The Implications of Accumulated Grievances and Memories of Political Violence to the Administrative Decentralization in Mozambique

Abstract

Political grievances accumulated in the course of protracted civil wars constitutive major challenges for democratic decentralization in various postconflict countries in Africa. However these types of problems have not been thoroughly accounted for in the political sciences literature. In Mozambique, the persistent attempts by the Mozambican main opposition party, Renamo, to officially inscribe in the country’s landscape their own version of the post-independence civil war (1976-1992) offers an interesting context ‘to espy alternatives’ in relation to the effects of civil wars in the constitution of new democratic practices and institutions. The overall analyses demonstrate how grievances over memories of violence can paradoxically hamper and reinforce political pluralism and democratic decentralization in Mozambique.