Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization?

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Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization? Author(s): Jessica Schafer Source: African Affairs, Vol. 100, No. 399 (Apr., 2001), pp. 215-237Published by: on behalf of Oxford University Press The Royal African SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3518766Accessed: 15-04-2015 00:11 UTC

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African Affairs (2001), 100, 215-237 C Royal African Society 2001

GUERRILLAS AND VIOLENCE IN THE WAR IN MOZAMBIQUE: DE-SOCIALIZATION OR

RE-SOCIALIZATION?

JESSICA SCHAFER

ABSTRACT Academics uneasy with widespread popular images of post-independence civil wars in Africa as barbaric and primeval have been prompted to search for ways of explaining the conduct of these wars which would make them appear more rational. However, carrying out the type of in-depth research necessary to understand the rationality of each case is not easy, given the security and political constraints posed by conflict situations. Mozam- bique's civil war was no exception. Fieldwork during the war itself was confined to government-held areas, and any Renamo guerrillas interviewed were those who had been captured or amnestied by the Frelimo government. This article gives evidence collected in the post-war period from former guerrillas, which challenges much of what was said about the motivations and attitudes of young men participating in Renamo's guerrilla army. Former combatants' own portrayals are revealed to be very different from previous academic accounts which highlighted brutalization, social promotion, absence of political ideology and the ritualization of violence. The article contributes to historical revision of the war in Mozambique, but the evidence is also of potential significance for understanding processes of post-war integration of former combatants into civilian life.

RECENT ANALYSTS OF POST-INDEPENDENCE WARS IN AFRICA have been con- cerned with explaining not only the occurrence of internal conflicts, but also the form which these struggles have taken. Uneasy with widespread popular images of these civil wars as barbaric and primeval, they have been prompted to search for explanations of their conduct which would make them appear more rational.' It is the terroristic aspect of the violence and the high proportion of civilian victims which they have found particularly difficult to fit into tidy, rational explanations. The popular media in the West, and even policy-makers within American government circles, have

Jessica Schafer is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the School of African and Asian Studies, University of Sussex. This article is based on research undertaken for her doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford. She was in Mozambique from November 1995 to Novem- ber 1996. She thanks all the people who assisted her research in both Oxford and Mozam- bique, in particular her supervisors, William Beinart and Raufu Mustapha, her former supervisor Barbara Harrell-Bond, and colleagues Chris Dolan and Jogo Paulo Borges Coelho.

1. P. Richards, Fighting for the Rainforest: War, youth and resources in Sierra Leone (James Currey, Oxford and Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 1996); D. Keen, 'A rational kind of madness', Oxford Development Studies 25, 1 (1997), pp. 67-75.

215



216 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

often been content to apply homogenized explanations such as ethnic violence or population-induced resource conflicts.2 But others in academic and policy circles have challenged these stereotypes of African violence as apolitical or primitive barbarism. Paul Richards has argued that the entire concept of rationality needs to be adapted to local contexts, and understood from the perspective of the participants.3 Christopher Clapham's collection of studies of African guerrilla movements demonstrates the need for his- torically rooted analyses, as opposed to the sweeping generalizations offered by popular commentators.4 However, such in-depth research is not easy to carry out, given the security and political constraints involved. This has meant that local studies are still fairly sparse, and, in particular, research into the values, attitudes and understandings of guerrillas themselves is rare.

Mozambique's civil war was no exception. Fieldwork during the war itself was confined to government-held areas, and any Renamo guerrillas interviewed were those who had been captured or amnestied by the Frelimo government.5 Analysis was also constrained by the ideological context of southern Africa at the time, namely, the South African destabilization campaign against the Frontline States and the international framework of the Cold War.6 Thus, scholars analyzing Renamo's success at anchoring itself in the countryside initially attempted to find explanations which denied the role of civilian support, because of their over-riding belief that Renamo was not ideologically motivated, but rather a puppet of the apartheid regime.7 This required them to construct alternative accounts to explain both the soldiers' continued adherence to the guerrilla movement after they had been forcibly recruited, and the way in which a guerrilla army could sustain itself in such conditions.

The view favoured by the Mozambican government and advanced by some academics was that recruits were systematically brutalized and psychologically altered so that they would become violent killing machines.8 Wilson

2. R. D. Kaplan, 'The coming anarchy: how scarcity, crime, overpopulation and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet', Atlantic Monthly (February 1994), pp. 44-76; V. Percival and T. Homer-Dixon, 'Environmental scarcity and violent conflict: the case of South Africa', Journal of Peace Research 35, 3 (1998), pp. 279-98. 3. Richards, Fighting for the Rainforest, p. xxi. 4. C. Clapham (ed.), African Guerrillas (James Currey, Oxford and Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1998). 5. W. Minter, 'The Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) as Described by Ex- participants' (Washington, DC, 1988); C. Geffray, La Cause des Armes au Mozambique: Anthropologie d'une guerre civile (Karthala, Paris, 1990), p. 94;W. Finnegan, A Complicated War: The harrowing of Mozambique (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1992), p. 69. 6. J. Cravinho, 'Modernizing Mozambique: Frelimo ideology and the Frelimo state', (DPhil Thesis, Oxford University, 1995), p. 50. 7. A. Nilsson, 'From pseudo-terrorists to pseudo-guerrillas: The MNR in Mozambique', Review of African Political Economy 58 (1993), p. 35. 8. A.Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique (James Currey, London and Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1991), p. 73.



GUERRILLAS AND VIOLENCE IN THE WAR IN MOZAMBIQUE 217

argued that soldiers were incited to extreme violence through deprivation and other psychological techniques designed to deaden their social sensi- bilities, as did Vines, Roesch, Nordstrom, Finnegan, and Nilsson.9 At times this was portrayed as purely coercive, but some advanced the thesis that systematic deprivation was complemented by a cult of military prowess which not only induced fear, but also glorification and psychological dependence.10 Allegations of the deployment of child soldiers and the use of drugs were also invoked to explain the violence and atrocities.11

Interestingly, though, these explanations find few echoes in the accounts of former guerrillas in the post-war period. There are several possible explanations for this discrepancy. One is that a growing body of research has demonstrated wide variation in the course of the war in different parts of Mozambique.12 This variation was reflected in differences in the interac- tions of both guerrilla and government armies with civilian populations, and the nature of the participation of young men in the conflict. My research area may well have some particularities which explain why accounts of the war were so different from those collected in other areas.

A second possible reason for the divergence between the stories recounted to me and those portrayed in previous research is that the latter may have suffered from incomplete evidence because of the impossibility of doing research in Renamo areas during the war. Despite attempts to cross-check and triangulate information, these accounts were not immune from biases. All historical sources are grounded in a particular present, and all recorded history, whether oral or written, involves the selection of some sources and the exclusion of others by the historian.13 But equally, it may be that the stories people tell in the post-war period are very different from those they told while the war was still raging, because of current pressures and influences as well as simply the tricks of memory. Thus, there may be

9. K. Wilson, 'Cults of violence and counter-violence in Mozambique', Journal of Southern African Studies 18, 3 (1992), p. 534; Vines, Renamo, p. 90; 0. Roesch, 'Renamo and the peasantry in southern Mozambique: A view from Gaza Province', Canadian Journal of African Studies 26 (1992), pp. 462-84; C. Nordstrom, 'Rituals and realities of terror/warfare', in S. P. Reyna and R. E. Downs (eds), Studying War:Anthropological perspectives (Gordon and Breach, London, 1994); Finnegan, A Complicated War, p. 68; Nilsson, 'From pesudo-terrorism', pp. 36-7. 10. Wilson, 'Cultures of violence', p. 545; Nordstrom, 'Rituals and realities', p. 15. 11. Vines, Renamo, pp. 95-6; Minter, 'The Mozambican National Resistance', p. 5; Finnegan, A Complicated War, p. 72. 12. See, inter alia, Geffray, La Cause des Armes; J-C. Legrand, 'Logique de guerre et dynamique de la violence en Zambezia, 1976-1991', PolitiqueAfricaine 50 (1993), pp. 88-104; Roesch, 'Renamo and the peasantry', and 0. Roesch, 'Mozambique unravels? the retreat to tradition', Southern Africa Report (May 1992), pp. 27-30; B. O'Laughlin, 'Through a divided glass: dualism, class and the agrarian question in Mozambique', Journal of Peasant Studies 23, 4 (1996), pp. 1-39; J. McGregor, 'Violence and social change in a border economy: war in the Maputo hinterland, 1984-1992', Journal of Southern African Studies 24, 1 (1998), pp. 37-60. 13. E. H. Carr, What is History? (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964).



218 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

both a war-time bias and a post-war bias to account for the changes in local portrayals of the war and individuals' participation in it.

In this article, I argue that all three of these explanations have some valid- ity. In order to tackle the first snag, I present my own case-study area and describe its specificity which affected the way in which guerrillas interacted with civilians during the war. Although this area was a predominantly Renamo-supporting district, my research avoided the bias of focusing only on an area held by one side, as I interviewed people in both government- held towns and Renamo-held countryside. To compensate for the possibility of bias in guerrillas' stories, I shall bring in civilian accounts to supplement the stories of the guerrillas themselves. This methodology is less than perfect, however, because of the high degree of guerrilla mobility during the war, and more importantly because of the considerable reluctance amongst civilians in Mozambique to speak about the war in detail while the struggle for daily survival is all-consuming and the events of the war period are still painfully fresh. Nor would my research ethic allow me to probe too deeply into stories of the war, since I was not equipped to deal with the psychological repercussions of painful memories. Thus, it is necessary to exercise some caution in drawing conclusions about what actually happened during the war from this material.

What this research does best, therefore, is to give a detailed picture of the way in which participants in the war, both guerrilla and civilian, recall the events and experiences of that period through the lens of the post-war era. For post-war social reconstruction, this information is potentially the most useful and relevant, because it is on the basis of their current construction of the past that people will move forward and reconstruct social and communal life in peace-time.

My research involved a survey and qualitative interviews with 62 soldiers and guerrillas,'4 and 69 civilians, in Mossurize district, Manica province, central Mozambique, in 1996 - two years after the demobilization programme ended. I shall begin by presenting the local history of the war in Mossurize district, in order to provide a background to the post-war stories of the guerrillas and civilians. In the subsequent sections, I present the former guerrillas' own portrayals of their participation in the war, in contrast to the hypotheses offered by the aforementioned authors.

Background to the case-study area

Mossurize district falls into the category of predominantly Renamo- supporting areas, as evidenced by patterns of territorial control during the war and subsequent voting patterns. By the end of the war in 1992, only a

14. Thirty-seven former Renamo guerrillas and 25 former government soldiers.




small band of territory in the district was controlled by the government, and only a tiny number of people voted for Frelimo in the first national elections.15

This pattern of political allegiance can be explained on a variety of grounds. Mossurize district is on the border with Zimbabwe, and was therefore one of the first recruiting grounds for the Rhodesians in their counter- insurgency campaign of the 1970s. Along with the two other border districts of southern Manica province (Machaze and Sussundenga), its Ndau population was the first to fill the Renamo ranks and therefore to take on positions of leadership within the military hierarchy of Renamo. Roesch argues that this provided an ethnic basis for identification with the Renamo movement; civilians in these three districts called the guerrillas 'our sons' and there was much less of the kind of brutality against civilians reported from other parts of the country.'6 Cahen's analysis of the election results also pinpoints the Ndau people as the only ethnic group to have voted over- whelmingly in favour of Renamo as a community.17

My own fieldwork supports these contentions. Elders in the rural parts of Mossurize did use the phrase 'our sons' to refer to the young men taken to be Renamo guerrillas. There were few reports of violence against civilians by Renamo in the district, except in government-held towns, and even there, it was less brutal than elsewhere. For example, in the first attack on the district capital, Espungabera, several women were captured, a baby died, and 'the Renamo soldiers entered the administrator's residence and ate a pot of rice which had been left there'.'8 In fact, people in Renamo areas of the district reported that it was government soldiers who were responsible for the worst violence against civilians.

It was the Frelimo soldiers who were going around here beating people and killing people with mines. They said that 'you who are here in the bush, you are all of Renamo'. S . . [Renamo's soldiers] lived here. We gave them food and fetched water for them, and they went to fetch food for us sometimes, they brought cows and chickens or goats.19

However, ethnicity does not account for the fact that people in government-held areas did not all show allegiance to Renamo, even in a Ndau district such as Mossurize. O'Laughlin argues that, more broadly than regional

15. Frelimo received 7 percent of the valid votes, as compared with 81 percent for Renamo; see L. de Brito, 'O comportamento eleitoral nas primeiras eleig6es multipartidirias em Mogambique', in B. Mazula (ed.), Mofambique: Eleifpes, democracia e desenvolvimento (Inter- Africa Group Press, Maputo, 1995). 16. Roesch, 'Mozambique unravels', p. 29. 17. M. Cahen, 'Nationalism and ethnicities: lessons from Mozambique', in M. Boas (ed.), Ethnicity Kills? (Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2000). 18. Interview, Frelimo secretary, Espungabera. 19. Interview, village headman, Mude.



220 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

and ethnic divisions, the political fault-lines of the civil war were drawn between central and peripheral areas across the country.20 By the time of independence in 1975, colonial patterns of development had created areas where resources, infrastructure and people were concentrated. The remain- ing areas became labour reserves, characterized by 'infertile soils, in- adequate surface water and poor roads' and were 'impoverished, drought-prone, subject to famine'.21 Subsequent to independence, Frelimo's policies exacerbated rather than corrected this pattern of development, both between regions and within them.

Mossurize district is distant from the central development belt of Manica province, the Beira corridor. The district was not connected by road with the provincial capital until the 1950s when a colonial cotton-growing scheme was initiated.22 There was only one settler farm in the district, and few settlers. Several sawmills in the northern part of the district provided the only wage-labour opportunities, and a handful of people were employed by the colonial state. Apart from these, the main source of household income was migrant labour, primarily to Rhodesia and South Africa, and secondarily to the Beira corridor. There were some mission schools in the district (15 by the time of independence),23 but people in rural areas more commonly sent their children to school in Rhodesia if they could, to gain an education in English which would help them find employment. The use of the Rhodesian pound as the preferred currency rather than the Por- tuguese escudo corresponded with a division within the district between areas which were connected with the colonial state and the more externally- oriented labour reserve areas.

After independence, Rhodesia was cut off as a source of wage labour by the war and the laying of landmines along the border. Opportunities greatly decreased in South Africa because of that country's own economic and political considerations, as well as Frelimo's desire to reorient the Mozam- bican economy away from dependence on South Africa.24 The Beira corridor also waned as a source of employment when the Portuguese departed and the country entered economic crisis.

Frelimo policies provided no alternative sources of livelihood in Mossur- ize and many similar peripheral districts. There were no state farms or industries because there was no land to reclaim from colonists. The co- operatives only benefited a few wealthy farmers who could use them as a

20. O'Laughlin, 'Through a divided glass'. 21. O'Laughlin, 'Through a divided glass', p. 15. 22. Mozambique Agricultural Rural Reconstruction Programme, 'Plano de estrategia para o Desenvolvimento Rural Integrado' (Chimoio, 1993). 23. Governo da Provincia de Manica, 'Nuimero de escolas construidas no tempo colonial at6 1995 no distrito de Mossurize' (Chimoio, 1996). 24. O'Laughlin, 'Through a divided glass', p. 30.




means to access agricultural inputs, and a few labour-poor households which used them as a hedge against failed production on their own fields.25 Even Frelimo cadres in Espungabera complained that the produce from communal farms disappeared with no return, and that people were forced to work on the farms for very low wages, reminiscent of colonial forced labour. Nor was household agricultural production a viable alternative source of income since the rural marketing networks collapsed, and con- sumer goods rarely made it out as far as Mossurize district. Lorry loads destined for 'People's Shops' in Mossurize were a favourite target for Renamo from early in the war, so there was nothing for which to exchange agricultural goods and therefore no point in producing a surplus. By the mid-1980s, the People's Shops were closed and 'there was nothing in the market at all in Espungabera'.26 Even to produce for subsistence became difficult, as there was a shortage of the most basic of agricultural inputs. Frelimo policies did give some young people, particularly those with education, new opportunities for power and advancement. But Frelimo's young cadres remained highly dependent on state favours, and as Mossurize district became more peripheral to the central state, the flow of such favours dwindled drastically.

Villagization was another highly unpopular policy which disrupted peas- ants across the social spectrum. Resistance to moving into communal villages arose immediately. Despite the national directive stating that villagization was to be voluntary, there was evidence of much force used in Mossurize.27 The first forcible evictions in the district were reported from October 1979.

Thus it is not surprising that Renamo found an anchor in Mossurize from the earliest days of the war. The stratum of people benefiting from the Frelimo regime was very small, even in government areas - although there, anti-Renamo propaganda and Renamo violence prevented this discontent from being translated fully into Renamo support. Outside of government areas, people across the social spectrum felt excluded and marginalized by the Frelimo state project. From early in the war, Renamo tried to capitalize on this discontent, using the Voz da Africa Livre radio broadcasts from Rhodesia to persuade people politically of the need to overthrow Frelimo. Administrative cadres were recruited early in Mossurize, from 1979. It was one of the areas in which Renamo managed to set up an alternative

25. C. Castel-Branco, 'Opg6es econ6micas de Mogambique, 1975-95: problemas, li9ges e

ideias alternativas', in Mazula (ed.), Mogambique. 26. Interview, District Judge. 27. Forcible villagization was also reported in other parts of the country, personal communication, former Lieutenant C. N. Castel-Branco. Also H. West, 'Sorcery of Construction, Sorcery of Ruin: Power and ambivalence on the Mueda Plateau, Mozambique, 1882-1994' (PhD Thesis, University of Wisconsin, WI, 1997).



222 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

government closely shadowing that of Frelimo, with teachers, nurses, and agricultural extensionists.

Despite initial approval amongst the rural population of Renamo's stated aims of reversing villagization, restoring individual production and private property, and reinstating the traditional hierarchy, once the war intensified only a minority remained in the large swathe of rural territory claimed by Renamo. Fully half the population of Mossurize district fled to Zimbabwe during the course of the war, mostly in two great waves in the early 1980s and early 1990s, and a smaller wave in the late 1980s.28 The first out-migration occurred as a response to Frelimo's sweeps of the countryside which Renamo was unable to defend against. Many of those fleeing at this stage were then repatriated to Mozambique by the Zimbabwean government and put into government centres in 1983-84. The rest fled deeper into Zim- babwe, surrendered to refugee camps, went to South Africa or managed to hide out amongst kin along the border. During the rest of the 1980s, the population in Renamo areas and government villages remained fairly stable. A second large movement of people occurred as a response to the severe drought of the early 1990s, into government villages where food aid was available or to Zimbabwe. But simultaneously there was a small wave of return migration to Renamo areas of the district by people who found themselves unable to gain subsistence in Zimbabwe for lack of land. People also tried to flee government villages for the security of Zimbabwe, but this was more difficult because the villages were tightly controlled by the armed forces and militias, and Zimbabwean forces patrolled the border vigilantly.

Thus, Frelimo's and Renamo's shared criterion of control over population as a marker for civilian support was not really an accurate reflection of political allegiances, in Mossurize at least. Living conditions were difficult in both Renamo and Frelimo areas, and deteriorated as the war dragged on. But many civilians were able to leave Renamo areas for a safer life in Zimbabwe, and thereby maintain support for Renamo without having to suffer the deprivations of war which might have led to disenchantment. Political sympathy was linked more with social identification with one or other side rather than a clear understanding of the political platforms of the two parties.29 Renamo remained predominantly the party of peripheral rural areas where people felt excluded from the Frelimo state and resented what they saw as discrimination based on urban disdain for those living 'in the bush'. In government-held areas of Mossurize there was fairly widespread opposition to many of Frelimo's policies, but this resulted in 28. Nuicleio de Apoio aos Refugiados, 'Classificai;o dos Distritos Conforme o Numero dos Repatriados Recebido Desde o Acordo de Paz, 1992-1995' (Chimoio, 1995). 29. The voting also reflected an element of social conformity within communities, and a residual fear that the war might recommence. See also R. Jacobson, Dancing Towards a Better Future? Gender and the 1994 Mozambican elections, Report for Norwegian Agency for Develop- ment Co-operation, 1994.




political apathy or abstention rather than support for Renamo. There was a historical sense of loyalty to the government created by the identification of central areas with power, even after the benefits themselves had dwindled.

The socio-political division has continued in the post-war period. Renamo is greeted with suspicion amongst people in government areas, and the party district headquarters has moved from the district capital to Cita, in the heart of the rural population. Renamo former combatants settled primarily in their home communities, with only a few venturing into government-held towns and cities.30 Their Frelimo counterparts, on the other hand, more commonly settled in government-held areas which were not their original homes, using new social networks to obtain access to land rather than relying on kinship as most of the Renamo guerrillas did.31

The participation of young people in Renamo's guerrilla army In the following sections, I present the former guerrillas' descriptions of

their participation in the war, their motivations and experiences. On the basis of these accounts, supported by civilian accounts from the same area, I shall argue that the majority of guerrillas in this Renamo-supporting area were not brutalized, dehumanized and transformed into violent killing machines, as is often believed, but that they were subject to more subtle processes of resocialization into a new environment of civil war. Coercion was an important element of Renamo's recruitment process, but the kind of spectacular violence highlighted by other accounts was minimal, and coercion was supplemented by non-violent persuasive techniques, includ- ing political education. Once in the guerrilla ranks, young people indeed found opportunities to abuse their new-found power, but there were conflicting pressures bringing them to collaborate and even integrate with local civilian populations, particularly as the war dragged on and Renamo came to depend more and more on co-operative interaction with local populations. In Renamo-held areas such as Mossurize district, civilians attrib- uted any aberrant violence to the government soldiers rather than to Renamo guerrillas. In return, guerrilla violence was primarily targeted against populations in government-held areas - a typical strategy of civil wars and not particularly irrational or bizarre.32

Overall, the memories of guerrillas and civilians alike dwelled more on

30. In my interview group, 65 percent of former Renamo combatants settled in their former homes, and only 18 percent left rural areas to settle in government-held towns and cities. Seventy-two percent obtained land through inheritance. 31. Half the former Frelimo combatants interviewed had settled in the district capital of Mossurize, which was not their original home, and only 35 percent obtained land through inheritance. 32. This is an argument made by Walter Laqueur, 'The character of guerrilla warfare', reprinted in L. Freedman (ed.), War (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1994), pp. 323-30.



224 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

the physical deprivation, forcible relocation and separation from family caused by the war, than on the constant terror and psychological traumatiz- ation which the international community, in particular, expected to have left such an indelible mark on them. This is clearly a healthier approach to what is undeniably a terrible period of Mozambican history, although we should not ignore the possibility that trauma may find its outlet in unspoken or more subtle metaphorical expression, or make its effects felt more gradu- ally. This picture of the past must be understood as part of current strategies for social and psychological reconciliation at an individual as well as a community level. At the national level, political reconciliation lags further behind and has not benefited from these processes of reconstructing the past through memory.33

The process of recruitment. The overwhelming majority of former guerrillas interviewed portrayed their recruitment into military life as invol- untary, and many proclaimed ignorance of the Renamo movement prior to entry. This coheres with previous research findings from other parts of the country.34 However, no one attested to psychologically brutalizing techniques upon recruitment, just typical military training.

The recruitment process followed a fairly regular pattern in the Renamo areas of Manica province from the late 1970s. Renamo soldiers were sent on recruitment missions, with orders to round up a specified number of men and women of a certain age (usually between thirteen and seventeen). They picked people up at their homes or in the fields, usually in the daytime but occasionally after dark. They told recruits, and their families if present, that they were being taken to do a 'job' and that they would return home afterwards. The use of the term 'job' was an important tactic, as it imparted a sense of normality to the recruit and to the family. Since most of the young men were underemployed and eager for work at the time, it could even be used as an incentive to make them go more willingly.35 Particularly in the early years of the war, the Rhodesians were paying salaries to guerrillas, which was an effective incentive for both young men and their parents to accept the war as 'work'.

The recruits were then taken in groups from the same area, and marched to the nearest base. One recruit interviewed reported being tied up during the recruitment; and two reported that members of their family who protested at their recruitment were beaten. Beating was the most severe form of physical punishment reported by any of the guerrillas or civilians

33. See C. Dolan and J. Schafer, 'The Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in Mozambique: Manica and Zambezia provinces' (Refugee Studies Programme, Oxford, 1997). 34. Minter, 'The MNR'. 35. This article focuses primarily on the experience of young men in Renamo. The experience of young female recruits was significantly different. Unfortunately it has been omitted for lack of space here, but is an important story waiting to be told.




in these Renamo areas of Mossurize. Even those who fled and were recap- tured reported no atrocities of the kind cited in other literature on the war in southern Mozambique.36

They arrived at night and took me away. They didn't beat me, they treated me very well, but we were suffering because the country was at war. But I lived well, I didn't see anything difficult, even when I was in the war, in the bush.37

The former guerrillas recalled a range of motivating tactics, some of which were more coercive than others but none involving the kind of spectacular and grotesque violence that journalistic accounts of Mozambique's war have focused on, and which some academic accounts also treated as examples of the norm. There was usually the threat of violence against the recruit's family hanging over their heads as an initial motivation, but according to all accounts in Mossurize, this threat was never actualized. To a large extent it was an idle threat, since 65 percent of the interviewees' families fled to Zimbabwe during the war.

Some young people said they remained in the army after recruitment because they became resigned to it, sensing that there was no alternative because of the economic and security situation in the country. Most also felt some desire to flee but were too far from their homes, and did not know the terrain well enough to make escape feasible. On the other hand, a few suggested that being in the army provided an opportunity to gain access to the necessities of survival which had become scarce in the countryside. The most poignant motive expressed was the desire to return home to their families.

I thought that since I had left home because of the war, if I didn't fight, then I will never get home. So if I would fight, then I would achieve something and the war would end and I could go home.38

There was also a difference in motivation between those who rose in the ranks and ordinary soldiers. A captain explained that he had no desire to flee because 'for me it was easy, because I had a rank. For a simple soldier, orders weighed heavily for him, but not for me.'39 Former guerrillas portrayed promotion as a reward for years of service or for showing military skill.

36. Roesch, 'Renamo and the peasantry'; L. Magaia, Dumba Nengue:Histdrias tragicas do ban- ditismo (Atica S.A., Sdo Paulo, 1990). 37. Interview 88, Makuiana. This account coheres with Geffray's finding in La Cause that often there was little or no violence seen within Renamo bases, but contrasts with his finding that most brutality took place upon recruitment. 38. Interview 46, Espungabera. 39. Interview 1, Espungabera.



226 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

Although few, there were individuals who entered Renamo voluntarily. They emphasized politics as their motivation: 'it was a political conquest, because I felt that the Renamo politics . . . I spoke with my parents and they accepted for me to go ... so I came to the conclusion to participate in Renamo, and I volunteered'.40 Another stated that he would have volunteered because he had seen the Renamo guerrillas moving through the area and he agreed with their politics, but 'there was no way of going on your own to join up because they could have thought that you had been bought as a spy'.41

So when they arrived, they captured us and gave us their politics that it was to liber- ate our country.. . . The change that Frelimo promised was to expel the chiefs and put in the [party] secretaries, but it's the chiefs who know how to give to the spirits while the secretaries couldn't do this, and they gave orders people didn't like. So we preferred to fight.

Although the majority were forcibly recruited and subject to coercive pressures, many guerrillas attested to effective political education once within the movement. Renamo slogans did find echoes with these rural recruits, as they expressed sympathy with the desire to 'live as we pleased' rather than being forced to move to Frelimo's communal villages - a cause for which they were ready 'to accept death, because I wanted the country to be free'.42 Some went further and testified that the only thing which kept them fighting was politics, 'to explain why we were fighting the war. There weren't many promises [for after the war], they just said that we were fighting for the good of our people. ... we just fought with this idea.'43

These expressions of political agreement with Renamo's goals have played a role in the post-war period as well, as justifications for guerrillas' participation in the war and as markers of solidarity with their home communities, since these opinions found support amongst civilians in the Renamo areas of Mossurize district. For the few Renamo combatants who settled in government-held areas after the war, the political angle could be used to argue that they had 'won' the war, since they had fought for democracy and in the end the government agreed to hold elections.44

The political ideology remained fairly crude, however. 'Democracy' was interpreted by the guerrillas as 'people living how they want without being forced into anything',45 generally the inversion of all of Frelimo's post-

40. Interview 14, Espungabera. 41. Interview 37, Mude. 42. Interview 11, Mude. 43. Interview 89, Makuiana. 44. This was the position which Dhlakama promoted as well; see M. Cahen, '"Dhlakama 6 Maningue Nice!" Un ex-guerilla atypique dans la campagne electorale au Mozambique', L'Afrique Politique (1995), pp. 119-61. 45. Interview 33, Mude.




independence policies. This interpretation was shared by civilians in both Frelimo- and Renamo-supporting areas.

The experience of war. After training and political education, the new recruits were thrown into the heat of combat. Renamo combatants were as a rule fairly young at the time of their recruitment,46 a factor which has been identified by many outside observers of the war in Mozambique and other post-colonial African wars as an explanation for much of the aberrant violence.47 The suggestion is that young people do not feel the same fear as adults. The testimonies of former Renamo guerrillas collected in my own research included some which referred to youth as a factor inhibiting fear, although their accounts did not show the kind of wild abandon which the phrase 'child soldier' has come to connote. The fact that these young men were all adults by the time the war ended and already subject to the influences of life in civilian communities probably exercised a tempering effect on their recollections of their entry into the war.

For example, Simaio, who was seventeen at the time of his recruitment, stated that in his first attack he 'felt normal; I wasn't afraid because I was still young, it all felt like a joke . . . But I didn't like it, only there was nowhere else to go.'48 Isaq was recruited at the age of thirteen. He was not afraid in his first battle, but he found that he was physically too weak to flee with his companions because of the shock of the shells falling on the ground, so his older friend had to carry him out. He stated that 'we didn't do anything to rid ourselves of fear. We might be afraid of dying but then when you begin shooting everything disappears, and also we were given training and politics so that we wouldn't be afraid.'49

There was some evidence of the type of 'battle-hardening' which is uni- versally reported for soldiers going into battle.50 The following quotation suggests parallels with Geffray's conclusion that guerrillas came to glorify disdain for life and bodily integrity.51 But this was described by ex- combatants as functioning more as a self-protection mechanism than as a means of becoming a fearless killing machine of the kind portrayed by Wilson and others.

46. Although, surprisingly, the average age of Renamo recruits interviewed in Mossurize was 17 at the time of recruitment, with the youngest being 12 and the oldest 31. The median was also 17, indicating that the outlier of 31 did not skew the sample significantly. This higher than expected age at recruitment agrees with accounts which suggest that very young child soldiers were used more frequently in the south of the country than in the centre and north; see Roesch, 'Mozambique unravels'. 47. Vines, Renamo, pp. 95-6; Minter, 'The MNR', p. 5; Finnegan, A Complicated War, p. 72. 48. Interview 89, Makuiana. 49. Interview 57, Mude. 50. J. T. Hansen, A. S. Owen, and M. P. Madden, Parallels: The soldiers' knowledge and the oral history of contemporary warfare (Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 1992). 51. Geffray, La Cause, p. 167.



228 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

In the first combat, I was afraid after the first shots. When I heard the first shot, I thought I should also shoot, and then I surprised myself [by shooting]. I began to admire myself, and realized that it was alright.

At first we went in big groups, but later we went in groups of five, because we were already practised at war, it was already a job that was in our blood ... At first you are afraid, but there comes a moment when you say 'fuck off', dying isn't a problem.

I didn't think anything [good about going into combat], I just felt badly about the battles I saw, and this is when I realized that war isn't good. It isn't good, and it's bad.52

Their portrayals did not suggest a process of ritualization into violence as Wilson and others have argued.53 They generally testified to having to face combat and deal with their fear alone. 'Before battle, we just took our weapons and were ready to fight. It was just to wait for our mission and go.'54

There were reports of occasional organized ceremonies dedicated to the spirit of Matsangaisse; one such ceremony included the local civilian population and gathered for a large celebration which was distributed by a Frelimo attack. But these were isolated occasions. Rather than group rituals, the guerrillas appealed to their own household spirits, carrying out rituals in private because they were forbidden by the military leadership. These rituals can be seen as attempts to maintain a connection with their former lives and homes, something which became important to the guerrillas often from the moment of their recruitment. Patreque, for example, saw his father carry out a ceremony asking their household spirits for protection for his son on the night of his recruitment."55 During his twelve years as a Renamo guerrilla, he continued to give offerings to the spirits as frequently as he could. When he could not gather the necessary items for a spiritual offer- ing, he spoke to the spirits and asked them to be patient. He and many others credited the protection of their household spirits with their safe return from the war, and almost all spent some of their demobilization pay on organizing a party to thank the spirits upon their return.

Former guerrillas' recollections of the overall experience of the war focused primarily on the suspension of their normal lives, separation from family and home, physical suffering and the distasteful aspects of war such as being surrounded by death.

Life wasn't good, because when a person is a soldier he lives like an animal. There was no time to make a house, or to get a wife, because you were always on the go. Some- times we would have to go to Chimoio on foot, and it would take weeks, so you could never think of a woman because each person smelled of blood.56

52. Interview 35, Mude. 53. Wilson, 'Cults of violence'; Nordstrom, 'Rituals and realities'. 54. Interview 35, Mude. 55. Interview 1, Espungabera. 56. Interview 44, Espungabera.




Life in the army is different from at home. If you are here at home, you won't kill anyone, but when you're in the war, you live in the bush, suffering under the rain, hunger, and sleeping in the middle of the forest, fighting all the time, seeing people dying every day. Sometimes you can spend a whole week shooting weapons, people dying, so it is very different from life at home. ... In Gorongosa there was no happi- ness at all, we just rested a bit when the war ended."7

Those who managed to set up a semblance of normal life were more resigned to the experience, and were more likely to refer to it as 'work' or a 'job', as described below.

Did I like working [in Nampula]? Yes, I had to like it because I was sent there. It was in this way that I liked it, because I fought there, I grew up there, I made my home there and even had children there, so I can say that it was this. It was this that I liked, because I fought there.58

Apart from this lukewarm acceptance, the guerrillas' post-war stories contained few traces of any enjoyment of the experience of war. Some did express a sense of accomplishment if they had succeeded in their mission. Clearly, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to keep an army motivated if no one was able to identify with the cause. However, there appeared to be internal conflict in many individuals between feeling pride in their work and their sense that killing was a bad thing.

There we killed people. In Gorongosa there were no stupid soldiers like these here at home, they were strong and smart, and they would kill someone up close, using all of the tactics. You had to put the gun on your shoulder, close one eye, and look at the end of the sight to see yourself all small. There they will fall. I, who stand here talking to you, I killed many people, truly I killed.

Was it good to kill people?

It was bad, it was bad. We don't know anything but what was written, that we had to do it like this. If you fail, he will kill you, and if he fails you will kill him, so of all of us, none of us was a good person. So war is a very bad thing, it is a thing which destroys people's lives.59

This kind of difficulty in reconciling oneself to the contradictions between the moral principles one has been taught by society and the injunction to kill once one is in the military is something which all soldiers must confront. It is an important part of the war-time socialization of combatants into their new role. But despite the fact that the war in Mozambique

57. Interview 57, Mude. 58. Interview 34, Mude. 59. Interview 11, Mude.



230 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

was internationally renowned for its brutal character, in the post-war period ex-combatants demonstrated a clear understanding of the line between jus- tifiable and wrongful killing in war.

[In my first combat], I felt badly, because what they call killing is a bad thing. But they came and attacked us, and they died.

Do you know if you yourself killed anyone during the war?

I killed many.

How do you feel about this?

I feel very bad, because it's not a good thing. The problem is that he also wanted to kill me, and I was there to kill him, so we entered into shock.

And the spirits of the people you killed have never come back to bother you?

There is nothing like that, no spirits that can come to me, because he was also against me, I was against him. If it were a person who didn't have a weapon, or someone who asked to be forgiven and left alone, yes, then the bad spirits would come back.60

Civilian reports suggest that not everybody obeyed these rules, however. Both civilians and former combatants admitted that some of the fighters were good and remained true to civilian social rules, while others did not. But there were conflicting views within the civilian community as to whether war had uniformly transformed its participants to the extent that they should all undergo post-war cleansing rituals, or whether it was only a few who had misbehaved and required social reintegration. The majority of guerrillas, on the other hand, argued that those who broke the rules were troublemakers by nature, rather than having been transformed by their participation in war and automatically turned into brutal people. 'If I was recruited when I was a thief, I won't stop being a thief because I'm in the war. The war didn't change anything in people's heads', was the way one ex- combatant explained the activities of wayward comrades in arms.61 There is clearly a strong motivation for them to adopt this stance in the post-war period, so we need to question the extent to which their current portrayals diverge from civilian accounts of what actually happened during the war. Guerrillas (and soldiers) tacitly recognized their guilt by approaching traditional healers both during and after the war, to atone for transgressions and thereby protect themselves from avenging spirits.

Regardless of whether or not they broke the rules during the war, the

60. Interview 37, Mude. 61. Interview 89, Maduiana.




former guerrillas did show an understanding of, and commitment to, these rules in the post-war period. There is a significant difference between violence against civilians as an occasional aberration, and such violence as a deliberate strategy of warfare held up as an example to all soldiers. Accord- ing to the testimonies of both civilians and soldiers, the latter was not common practice in this area at least; it was unnecessary, given the civilian political support, and would have been counterproductive to maintaining this support for the war effort.

For civilians, too, their memory of the experience of war focused on the changes to their normal routine, the physical suffering, relocation and separation from family. Fleeing attacks, sleeping rough, not being able to work in their fields, being forced to live in crowded accommodation centres, having their possessions stolen or lost during the scramble, losing their social status and going from self-sufficiency to dependence were all experiences which could be considered 'traumatic'. But in this area, this was the extent of the suffering of which people spoke; accounts of spectacular violence were uncommon, and most relatives lost during the war died of disease rather than being killed by soldiers or guerrillas. In fact, some people said that the war was preferable to routine witchcraft.

War is better, because when they came, they would start to shoot and if your spirits were with you, you would flee and be saved. But from the sorcerer it is not possible to flee. War and witchcraft, war comes in the afternoon and you can see it, witchcraft comes at night, you're caught in bed and then your ribs begin to ache and get heavy and then you become ill and in the end you die, when you haven't seen how this arrived or when.62

Guerrilla and civilian interaction. As argued above, from the perspective of the young men taken into Renamo's guerrilla army, the main element of their suffering was being removed from their homes and having to suspend the pursuit of their life plans. There were some compensating aspects to life in the war, such as the thrill of a new adventure, the chance to travel around the country, and the power provided by the weaponry of war. But as the war dragged on and they grew from adolescents into adults, there were countervailing influences which pushed them to mend the rupture with their former lives. Their interaction with civilians could not be entirely coercive and one-sided, as civilians themselves developed strategies to counteract the guerrillas' power, and guerrillas required assistance from civilians which could not be obtained by force alone.

Other accounts of Renamo's guerrilla army have focused on the sense of social promotion provided by the gun, and the reversal of power relations as young people became masters over their civilian elders. In the post-war

62. Interview, traditional healer, Mude.



232 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

period, the guerrillas in my study area expressed a mixed set of opinions on these issues. On the one hand, they avowed subscribing to Renamo's political platform to return power to local chiefs, and they declared themselves as believing in local traditional rules, social structures and hierarchies. Their accounts refer to instructions from the Renamo leadership to 'respect the elders'.

Dhlakama taught us that 'since I took you to be soldiers, it wasn't for you to go and threaten people.' If you meet up with an elder, you must show respect, kneel down for them with your weapon, greet them properly. You must not rob, and not go begging. The people must just feel [sympathy] for you and give you whatever they can give.63

Nonetheless, some also admitted that they did not always obey these injunctions. 'As soldiers, we weren't afraid of anything, so sometimes we dis- obeyed the chiefs' taboos.'64 Chiefs and civilians also gave varied reports of the guerrillas' behaviour in this respect. Most held that guerrillas obeyed the chiefs' rules, because they were afraid of the consequences of spiritual retribution. But a minority of civilians blamed the guerrillas for spiritual disquiet during the war. This was not simply the common refrain that the spirits were angry because of the fighting, but more specifically that guerrillas broke taboos which angered the spirits and caused local suffering as a result.

Connection with local spirits was one means civilians had of counteract- ing the guerrillas' military advantage, since most guerrillas believed in the power of the spirits to affect their lives and the outcome of war. The material sacrifices necessary to appease the spirits following a transgression could also be used by civilians to gain access to goods which the guerrillas other- wise monopolized. Over the course of the war, there were fluctuations in power between civilians and guerrillas depending on whether the latter felt that they were winning and were strong, or were suffering defeat and were worried about spiritual retribution. This helps to explain the different accounts of guerrillas' submission to local spiritual rules.

In Gorongosa, if you didn't follow the laws of the land, you would not survive.... Sometimes we would go and ask for information on these rules, because no one should arrive in someone else's house without trying to find out these things. This is the type of question I asked. . . . Everyone complied with these rules.65

Another aspect of the social promotion ostensibly afforded to young men in the guerrilla army was control over women. But in this respect, guerrilla and civilian accounts from Mossurize were agreed that, in Renamo areas,

63. Interview 91, Muedzwa. 64. Interview 37, Mude. 65. Interview 35, Mude.




liaisons with women were forbidden by the military leadership rather than promoted, as other accounts have suggested. Guerrillas were forced to form their relationships with local women clandestinely, and even more cautiously with female guerrillas.

We weren't allowed to [sleep with women], no, we just did it like thieves, but if you were caught you would be detained. . . . My wife lived close to the base, it wasn't far. Just a little evasion, then I arrived, ate, finished eating and then returned. You ate like a trooper, as soon as you had finished eating, you had to run. If you were caught, you would be punished.66

Another guerrilla managed to take the woman he married during the war with him even when he was transferred from one area to another. He would then negotiate with the local population to house and protect her, and he would give them marijuana in exchange which he obtained through military contacts. This is another example of a more collaborative relationship between soldiers and civilians; in this case, the guerrilla was making an alliance with civilians to avoid punishment by his own army.

The only reports of transgression of sexual rules in this area were attrib- uted to the opposing side in the war. It appears that both Frelimo and Renamo combatants regarded women in the enemy area as fair game for capture and sexual abuse, whereas women in their own areas were to be treated with caution and approached according to normal social rules. Former combatants referred to their relationships during the war as mar- riages, and many brought these wives back with them upon demobilization. Fully half of the Renamo guerrillas in the interview group married during the war. Of these, only a small number were able to fulfil local requirements for marriage ceremonies during the war, but two-thirds had done so by the time of my research, two years after demobilization. Again, this suggests that the guerrillas made attempts to remain within the moral boundaries of society, working around the constraints of the new situation, despite pressures - and opportunities - to make their own rules and to behave as they pleased.

While weaponry might have given the young men an incentive to become warlords, countervailing incentives to integrate locally increased as they became more dependent on local civilians for supplies and information. This was particularly the case after 1984 when South Africa was forced to make its support for Renamo more discreet and Malawi pushed the guerrillas out of their rearguard bases. Civilians learned to create their own networks of information in order to evade the guerrillas' demands for food, as well as attacks by the government army. Therefore the guerrillas had to change their tactics and work more co-operatively in order to obtain what they needed. 66. Interview 36, Mude.



234 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

If it were daytime, we would get in with the population who were leaving their macham- bas. As we went, we would not threaten, we didn't do anything bad to the people, just, together with them, we would enter the site we wanted until we met up with our enemy.

The people informed us of the way in which the Frelimo soldiers carried their arms. So we would imitate them, putting our weapons behind our shoulders, so the soldiers would see us as if we were their brothers or colleagues.67

The guerrillas also began to help civilians to flee from enemy attacks, and then to return to areas which were safe in order to allow them to continue farming and, if possible, protect their own homes. Civilians in Mossurize referred to this as a generous action rather than a self-serving one, indicating that they believed the guerrillas' motives to be genuine, despite the accompanying exaction of food and supplies. In fact, a number of civilians in Mossurize attested that the guerrillas had suffered more than they did during the war.

It was the soldiers [who suffered more during the war], because if it weren't for the soldiers, we the people would have suffered more. The soldiers had the mission to take people from the places where the war was most intense, to places which were safer. This was the suffering of the soldiers, because if they hadn't done this, there would have been more deaths and the population would have suffered more.68

Guerrillas also shared their food with civilians at times when it was available, or exchanged hunted meat for cultivated grains.

We got on well with the population, because we soldiers asked the population for things, and the population also depended on the soldiers in times of hunger, the soldiers went to the forest and killed elephants to give to the population to eat.69

Liaisons with women in the local population were often contracted partly in order to gain access to a plot of land for growing food. The guerrillas would work on their plots in the intervals between battles. This was only possible in calmer areas which the government eventually abandoned, not bothering to send troops there regularly but focusing instead on the central bases such as Gorongosa. The interior of Mossurize district was such an area for much of the war:

The population always came to us, we would meet them and hang out with them, because the area was already controlled by us, it was ours. There was no fear of Frelimo, because if Frelimo even put its toes there, the population would come running to inform us, so it was easy for us to beat Frelimo in our area.70

67. Interview 35, Mude. 68. Interview 39, Chipungumbira. 69. Interview 37, Mude. This statement refers to Gorongosa, as there were no elephants in Mossurize district. There was only smaller game to be had in Mossurize. 70. Interview 1, Espungabera.




The way in which the Renamo movement became linked with independent African churches, in particular the Zionist Church, was another aspect of the interaction between guerrillas and civilians. Renamo's policy of courting support from religious communities was part of its attempts to gather into its fold all those marginalized by Frelimo. The Catholic Church was a natural ally for Renamo, because Frelimo confiscated church property and discouraged Catholicism, but Renamo also targeted Protestant churches for support.71 Frelimo had a better relationship with the Protes- tant churches, but nonetheless persecuted those which it perceived to be a threat to its power base, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses.72

In Mossurize as in other parts of the country, independent African churches have been growing in popularity since the middle decades of the twentieth century. Much of this growth was owing to the influence of migration to neighbouring Rhodesia, where migrants were brought into the churches.73 The Zionist church was the most popular amongst civilians in Mossurize, and during the war many guerrillas were converted to this church. Amongst interviewees, a minority went to church before the war but more than half attended church during the war.74 Some bases even had churches within their confines.

Some guerrillas were able to integrate their religious beliefs into their war-time work, and held that they maintained them during the war without change.

I was obeying the law of the war. Because everything I did, I was ordered to do. But I was always within my religion. The Bible always directed my behaviour and my judge- ment. After that, it ended and I came home.75

Others found their church beliefs to conflict with war-time practices. The injunction against drinking was an important tenet of many of the independent churches.

Why weren't you able to practise your religion much during the war?

The problem was that others were drinking, so to go and participate in combat without drinking was difficult.76

71. Vines, Renamo, p. 107. 72. Vines, Renamo, p. 106. 73. Personal communication, Joel das Neves, School of Oriental and African Studies, London. 74. See J. Schafer, 'Soldiers at Peace: The post-war politics of demobilized soldiers in Mozambique, 1964-1996', unpublished DPhil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1999, p. 127. 75. Interview 50, Chimoio. 76. Interview 91, Muedzwa.



236 AFRICAN AFFAIRS

Conclusion

This article has tackled the question of the participation of young men in Renamo's guerrilla army on the basis of their own accounts in the post- war period. These accounts were in stark contrast to previous portrayals of the guerrillas which suggested that recruits were systematically brutalized, dehumanized and turned into violent killing machines as an integral part of Renamo's destabilization strategy. I have argued that this discrepancy was partly owing to significant variation in the prosecution of the war in different parts of the country. My case-study area, Mossurize district in the central province of Manica, had specific characteristics which made it unnecessary for Renamo to use brutality and excessive violence as a rule. Mossurize was a particularly strong pro-Renamo area, because of Ndau ethnic identification with the movement as well as its status as a peripheral rural district with multiple grievances against Frelimo. Frelimo was responsible for violence against civilians in rural parts of the district, and Renamo for violence against civilians in government-held towns, a pattern typical of civil wars and not demonstrative of any unusual or irrational strategy. A size- able proportion of the population were also able to take the exit option, and then returned to support Renamo after the war because of their social and/or political identification with the movement.

In Mossurize, guerrillas showed a range of motives for their participation in the war, despite the predominance of forcible recruitment as their entry point into the army. There was certainly coercion and force, but no spectacular violence or desocializing atrocities. Former guerrilla accounts included a combination of resignation, lack of alternatives, the possibility of gaining access to survival goods, and an element of political conviction which was not insignificant. They emphasized feelings of deprivation from being away from their families and normal life, although at the same time they expressed some excitement at the new life. Civilians affirmed that some guerrillas took advantage of the new opportunities for power, but with time most of them integrated locally. To counteract the rupture with their home lives, guerrillas formed relationships with local people, continued to pray to their own household spirits, frequented traditional healers, and became involved in church-based religion together with civilians. They held on to the moral beliefs of their previous lives, although these conflicted with the pressures and priorities of the war situation and created internal confusion. Despite the fact that some guerrilla actions went against local social codes, in the post-war period it was clear that they had not lost a sense of the rules, as the international community's predictions of 'desocialization' and mar- ginalization from civilian society would have us expect.

Just as previous accounts were subject to the biases of the war period, my own research had to contend with current influences and pressures which




affected the accounts of both guerrilla and civilian informants. I attempted to identify these biases, but have to conclude that to a certain extent it is not possible to obtain one single and non-contradictory account of the war, or any historical event. More positively, though, we can use accounts of the war given by both guerrillas and civilians in the post-war period to shed light on processes of post-war social reconstruction. In this case, at least one of the conclusions to be drawn from the accounts of guerrillas and civilians is that they share a belief that the details of war-time violence are best left unspoken, and it is the more mundane, everyday suffering which they voice in their recollections. Such a picture coheres with suggestions by other researchers that a certain amount of violence is accepted by Mozambicans as part of the age-old struggle for power and political dominance.77 Some suggest that the worst violence in living memory was not perpetrated by Frelimo, Renamo or the Portuguese but by the Ngoni invaders of the nine- teenth century.78 The historical roots of violence in Mozambique must not be neglected, therefore, in considering the implications of the civil war for society, reconciliation, and individual psychological rehabilitation. The evidence of this article supports injunctions to examine African civil wars and the violence perpetrated by participants within their historical context. Only in this way can we understand the rationality of the participants themselves, which is the central element of any peace process and post-war civil reconstruction.

77. Finnegan, A Complicated War. 78. J. Alexander, personal communication.



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Guerrillas and Violence in the War in Mozambique: De-Socialization or Re-Socialization?

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