5
Multipartyism, the retraditionalization of local administration and the apparent duplication of state authority The case of Nampula Province
In the early 1990s, the Ministry of State Administration (MAE) launched the “Traditional Authority/Power” project (TA/P) to investigate the history of chieftaincy in Mozambique from the precolonial period to the present.1 At the same time, the provincial government in Nampula authorized district administrations to work openly with chiefs qua chiefs as grassroots representatives of the state. This chapter examines the manner in which government authorities in Nampula justified the return to chiefly rule to rural inhabitants. It shows that the retraditionalization of local administration was cast as the logical corollary of the state’s growing autonomy from the party and, more broadly, its disavowal of politics per se. The official explanation, in turn, implicitly turned on a revisionist critique of the historical relationship between the state and the party as hitherto represented in Frelimo discourse. To demonstrate this, I review the evolution of ruling representations in this respect from 1976 to the mid-1980s. I then proceed to an analysis of the genesis and development of revisionist interpretations that crystallized upon the demise of single-party rule. Despite their differences, both versions of party–state relations, I show, presuppose a false dichotomy between the two principals and, in doing so, neatly deflect blame for the erosion of Frelimo’s popularity and legitimacy from one on to the other. The transposition of the state and the party in ruling representations helped set the stage for fingering Frelimo-installed rural institutions and leaders as the root cause of post-independence travails. It also paved the way for editing out of the official script virtually all mention of Renamo’s strategy of rural mobilization and the effect of this strategy on local ruling relations. Both topics are addressed in Chapter 7. Below I identify the temporal displacements upon which such redactions were premised. This chapter also explores rural perspectives on, and modes of responding to, the differentiation of local power and its relation to wider socio-political transformation. Finally, it considers the antinomies of the new discourse and the reasons for the continued overlap and interdependence of the state and the party.
