The War Within

This scholarly study revisits the 1976 to 1992 civil war in Mozambique, a conflict that pitted the Frelimo government against Renamo guerrillas and other armed groups. The authors set out to open a new phase of research by examining the period through a range of local perspectives.

Instead of a single national account, the contributors focus on one province or one village at a time, treating the war as a total social phenomenon that shaped every part of life across the country. The chapters cover Frelimo and Renamo, private, popular and state militias, the Catholic Church, NGOs and traders.

The research draws on sources rarely used before, including local and provincial state archives, religious archives, guerrilla documentation and interviews, to bring out overlooked dimensions of the conflict. The volume also proposes a framework for understanding peacemaking, contemporary Mozambican politics and the current conflict in the country.

The authors include Eric Morier-Genoud, a lecturer in African history at Queen's University Belfast; Domingos Manuel do Rosário, a lecturer in electoral sociology and electoral governance at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo; and Michel Cahen, a senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), based at the Bordeaux Political Studies Institute and the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid.