The Social Origins of Good and Bad Governance

Re-interpreting the 1968 Schism in Frelimo

Bibliographic Data

ID20052224
AuthorsGeorgi Derluguian (0000-0002-0175-7617, corresponding author)
Year2012
Pages78-101
Publication date2012-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueSure Road? Nationalisms in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/9789004226012_005
OpenAlexW2926247382
ISBN9789004226012
LanguageEN
Citations received8

This chapter examines the case of the construction of the Mozambican nation by FRELIMO, the Mozambican Liberation Front. In this respect, FRELIMO had to solve two problems. Firstly, the movement was confronted with the practical necessity of legitimizing the unity and identity of a territory against the hegemonic claims of the colonial empire. Secondly, FRELIMO needed to distinguish itself from other political factions, which had already elaborated their own visions of Mozambican nationalism. Against these movements, which it considered to be colonial and bourgeois, FRELIMO's revolutionary project sought to abolish class inequalities and racism within a broad internationalist movement. In the chapter, the author argues that the solution to the problem of both sustaining a discrete political entity and being internationalist revolutionaries was to avoid the nation by substituting it with the idea of culture, opting for writing a culture rather than writing a nation. Keywords:colonial empire; FRELIMO; internationalist revolutionaries; Mozambican liberation war; Mozambican nation; Mozambican nationalism

Corporate governance · Economics · Management · Political science · Politics · Schism · African history and culture studies · Law · Public Administration

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