteiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The transition

FRELIMO was by no means dazzled with the news of the portuguese
revolution. They have refused proposals for an immediate cease-fire and
intensified military pressure, a tactic that would later pay-off
brilliantly. This was, no doubt, the right course since neo-colonialist
views and interests were predominant in the conservative civilian and
military circles around general Spinola who held power in Lisboa during
all the summer of 1974.

After some skirmishes, the democratic wing of the portuguese armed
forces quickly gained control of the situation in Mozambique. They were
for an immediate cease-fire. But FRELIMO would only concede a cease-fire
with a global accord with the portuguese government, comprising a firm
commitment for total independence and the recognition of FRELIMO as the
only representant of the mozambican people.

With democratic and civil liberties installed, social tensions erupted.
A small minority of the colons, who had been organized in the Democratas
de Moçambique (a broad front with the participation of the PCP) took
positions in the administration and the media, entering in contact with
FRELIMO. The majority of the colons, however, were intransigent "pieds
noirs", favorable to a rhodesian style white independence. But they had
no support on the metropolitan armed forces, which they had been
campaigning against. A whole confusing bunch of new, intermediary black
political organizations emerged, campaigning for a peaceful transition
with a referendum and democratic elections. Uria Simango presided over a
federation of them, the Partido da Coligação Nacional (PCN).

On June, the first contacts between FRELIMO and the portuguese
government produced no agreement. FRELIMO kept a posture of complete
intransigence and accentuated the military pressure, which sowed the
most absolute confusion on the chain of command of the portuguese army.
Some units refused to fight altogether. Some have confraternized with
FRELIMO columns. A gathering of democrat officers produced an ultimatum
to the portuguese government to reach an agreement with FRELIMO by July,
otherwise they would cease hostilities unilaterally.

FRELIMO actually managed to have serious talks going with the portuguese
progressive military circles (circumventing Spinola, whose authority was
in free fall). In August and September, military activity was sparse. On
September 6, a formal agreement was signed in Lusaka. Power would be
transmitted to FRELIMO the next year, on June 25. A transitory
government headed by Joaquim Chissano - with six FRELIMO ministers and
three portuguese - would take office immediately.

As soon as news of the Lusaka accord reached Mozambique, the "pieds
noirs" rebelled. It was either a spontaneous movement or a very
inarticulate coup attempt. They occupied Radio Clube Moçambique in
Lourenço Marques and Beira. Serious racial confrontations followed,
which left 300 people dead. The insurgents were quickly dominated by
portuguese para-chutists but, as a consequence, the social climate
deteriorated very rapidly. The Chissano transitional government was
invested on September 20. Racial confrontations continued - putting the
final death toll at some 9.000 - and the majority of the white settler
community (along with many indians) fled the country during September
and October, after destroying and sabotaging much equipment. Jorge
Jardim also fled to Rhodesia, bringing with him the files of the
portuguese political police (PIDE), and started organizing his terrorist
network from there. Of 250.000 non-black residents, only about 15.000
finally remained. The departures were to be substituted by the meager
hundreds of cadre FRELIMO had formed abroad.

Otherwise, the transitional period was relatively smooth, with the
portuguese armed forces participating in a military apparatus prepared
to dissuade aggression from Rhodesia or South Africa. The independence
ceremonies were held in Maputo (Lourenço Marques) on schedule, in June
25, 1975. Samora Machel entered the country a few days earlier, on the
northern frontier, and descended triumphantly to the capital, acclaimed
all the way by delirious crowds.

If FRELIMO's rise to power was done under a favorable gathering of
circumstances (in great part created by the pugnacious struggle of the
mozambican people and optimized by its shrewd political leadership), the
socio-economic challenges it faced now were awesome indeed.

Mozambique was not, by any measure, a nation-state. On its territory
(799.380 km2), there were about 10 million people (now over 19 million)
divided into 16 different ethnic groups, using 24 languages. Over 90% of
the population was rural, living in traditional communities with marked
differences in customs (some as distasteful as male polygamy, dowry,
etc.), religions, values, social/political organization, systems of
production/circulation of goods, kinship rod (matrilineal/patrilineal),
hierarchies of prestige, alimentary habits, socialization rites, etc.,
etc.. Illiteracy was at a staggering 93% (now 67%). There were 171
doctors in all, 70% of the population living out of reach of any medical
care. Infant mortality was 15%. Useless to say, with the colonialists
gone, there was absolutely no country-wide market or an institutional
national framework of any sort. The liberation struggle had touched
barely one fifth of the territory with the first efforts at building a
national consciousness and the rudiments of a modern (socialist) economy
and polity. From Maputo to Cabo Delgado its some 2.000 km in straight
line. The means of communication and transportation were scarce and
unreliable.

The oil crisis had already left the economy struggling with the throes
of a deep recession. Now the exodus of the whites left the little modern
economic infrastructure the country possessed either destroyed or with
no qualified personnel to manage it. Racists South-Africa and Rhodesia
were ready to jump at the throats of the infant republic.

The catastrophe was imminent. A lesser leadership would easily have
panicked and surrendered fundamental principles on the spot. Not
Machel's FRELIMO. The movement had a very coherent and articulate
doctrine. It's leadership was united behind it very tightly and these
guys were hardened fighters of a kind not very usual to find these days.
Catastrophe was avoided. With a giant popular mobilization (and a little
help from the eastern-european block), the country took-off on a
socialist path, hold on and even made some impressive advances during
the remains on the 70's. In the process, it conquered freedom for
Zimbabwe in 1980, arms in hand. Disaster eventually struck indeed, from
1982 onwards. It was caused by continued foreign aggression, weather
inclemency and, no doubt, the cumulative effect of a number of errors
committed during the euphoric phase of national construction.

But by no means this should obscure the fact that giant achievements
were made on those years and a nation was forged. Though tensions still
exist today, I don't believe it can ever be undone. With its particular
characteristics, the mozambican revolution was one of the last of a
whole historical epoch of intellectual voluntarism and popular
mobilization (what the bourgeois commentators now spitefully deride as
the epoch of the "tomorrows that sing"). It was a revolution possessed
and conveyed with an ideal of social and humanist optimism. With
hindsight (and a bit of cruelty) it could be said that it somehow tried
to lift the country by making it pull itself by the hair. But, as the
poet (Hölderlin) said: "grand and inexpugnable be / the human spirit on
its quests". May we, who are about to criticize this undertaking, yet
find an occasion to prove to be worthy of its heroic deeds. A luta
continua.


African socialism or scientific socialism


Sorry, not yet. I'm not going straight now into the record of FRELIMO in
power and the socialist experience in Mozambique. First, I'm going to
make a theoretical point of order.

I owe much of what follows to Brazão Mazula, the leading mozambican
intellectual, and his 'Educação, Ideologia e Cultura em Moçambique
(1975-1985)'. It is a source of intellectual and moral delight to see by
far the best and most profound analysis of the mozambican revolution
made by a black man, whom the colonialist educational system had, very
characteristically, made into a priest. He abandoned this "career" and
held several posts on the ministry of Culture and Education between 1976
and 1988. He holds a doctor degree from the University of São Paulo
(USP-Brazil) and is now professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and
rector of the Eduardo Mondlane University (Maputo).

FRELIMO has always sustained the existence of a "feudal-traditional
society" in Mozambique, alongside the "colonial-capitalist" one brought
by the portuguese domination. It's strategic purpose was to overcome and
eradicate them both, aiming directly at socialism without any
intermediary phase. This would be done by following a "non-capitalist
path to development" supported by "the existence of a powerful socialist
block in the world".

This latter part is "marxist-leninist" vulgata straight from the
handbooks of the C.P. of the USSR and, no doubt, reflects a certain
level of diplomatic contacts and commitments. What these were worth was
soon to be found out by the mozambicans themselves. FRELIMO took no
sides on the sino-soviet split and, although its politico-military
doctrine remained clearly influenced by maoism (and having received
ample chinese material support during the years of struggle), in the
70's the movement settled for a certain pragmatic alignment with Moscow.
Useless to say, this "non-capitalist" thing is absolutely null as a
scientific concept.

Let's take a closer examination at the specific conceptualization of the
mozambican social formation. Sérgio Vieira puts it this way:

"Probably our society, if it hadn't been colonized, would have reached
the capitalist society by its own process of historical development. But
the fact is that capitalism has surged as an imposition on our society,
through colonial conquest. This is a phenomenon specific of the process
of development of our society, in Mozambique, as is the case of most
other countries who were submitted to colonialism and were deprived of
their own normal process of historical development."

That the mozambican traditional social formations would, left to
themselves, have found their own way to capitalism is a legitimate and
interesting speculation, but no more than that. It has the merit of
putting to rest the myths about the a-historical character of african
society, of its freezing on "zero degrees of historical temperature"
(Lévi-Strauss). It has the demerit of a certain eurocentric teleologism
and evolutionist linearity.

What is much less warranted is the characterization of the traditional
mozambican society as "feudal" and, as practical consequence, the two
front struggle that FRELIMO has conducted against both
colonio-capitalism and feudo-traditionalism, that is, a war against
everything that existed with some  rooting on the mozambican social
fabric. A war for which FRELIMO had no support on any social class or
clearly defined class-alliance, resorting to an appeal for the naked
abstraction "the people". This "people" were then to be molded - by the
movement's teachings and the experience of the struggle alone - into a
"New Man" (no sexism, in fact FRELIMO was most emphatic, intransigent
and consequent in its struggle for the promotion of the status of the
mozambican woman), in complete rupture with all the past, a man capable
of forging in a decade, two at most, a nation at the level of the most
modern ones in the world. This extreme humanist and rationalist optimism
has always been one of the trademarks of FRELIMO.

There is a debate among professional historians about african feudalism
which is far from over. The main promoter of the idea of an african
feudality is Marc Bloch, whose field work on the bunyoro (Uganda) has
been rebuffed. Various other authors (J. J. Maquet, Jack Goody, R.
Lemarchand, A. Troubworst) use the feudal paradigm to analyze african
society, with a number of important and variable qualifications. Most
africanists now dismiss it completely, prominently among them Joseph
Ki-Zerbo (with prof. Mazula's support).

The best marxist work I know on this matter is from Jean Suret-Canale
and I'm going to follow his exposition closely. He divides the
autochthonous african society in three different types of social
formations:

1. Primitive community
On all its purity, this type is only found among the khoisan people of
the South-West (bushmen, hotentots), which are not bantu and don't
belong to what we generally call black Africa.

2. Tribo-patriarchal
The bantu people have all completed the Neolithic revolution.
Agriculture and cattle rearing are its main occupations, for which they
use iron tools (hoes, cutlasses, choppers). This permits a small
surplus, which can be put on reserve, spent on festivities or
appropriated by certain families or individuals. The fundamental social
unit is the family (a group of relatives by patrilineal or matrilineal
line). The eldest of the elder generation is usually the head of the
family and distributes the land, being responsible for the fertility of
the soil for which he performs the necessary rites.
Frequently, the founding family (who cleared up the land, usually by
fire) is joined by other families, accepted as guests, or by captive
individuals, forming a village. The patriarch of the founding family is
then the "chief of land". There may be, alongside him, a "lord of water"
(for fishing) or a "lord of the bush" (for hunting), as some division of
work appears. These functions are primarily technical (direction of the
productive processes). If the surplus is abundant, they can bring more
or less important material compensations (rents, services), along with
social privileges and religious authority. But the system functions in a
democratic and egalitarian manner with no private appropriation of the
means of production. The tribo-patriarchal village is a transition from
the primitive community to a true class society.

3. Social classes and state
Particularly on the savannas where extensive cultivation of cereals is
possible and a large surplus is thus created and stocked (for reserve or
trade) the social antagonisms were deepened. Privileged classes (by
birth or function) appeared to concentrate this wealth. Then, by war or
trade, the villages and tribes were confederated in kingdoms or empires
under a sovereign. There was a royal court, "lords of war", "lords of
gold", appointed provincial governors (sub-chiefs of land). Slavery was
more common, though with no particular meaning in terms of relations of
production (a captive could well be a courtier and therefore a member of
the exploiting class). Class exploitation and the state arise. However,
the regime remains under inalienable collective property of the means of
production. Nowhere in pre-colonial Africa was there a regime comprising
private rights over the land. Suret-Canale frames these african kingdoms
in the marxist concept of asiatic (what we would now call tributary)
mode of production. He then goes on to argue that the nuclear internal
contradiction  of these social formations - class exploitation and
collective property - has prevented them from developing further. "The
intensification of class exploitation, far from destroying the
structures supported in the collective property of the land, reinforces
them: these constitute the frame on which the appropriation of surplus
takes place, the very condition of exploitation". Faced with this
deadlock, the tendency throughout black Africa has been for a periodic
regression into the tribo-patriarchal phase, as the lust and glory of
its empires comes and goes.

The traditional bantu society is not feudal at all. In Mozambique,
feudalism (and later mercantilism) was introduced by the portuguese
prazos, against the opposition and many centuries of resistance by the
mozambican traditional society. There have been a number of important
states formed and dissolved on parts of its territory (Zimbabwe,
Monomotapa, Gaza) but, on the XX century, the overwhelmingly dominant
feature of mozambican traditional society were its dispersed
tribo-patriarchal social formations. Why then has FRELIMO, otherwise
intellectually so careful and resourceful, adopted this flawed feudal
model? Just out of deference for the - by then already discredited -
stalinist theory of the universal validity of the "five stages" of
historical materialism?

Prof. Mazula puts this hypothesis: "by adopting feudalism as a model of
classification of so-called «traditional-feudal» mozambican societies,
FRELIMO had in view to assure its own power, to establish its hegemony,
to assure the mobilization of all the populations for the struggle,
while simultaneously showing itself fearful that other internal forces,
like the 'régulos', the local chiefs, some of them descendants of real
states of the pre-colonial period, would constitute a threat to its
hegemony. Therefore, it has had to do everything on its power to prevent
these forces from transforming themselves into a real power, a
bourgeoisie. There was a dislocation of the problem. Although the
so-called «traditional» national cultures were also authoritative, by
its conservative  (conserve to preserve, in face of the constant threat
of cultural genocide) character, they didn't tend to national hegemony,
but only demanded the official recognition of their identity."

Later, he concludes: "this theoretical assumption of the existence of
feudalism can explain why FRELIMO, whose political discourse has
considered culture as essential for the revolution, has not encouraged,
for a long time, studies on the culture of the so-called
traditional-feudal societies, essential for a solid anthropological
implantation of the revolution and for the revolutionization of the
local cultures. This same discourse closes upon itself, evading the
cultural dialogue with such societies that are indeed the people. Before
this close-mindedness and radicalism of the party, the populations have
reacted with silence, in search of ways of realizing themselves in this
silence and on the absence of viable alternatives from the Party/State.
Easily, the populations have retrieved the tradition of passive
resistance, as a way of preserving their cultures."

With this course, FRELIMO has completely sidestepped the theoretical
traditions of African Socialism. The guinean Sékou Touré, in the second
Congress of the African Society of Culture (Rome, 1959), had emphasized
the "communocratic character" of ancient Africa, seeing in it an
important support for the installation, at a modern level, of a State in
which the capitalist free enterprise and bourgeois individualism would
be completely strange. This was also the course followed by Julius
Nyerere's TANU (Tanganycan African National Unity) since its declaration
of Arusha in 1967. In this document, the principle of self-sufficiency
is proclaimed and the priority is given to the development of
agriculture, in communitarian forms, in small units called ujamaas. This
a swahili vocable that means family and, by extension, socialism.

I believe this is the right revolutionary course for a regime of
workers' rule in black Africa: introducing modern education, sanitary
care and productive techniques in the framework of its ancestral
communitarian social structures and slowly eroding its patriarchal
superstructural envelope from within. These small agro-industrial units
could be networked and coordinated, by consent and creative engagement,
in a national plan under the party's overall strategic orientation. The
whole social formation would be delinked from the imperialist circuits
of the law of value. A self-centered accumulation process could then
begin and start to gather pace in a virtuous circle. Capitalism's
superseding will probably not take place on the most developed
countries. History is not a linear evolutionary process. It has its
dead-ends, catastrophes and wondrous developments. As monopoly
capitalism debates itself in the death throes of stagnation, something
new can surge from behind. From black Africa, for instance.

Having been based in Tanzania for twelve years, FRELIMO knew the ujamaa
experience very well. But it opted conscientiously for "scientific
socialism". The III congress of FRELIMO (1977), which officially
transformed the movement into a marxist-leninist party, explicitly
rejected african socialism, which was generally derided as a parochial
counterfeit and not the real thing. FRELIMO's vision was much more
ambitious. In the next installment I will finally start to account the
results it brought for the mozambican people. It could still take a
couple more weeks (or more) for I still haven't completed my research.
Besides that, I am very lazy and writing long posts in english is very
painful to me.

If prof. Blaut (or anyone) feels he must dispute what I'm stating in
this post - now that he DOES have a clue on where I'm heading -, I
promise I will debate him in a civil manner. I feel these matters is
still very much open to discussion, which would be particularly fruitful
with african comrades.


João Paulo Monteiro