Twelve - The Rise of a Micro Dual State: A Case of Highly Politicised Legal Pluralism

Summary

In this chapter, the analysis focusses on a very specific instance of political and legal heterogeneity, with reference to the northern town of Angoche in the newly independent Mozambique. It will show that the heterogeneous state and legal pluralism underwent a significant transformation when the central governing political force (the Frelimo party) was confronted in democratic elections with another, rival political force (Renamo). Even after a multiparty system had been introduced in 1990, the authoritarian political structures that dominated the country in the first period of independence in Mozambique under the one-party system (from 1975 to 1990) still prevailed in central government policies for local authorities. The result of this disjuncture at municipal level and its potential political implications is the object of analysis in this chapter. In the first period of independence, interrupting the state and the law meant a radical and wholesale refusal of the colonial political and legal structures. The assumption was that colonialism had absorbed, cannibalised or disfigured the entire political and legal experience in the colony. The envisaged transformation would be brought about by a top-down, vanguardist, authoritarian process. This experience showed that both the nature and the scale of the planned state and legal transformation were misconceived and were subsequently reformulated as a result of internal conflicts and external pressures.