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Democracy in Mozambique: the significance of multi‐party elections
Abstract
This article examines democracy as a process rather than an event, or some kind of transition from one regime to another via a period of exceptional change. In doing so, it reveals a set of often contradictory forces which seriously question the democratic content of social change in Mozambique since 1992. The key points which this article raises are: a particular model of democratisation has been, paradoxically, imposed on the masses by national and international elites, in the context of an extremely antidemocratic economic environment, dictated by the World Bank and IMF; people's views of democracy are inseparable from their economic condition and that consequently, ordinary peasants see democracy as meaningless in the face of the same old privations, or as something for others, in the context of differentiation; people have partially articulated the liberal‐democratic model around a challenge towards arbitrary state authority during an unstable and fluid conjuncture in Mozambique's history; the elections threw into relief local social dynamics, based on particular experiences of the war, Frelimo, and traditional authority. With the formal policy debate receiving little attention, beyond the ubiquitous promises for more schools and hospitals, local histories became active sites of contestation, used to legitimise and delegitimise the two main parties, and to re‐invent so‐called traditional power. While it may be true that the elections marked a reconciliation between Dhlakama and Chissano, at the local level conflict between the parties remains at a level which provokes daily concern for many villagers, especially as the material conditions of communal village life have generally remained very harsh since the end of the war.
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