Politics of Memory, Decentralisation and Recentralisation in Mozambique

Abstract

This article explores the contradictory processes that arise from projects of democratic decentralisation in the contexts of those post-civil war, emergent pluralistic democracies and ruling elites that typically strive to officially maintain essentialist forms of national unity, identity and commemorations. These contradictions significantly shape projects of democratisation and decentralisation in post-conflict countries, even though they have not been thoroughly accounted for in the expert literature. In Mozambique, these contradictions were analysed through the unrelenting attempts by the main Mozambican opposition party, Renamo, to inscribe officially in the country's landscape their own version of the post-independence civil war (1976–1992). Taking advantage of the Law 2/97, known as the Juridical Framework for the Implantation of Local Autarchies, Renamo built a square with a sculpture to honour André Matsangaíssa, Renamo's first commander killed in combat during the war....