The example that I shall give next refers to a type of anticolonial criticism against anthropology that was very frequent in the discourses of the African nationalist elite of forty or fifty years ago. In the case in question, the cloak of suspicion is cast by a member of the intellectual circles of the socialist phase. I hope the example will serve to outline the way in which a colonial past, that is still very present, operates in the consciences of the local intellectuality, and to stimulate the debates on identity and culture in Mozambique.

 



 I encountered this anticolonialist suspicion against the anthropologists in October 1996, a few days after my arrival in Maputo, in a journal article entitled “Sobre autoridade tradicional” (On traditional Authority) The author of the article, Sérgio Vieira, had joined the frelimo while still a university student in Europe; he was later to become Minister of Security and Director of the Central Bank of the Samora Machel Government, the first after independence in 1975; In the 1990s, he was Director of the Center for African Studies of the Eduardo Mondlane University and Deputy for the frelimo party.

 

Furthermore, Colonel Sérgio Vieira was one of the most enthusiastic formulators of the idea of the New man in Mozambique, the basis of which, as we shall discuss later, was founded on a heterodoxical application of Marxism. For all these reasons, I read the article with great interest. It began thus: “In recent times, perhaps because it has become fashionable among foreign anthropologists in search of exoticism, a lot has been spoken about traditional authority”

 

As a newcomer I noticed that these words introduced me to a set of discussions and dilemmas that could form an important basis for reflection on the Mozambique of today. The first mobilizing aspect of the debate was perhaps “anthropological knowledge”, which once more became the villain of the story. “Once more” because from the 1950s on, when the process of decolonization began to expand throughout Africa, the obscure side of anthropology was revealed (especially in the territories under British rule), and the accusation of collaborationism was made by the new nationalist African elites themselves.

 

The supposed complicity between anthropology and colonialism was thus heralded, particularly due to the sympathy that many anthropologists harbored for the so-called Indirect Rule in the British colonies10. In this system of colonial administration, the natives institutions and the traditional chiefs played an important role as mediators between the rural African populations and the metropolitan power.

 

Over time, the nationalist African leaders came to understand that criticism of the Indirect Rule and criticism of anthropology were just two sides of the same coin. In contemporary Mozambique, the accusation of anthropology was associated with a similar phenomenon: the intended resurrection of the so-called traditional power at the local levels of State Administration, which created mistrust, evoking an administrative system that Portugal had tried to implement in the colonial era. In fact, the mistrust of Sérgio Vieira over the plan to integrate the traditional chiefs in a local administrative structure was based on the supposed complicity of those same chiefs with Portuguese colonialism.

 

 From the 1990s on, with the process of pacification and the subsequent process of multipartidary democratization, the role of the traditional power was reexamined, in order to establish its degree of legitimacy between the populations in the interior of the country, seeking, above all, its reinsertion into the municipal districts. This was an initiative of the Ministry of State Administration, and was financed by international bodies.

 

But the criticism of Sérgio Vieira also led, in addition to a conspiracy against the colonial past, to a new stance towards a more recent subject: the war of destabilization against the socialist frelimo regime, initiated by the renamo around 1976. In a way, it is possible to read, in the accusation of “exoticism” against the anthropologists, a wider rejection of the ethnicist (or as some would prefer, “tribalist”) position of the renamo. This would come out of a counter-revolutionary movement in neighboring Rhodesia (presentday Zimbabwe), at that time governed by a white minority. When Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, the renamo won support from the South African apartheid regime. What began as a war of destabilization became one of the bloodiest civil wars Africa has ever seen.

 

 Once again, the frelimo had to strengthen its discourse of national unity, particularly when the renamo sought to clean up its international image (that of “armed bandits”, as it was known), assuming a more “politically correct” stance based on ethnicist arguments (Fry, 1995; 2005). In fact, this ethnicist claim was a key aspect of the conflict between the frelimo and the renamo. It is often stated that the renamo followers came mostly from the ethnic group called the Ndau, which is concentrated in the center of the country, and that one of the key elements of the renamo’s ethnic-political discourse was the accusation that the frelimo (traditionally supported by the ethnic groups in the South and North) was promoting a policy of persecution of the ethnic groups in the center of the country, while for the frelimo, the renamo position was stirring up “tribalist” claims. In fact, some analysts have pointed out the Jacobinism of the frelimo, which in the name of national unity would have underestimated and even combated these ethnicist claims.