Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania by Joanna T. Tague

Author:Joanna T. Tague [Tague, Joanna T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, General, Modern, East
ISBN: 9780429866272
Google: fPmADwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-12-21T01:34:30+00:00

Rupture and riots: liberation and the gradations of education in exile

George Houser once lauded FRELIMO’s singularity among African liberation movements as “one of the few successful efforts to form a front of competing nationalist groups.”79 Historians now know that FRELIMO leadership was irreparably fractured even upon unification in June 1962. Multiple fault lines rent the newly-unified party’s liberation ethos, prompting some to rely on expulsion to extinguish criticism or eradicate dissent. Expulsion operated as annex to exile, propelling some beyond Dar es Salaam and into the growing Mozambican diaspora. Party leaders employed expulsion as a political tool just months after unification. When David Mabunda and Paul Gumane charged dos Santos with nepotism, in January 1963, they and João Munguambe (along with three other party members) were expelled from the party. The men sought sanctuary in Cairo, at the home of FRELIMO representative Fanuel Malhuza, but the lattice-work that undergirded FRELIMO’s informational base was diffuse: Malhuza himself was subsequently expelled that March for providing the men asylum.80 The very act of exorcizing party members, however, sparked the formation of splinter movements, inaugurating a dizzying array of political alliances, vacillations, and reconfigurations—a prevalent theme in Mozambican political behaviors that endures well into the twenty-first century. One segment of the Mozambican political exile community in Cairo, for example, endeavored to resuscitate UDENAMO under the new name Udenamo-Moçambique, with Gumane as president. In another instance, when FRELIMO expelled Matthew Mmole for his association with Gwambe, Gwambe and Mmole joined forces, announcing in May 1963 the birth of yet another liberation group, the Frente Unida Anti-Imperialista Popular Africana de Moçambique (FUNIPAMO).81 The alliances undergirding liberation politics thus continually assumed new shapes in the wake of FRELIMO expulsions.

Prior to the start of the war for independence in September 1964, such purges were often the result of criticisms leveled at Mondlane over his hesitation to engage in armed conflict against the Portuguese. These splinter groups that formed were composed of men who had tired of Mondlane’s delay and considered immediate military engagement the most expedient path to independence.82 To be sure, some party members viewed guerrilla warfare as an eventual necessity in light of Portugal’s intractability, but Mondlane held out hope that Western European and North American governments could (via the United Nations) put pressure on Lisbon to consent to a negotiated settlement and attain independence without bloodshed. This strategy of working within the parameters of the United Nations to avert colonial warfare led many in FRELIMO to speculate that Mondlane’s commitment to the liberation movement was shallow—a perception bolstered by his long-standing connections to the United States, historically perceived of as Portugal’s ally and yet, as Chapter 1 reveals, “mortal enemies” with regard to African education during liberation.83

As Malyn Newitt has argued, FRELIMO’s decision to launch a military campaign against Portugal in September 1964 was not of its own choosing. Several bursts of violence in Mozambique throughout 1964, such as the attack in August on the Catholic mission at Nangololo by a group of Makonde associated with MANU that killed one Dutch missionary, forced the party’s hand.

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