After years of conflict, Mozambique is seen as a success story. However, the return to peace has not solved everything: The government's neo-liberal economic policy could spawn social and ethnic tensions that even the civil war had not produced. Interview.

Enjeux internationaux: Mozambique is sometimes presented as an example of a Failed State that has managed to pull through.

Michel Cahen: Mozambique was never a Failed State. Even during the worst times (1986-1988) of the civil war, even when the RENAMO (*) rebellion embraced 80% of the territory, the State apparatus continued to exist, especially in the towns. The State was in a crisis, but unlike the Liberian and Congolese scenarios, it never collapsed. That does not mean that one can speak of a success…

Where, then, does this "success story" image come from?
The great success of these past fifteen years was the transition from a state of civil war to one of peace. The neo-liberal turn taken during the war (1984-87), and which had patently failed by the late 1980s, thus had to be followed by at least a "decompression of authority" if not by true democratisation: The single party became a hegemonic party. Of course, Mozambique is a good student of the IMF and thus gets good marks in the international media. But you must be wary of percentages - in such a weak market economy, a single large investment suffices to change the figures - and of the sites of investment. The investments are clustered where infrastructure already exists. The Maputo corridor (at the country's southern tip) is well in the lead, followed modestly by the Beira corridor (in the south-centre) and, lagging well behind, the Nacala corridor (in the north). The more isolated but densely populated regions, for their part, are untouched. The structure inherited from the colonial era - going from the Indian Ocean ports to the British hinterland - has not changed one iota and has even been reaffirmed in recent years.

The State's inability to develop the rural economy could lead to the exacerbation of regional tensions. In other words, the neo-liberal economy might succeed in doing what fifteen years of civil war failed to achieve by generating social discontent that is likely to take on ethnic trappings.

The State has grown by denying the multiplicity of the population's ethnic identities. Is that not a source of instability?
Of course! FRELIMO (*) moved from the anti-colonial manifesto that it espoused at its birth in 1962 to an increasingly Marxist manifesto (from 1969 to 1997), then an officially "Marxist-Leninist" programme (from 1977 to 1989), to come back to a nationalistic option in 1989, before the collapse of the Berlin Wall. This national construct is particularly present, even hypertrophied, in the imaginations of the capital's elite groups.

This choice is not risk-free. Mozambique's borders were hacked out with an axe after the Berlin Congress (1884-85/1891) and its territory is not necessarily meaningful for the peoples it comprises. The preferences given to Portuguese over the local mother tongues and to the transport and service industries over rural development are rife with ethnic tension.

FRELIMO won 60-65% of the vote in the 2004 elections, but this victory masks a very high abstention rate and a steady decline in the absolute number of this party's voters since 1994. This abstentionism reflects people's exasperation, which could lead not to a resumption of the civil war, but to very great social tensions. The country's stability appears less obvious today.

Is it possible to end the polarisation between FRELIMO and RENAMO?
The "civil society", that is to say, the social movements capable of developing some independence from the State, remains feeble. The great concentration of the modern elite in the country's capital and the marginalisation of the other nuclei of elite groups in the Centre and North during the "colonial century" (1885-1975) and after independence have reduced the social base from which a third force might emerge. In any event, I see none arising in the next ten or fifteen years. However, FRELIMO is not a tribal party, even though it is dominated by southern ethnic groups, mainly the Changene. If the State succeeded in delivering regionally balanced long-term economic and social progress, it might get the people to identify with this Republic and possibly foster the emergence of a "nation of nations", a Mozambican super-identity above Mozambique's multiple identities; finally, something similar to Great Britain's image, which, far from being a simple federation, expresses the British super-identity of the English, Welsh, and Scottish nations.

How can the international community contribute to this process?
The donor countries and agencies, just like private investors, must be extremely careful that their actions and investments do not exacerbate regional tensions. They must also foster the emergence of a "Social Advancement State", which, situated as it is on the edges of capitalism, is a challenge.

FRELIMO
Front for the Liberation of Mozambique

RENAMO
Mozambican National Resistance. This former guerrilla movement, which was backed at the time by Southern Rhodesia, South Africa, and the United States, became the main opposition party following the signing of the 1992 peace accords.