Mozambique: resistance and freedom

The subject of this study was the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Renamo) movement, its involvement in the Mozambican civil war, and the way in which Renamo was presented to the outside world.
Renamo began fighting against the Marxist Frelimo government in Mozambique in 1977, receiving limited Rhodesian and subsequently South African assistance. Renamo was the subject of an almost unprecedented propaganda war, and labelled a foreign proxy. The work examines the shortcomings of media and academic coverage
of the Mozambican civil war in general and Renamo in particular.
The study attempts to explain the ·silccess· of the Renamo insurgency, suggesting that much of Renamo' s support was the result of ingrained rural and regional opposition to the Frelimo government. The study traces the intellectual origins of Renamo back to Frelimo itself, examining how Frelimo had earlier been split between Marxist and nationalist tendencies.
The study examines how Frelimo managed to portray Renamo as a terrorist organisation without popular support, contrasting this image with the markedly different first-hand observations of over twenty independent visitors to Renamo-controlled parts of Mozambique.
The study examines how it was possible for virtually every branch of informed opinion to have misjudged the forces at play within the Mozambican civil war. The work argues that Renamo was a genuinely Mozambican phenomena and should be seen as having enjoyed considerably more popular support than had hitherto been accepted. Much of the thesis outlined in the work was borne out by both the 1994 and 1999 election results, in which Renamo won 112 and 117 out of 250 Parliamentary seats.