saul, john s. 1991 'mozambique-- the failure of socialism' transformation, vol. 14 (pp. 104--110)

7/28/2019 Saul, John S. 1991 'Mozambique-- The Failure of Socialism' Transformation, Vol. 14 (Pp. 104--110)

1/7

TRA NSFO RM ATION 14(1 991 ) DEBATE

MOZAMBIQUE: THE FAILURE OFSOCIALISM?John S Saul

'Capitalism', Bertholt Brecht once observed, 'has an address'. Capitalism'sno mere abstraction, he was saying, but real live individuals in control of veryconcrete eco no m ic institutions, reproducing, m ore or le ss self-consciously, theexploitative social syste m o f w hic h h e disappro ved. For B recht, that's where thebuck, the blame, the abstraction, had to stop. And that's where the on-goingstruggle to develop a m ore hum ane syste m had to be 'addressed'.For W estern radicals, 'the failure of so cia lis m ' - thi s latter phrase so pervasivea talisman of political discour se as w e enter the 19 90 s - has an address as well.For some that address is close to home, no further away than the constituencyoffice of their local social-democratic party where they have come to seeorganisations ever more d eep ly enm eshe d in and co m pr om ised by their historicbargain with capitalism and the most 'bourgeois' features of democracy. For

others, particularly many of an older generation, the Soviet Union itself hasprovided the postmark for 'failed soc iali sm '. H ere w a s a peculiar brand ofsocialism indeed, authoritarian an d sm ug , but w ith p ro m ise perhaps, the promiseof an 'alternative', of so m e coun ter-weight to im per ialism . A nd yet, for thosewith eyes to see (and not in ever y ca se m erely wit h th e adv antag e of hindsight),no real promise at all.China, Cuba, Nicarag ua... and, for ma ny of u s in the anti-apartheid movement,Mozambique. My own association w ith the M oza m bic an revolution began inthe 1960s wh en I m oonlighted, occasio nally, from m y j o b at Tanzania's univer-

sity and helped out with English-language translations at FRELJMO's head-quarters in Dar-es-Salaam. My commitment to the Mozambican struggle wasdeepened by a trip to the liberated areas of Mozambique in 1972, first-handparticipation in 1975's dramatic independence celebrations in the newly-renamed capital of M aputo, num erous subsequ ent v is it s t o the country, includ-ing attendance at several key Congresses and meetings, and even a spell offull-time em ployment there, teaching at the Eduardo M on dla ne University andin FRELJMO's party sch oo l.Through these years I passed close enough to the flame of Mozambique'srevolutionary process to see how real was the sense of humane purpose thatcame to motivate so many of FRELJMO's cadres, how sincere, too, theirgrasping for a Marxist m etho dolo gy that wo u ld he lp further to co dif y the radical

104


2/7

SAUL TRANSFORMATIONthrust of their undertakings. I had seen enough, in any case, to insulate me fromboth the ultra-left abstractions of a Michel Cahen (1990; also 1987) and the crasscynicism of a Heribert Adam with his suggestion that recent developm ents have'reduced FRELIM O's... versions of freedom ideology to rhetorical socia lism...In a crunch, the elite therefore adjusts ideological interpretations as arbitrarilyas they adopted them. No conversion is involved, as is frequently assumed,because a collective ideological commitment hardly existed in the first place'(quoted from Adam and Uys, 1985).1Yet my more recent visits had also revealed the progressive decay ofFRELIMO's high promise, a decay by now self-evident to all observers but onethat has been particularly well documented, over the past few years, in thevarious articles by Judith M arshall (eg 1989), John Loxley (1988), Otto Roesch(1988) and others in the pages of Southern Africa Report. Still, I had not beenback to Mozambique myself since 1986 when I travelled there recently to attenda conference and to visit friends. It very quickly became apparent that even theinstructive contributions of Marshall and the others had not quite prepared mefor what I was about to witness.

The conference itself was a revelation. Officially convened by the FRELIMOparty and the Ministry of International Relations, it was entitled 'RethinkingStrategies for Mozambique and Southern Africa'. The number of delegatesinvited from Western establishment circles was remarkable enough. Even m oreremarkable was the strong pitch in favour of adopting quite unalloyed 'freemarket' policies to deal with Mozambique's development problems that wasformally presented by each of the three senior governmental ministers whoaddressed various sessions (Pascoal Mocumbi, Jacinto Veloso and ArmandoGuebuza).Guebuza was particularly hard-boiled in this respect, acknowledging thehardships that the structural adjustment programme has brought to many inMozambique with the matter-of-fact assertion that the market economy solutiondoes in fact m ake the rich richer and the poor poorer, bringing with it more socialinjustice as 'the price of progress". Indeed, it was the World Bank's ownrepresentative in Mozambique who sounded more of a warning note. Hesuggested that the Mozambique government had become rather too naive in itsdealings with international capital, not being willing or able enough to drive thekinds of hard bargains with firms and Westem agencies that might actuallydefend the country's interests. Not that this representative himself queried thepremise that a wide range of benefits could flow from more or less totalimmersion in the international market-place. But it was rather disconcerting, asI said in my own address to the conference, to find the World Bank standingmarginally to the left of spokespersons from the Mozambican government.

105


3/7

TRANSFORMATION SAULEq ually disconcerting, I continued, was the small inclination o n the part of an yof th e Ministers to take seriously the fact that, even if a certain kind of so cia lismcould be said to have 'failed', there was still good reason for measured scep-ticism as to whether capitalism could succeed under the conditions in whichMozambique finds itself.

Most remarkable of all, however, was a briefing given exclusively to con-ference delegates by Mozambique's President, Joaquim Chissano. Chissanoseem ed to be addressing himself m ost directly to the m ore establishm ent-styledelegates from Germany and the United States (in particular, perhaps, theextremely right-wing former Reagan ambassador to South Africa, HermanN ick el). In doing s o, however, he also starkly revealed just ho w supine M oza m -bique has been forced to becom e vis-a-v is W estern dictate:The US said, 'Open yourself to... the World Bank, and IMF'.What happened? ... We are told now: 'Marxism . You are dev ils.Change mis policy'. OK. Marxism is gone. 'Open marketecon om y'. OK, FRELJMO is trying to create capitalism. We ha vethe task of building socialism and capitalism here.We went to R eagan and I sa id, ' I want m on ey for the private sectorto boost people w ho want to develop a bou rgeoisie' . A ns w er $1 0m illion, then $ 15 m illion more, then another $1 5 m illion. You tellm e to do awa y with Marxism, the Soviet Un ion and the G DR andgive me (only) $4 0 million. OK, we have changed. N ow they say,'If you don't go to a multiparty system, don't expect help fromus".Ch issano did no te that the structural adjustment program me bein g fo llo w edby the FRELIMO government has deepened the hardships of the M ozam bicanpeople at least as much as it has produced economic advance. And he warnedthat 'the readjustment programme must start sho win g re sults. Or w e m ust take

other directions'. But what 'other directions'? In fact, Chissano said ratherforlornly in capping this threat, 'w e don't se e wh ich other way. W e are tota llydependent on inputs from outside. If they are not forthcoming in the correctmanner it is no us e'.T he debate w ill continue about what has brought Mo zam biqu e to its currentsorry pass, what combination of an unpromising historical starting-point in-herited from Portuguese colonialism, a relentless siege imposed upon thecountry by outside forces (notably the architects of South Africa's destabilisa-tion strategy), and a FRELIMO development project marred by significantfailings of its ow n. Old FRELIMO friends, peo ple of ge nu inely left instinct andintent, were in a reflective mood, prepared to discuss more openly than hadsom etimes b een the case the party's failings. No t that anything I heard or sa wcaus ed m e to revise m y earlier opinion: first and forem ost am ongst the c au ses

106


4/7

SAUL TRANSFORMATIONof M ozambique's so-called 'failure of socialism' has been the ruthlessness ofthe aggression launched against it and the destruction, quite literally, of a societythat has been attendant upon that aggression (see Saul, 1990: especially chapter3).Indeed, I came to feel that I had, if anything, underestimated the broaderimperialist underpinnings of the grim destabilization of Mozambique. At theseminar itself, as well as in other discussions, a pithy epigram about Mozambi-que attributed to the Caribbean social scientist Horace Campbell took on everincreasing resonance: "The IMF is the economic wing of the armed band its!'There have been many indications, over the years, that South Africa's des-tabilization tactics dovetailed neatly with the Reagan doctrine of Third World'roll-back'. After all, these tactics had been applied in earnest only uponReagan 's entry into the White House. Now private discussions with FRELIMOveterans underscored the extent to which Samora Machel had premised his owntactics in the early 1980s on his grasp of the fact of US/South African connivancein destabilization. The neutralization of American hostility was thus front andcentre in the calculations that underlay the signing of the Nkomati Accord.

As things turned out, Machel had underestimated the extent to which SouthAfrica was an independent actor. South African and American policies as to thebest methods of dealing with Mozambique diverged after the Nkomati Accord- the Americans apparently accepting it as rather more of a supine Mozambicansurrender to the reality of force majeure and the logic of the internationalmarket-place than the South Africans were prepared to do. As a result, des-tabilization continued. Yet Chissano's words, quoted above, give some furthermeasure of the ruthlessness with which the Americans (alongside other Westernpowers) have been prepared to follow up economically on the advantagebequeathed them by South Africa's direct physical weakening of an 'enemyregime'.

At the same time, some FRELIMO veterans were also prepared to discuss,more frankly than ever, the weaknesses of their own project. Perhaps the mistakewas in going for the vanguard party structure in the first p lace, one of them said.Certainly, he continued, we were w rong , all of us at the top, in fostering a cultof personality around Samora, whatever his undoubted virtues and the particularstrength of his dedication to a popularly-based development strategy: thispersonality cult he saw as being the biggest change, politically, in the transitionfrom the Mondlane period to the Machel period and the most questionable one.My friend also referred to a long series of discussions he and I had had over theyears (including during the period when I had taught at the FRELIMO partyschool) in which I had often emphasized the costs of FRELIMO's embracingthe particularly lifeless brand of Marxism on offer from the Soviets as the

107


5/7

TRANSFORMATION SAULideologica l instrument for codify ing its radical intentions. W e shou ld probablyhave listened more to you, he said lightly, then - in a wry voice - 'Of course,you didn't have in your briefcase the military hardware that we also felt weneeded'!

As our talk flowe d along t hese lines, I got a fresh sens e of the costs - perhapsfar outw eighing the benefits - of M ozam biqu e's hav ing had to turn (inevitably?)to the Eastern bloc for support of its attempt to escap e subordination to Westerncapitalist dictate. Moreover, in this and other conversations, I found concernexpressed that the regime's original attempt to systematise its revolutionarynationalism within a Marxist frame o f an alysis had had le ss depth intellectua llythan it need ed to have (and les s depth, certainly, than I had m yse lf dared to thinkat the time). Perhaps this is also what makes it so easy for Chissano now tosuggest that 'marxism (not, be it noted, 'Marxism-Leninism') was creatingproblems for us ' (JzxpKsso, 12.05 .90) - and to leave himself so little conceptualmiddle-ground for blunting the charge of th e mo st unadulterated o f free-marketnostrums.

A number of more concrete subjects were also broached, notably in adiscussion of the importance of Samora's failure, in the breathing spaceprovided by the end of the Zimbabwe war, to do something about the military.In particular, this might have in volv ed m oving out the dea d-w oo d a mo ngst thearmy's commanders, both those w ho were not up to meetin g the no vel deman dsof the independence period (so different from the day s of th e liberation struggle)and those who had failed to resist the temptations to corruption. Did Samorafeel too close , from guerilla day s, to members of this leadership cadre to takethe necessary steps? Yet a transformed army migh t have m ad e a great differencein containing Renam o as South A frica first began to reactivate the latter group.

Then, as the war escalated, Samora seem ed him self t o lo se h is nerve and h isself-possession , the period from 19 83 to 19 85 revealing particularly graphically,FRELJMO friends argued, some of the costs of excessively centralised andpersonalised rule. True, a vibrant and critically-focu ssed m eet ing of the CentralComm ittee in 1986 did see the beginn ings of a revitalisation of FRE LIM O - andof Samora. Moreover, it seems quite plausible that it was precisely as Machelnow began to mo ve to transform the situation, givin g p rom ise, for ex am ple, ofat last shaking-up the army, that the South Africans determ ined to k ill h im . Butho w could the situation hav e been allow ed t o degenerate s o far in the first place?Unfortunately, my time in M ozam bique did not permit a full exploration of

all the questions that Mo zam bicans should no w b e asking the m selv es about thecontribution of their ow n errors of om ission and com m ission to the de m ise oftheir experiment. Certainly, one was tempted to cavil at times about what wasbeing said - and about what wa s being left unsaid. For exa m ple, w ere eve n my

108


6/7

SAUL TRANSFORMATIONmost reflective FRELJMO friends sufficiently self-critical about the extent towhich party/state directives and controls had tended (with whatever goodintentions) to straitjacket initiatives from below and had thus failed to facilitatevitalisation of unions, wom en's organisations, 'civic associations', media? Andyet it was refresing to find that for some M ozambicans - though perhaps not ye tenough of them - work has begun on a task that is now essential to the left theworld over: that of studying, self-critically and with more effective tools thanhave been available in the past, socialism's setbacks.Moreover, given some of the realities just touched upon, one can scarcelyargue, from a progressive point of view, that all the recent changes in Mozam-bique are pure retreat. Indeed, in some instances they seem more a case of toolittle change too late. Stronger steps towards effective democratization, if thatis what is happening in Mozambique, are certainly welcome, capping a lessonsocialists have had to take more firmly to heart everywhere in recent years. Andthere may be a general kind of wisdom, too , in seeking to let markets do someof the work that has broken the back of the planning apparatus in M ozambique.Regrettably, however, one senses that these changes are not being m ade in somemeasured manner, the better to deepen the effectiveness of a popularly-rootedproject. Instead they seem more the grasping at straws of a leadership left reelingby the pounding it has taken, a leadership desperate to keep afloat on theturbulent seas of (continuing) destabilisation and ever deeper reintegration intothe global capitalist system.

In some cases, too, it seems that the weakest attributes of many FRELIMOleaders have become magnified, benevolent authoritarianism now turned intosomething much more overtly non-benevolent. Take, for example, the hardversion of Mozambique's present development strategy cited earlier fromMinister Guebuza's remarks at the conference. As I pointed out in my ownconference intervention, it may be no accident that the Minister who onceoffered up to the people of Maputo the hardship and high handedness of'Operation Production' (a programme of forced urban removal in 1983) in thename of socialism, is now prepared to offer the hardship of extreme polarisationof incomes to that same people in the nam e of capitalist development.

Not all were on quite this wave-length, even if it did seem at times that themost salient division one could discern within the Mozambican leadership laybetween those who favour a quite crude and aggressive project ofentrepreneurial greed and corruption (exemplified most clearly by Guebuzahimself and apparently packaged by those around him in crypto-racist terms asexemplifying the best kind of 'African advancement') and those who favour asomewhat softer, more technocratic and 'rational' version of 'free market'

109


7/7

T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S A U L

strategy. Does there, in addition, linger, within th e FRELIMO system, some-thing of Samora Machel "s left-wing populist sense that Mozambique's develop-ment strategy should benefit, first and foremost, the poorest of the poor?President Chissano himself may not have lost sight of this bottom line ofFRELIMO's historical project entirely -however impossible he is finding it togive meaning to his best instincts in this regard. An d even the senior leader whocommented to m e ruefully that 'the Samoran project is over' did suggest thatthe Mozambican state remains a site of struggle where some remnants ofFRELIMO's socialism might still be defended. For him , however, the main'deposit' of the first 15 years ofMozambican independence m ay need to besought elsewhere, in something equally real if rather more amorphous: 'in theminds of the people' and within the folds of a Mozambican culture stillin-the-making.

He did look, concretely, to some of the cooperatives that have been establishedin th e Green Zones and to some of the strikes that had been triggered, earlierthis year, by the worst enormities of structural adjustment's impact. These werepossible sources of bottom-up regeneration that might yet place a more success-ful radicalism on Mozambique's historical agenda. But from where, in turn, didthey draw their inspiration? Wasn't it in part from some residue, still alive inMozambique, of 'the Samoran Project' at its most positive, at its most socialist?Doesn't the best of that project survive as on e positive point of reference forprogressive endeavour, survive as precisely the kind ofhistorical bench markthat few other African peoples can find in their post-independence past to takesustenance from? His conclusion: perhaps in this oblique w ay, if in n o other, theFRELIMO struggle really does continue.Nous1.Curiously thesame passage appears, transcribed virtually word for word, in Heribert AdamdKihWdl(l9f7r

Reference*Adam, Heribert and Stanley Uys (1985) - 'From Desfabilizabon to Neo-Cokmial Control: SouthAfrica's post-Nkomati regional env ironm ent' (paper presen ted to South AfricaConference, M cGill University. Montreal).Adam, Heribert and Koeila Moodley (1987) - 'Interstate Relations Under South AfricanDom inance', m Wilmot G James (ed) -The Slate of Apartheid (Boulder:Lyraie Reiner Publishers).Cahen, M ichel (1987) -Mozam bique: la revolution implosee (Paris: L'Harm attan).Cahen, Michel (1990) -letter in SouthernAfrica Report (Toronto).Loxley. John (1988) - 'Strategic Defeat o r Tactical Re treat', in Southern Africa Report, 4(2).Marshall, Judith (1989) - 'On the Ropes: socialism and FRELIMO's fifth Congress', in SouthenAfrica Report. 512).Roesch, Otto (1988) - 'Classes in Formation?', in Southern Africa R eport. 4(2).Saul, Jo hn S (1990) -Socialist Ideology and the Struggle orSouthern Africa (Trenton. NJ:Africa World Press).

110

saul, john s. 1991 'mozambique-- the failure of socialism' transformation, vol. 14 (pp. 104--110)

Documents