The Question of Renamo's Roots

There are scholars who have tried to downplay Renamo's roots. Renamo is the main opposition party in Mozambique. It began as a rebel movement, created and funded by two apartheid regimes, Rhodesian and South Africa.

Renamo gained sympathy from right wing circles in Europe and the United States during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Frelimo, the guerilla movement who led Mozambique to independence in 1975, ran a self-described Marxist-Leninist state. Renamo was viewed as an anti-communist force designed to inflict another blow on the Soviet bloc. Thus, Renamo received funds from conservative sources, such as Pat Robertson (yes, the one and only).

Another form of support came in the form of pro-Renamo literature. These academics sought to describe Renamo as fundamentally a black Mozambican nationalist movement, engaged in a legitimate struggle against a repressive regime. Certainly Rhodesia did not force Renamo on unwilling participants. There was a local clamoring for resistance to Frelimo in various parts of Mozambique. But Rhodesia's role in forming Renamo is undeniable.

After the Rhodesian regime disappeared in the wake of the Lancaster Agreement in 1979, paving the way for majority rule in the newly renamed Zimbabwe, South Africa took control of the direction of Renamo. The level of South African involvement is a source for debate. Some scholars claim that South Africa provided only scant logistic support, and only did so during the first 10 years of the civil war.

In 1984, South Africa and Mozambique signed the Nkomati Accord, calling for South Africa's support of Renamo to cease in exchange for a halt to Mozambique's support for the ANC. However, it is widely accepted that South Africa continued to back Renamo. The Vaz diaries, also known as the Gorongosa documents, give a detailed account of South African involvement in Renamo's affairs even after Nkomati. Vaz, the secretary of Renamo's leader Afonso Dhlakama, left his diary in Renamo's headquarters where it was captured by Zimbabwean troops during a raid and handed over to Frelimo. Right wing scholars tend to ignore this revelation in order to downplay Renamo's historical ties with white racist regimes.

From its founding in 1962, Frelimo was always marred by dissidents. Renamo tapped into an existing disaffection when it was formed shortly after independence. Frelimo was a one party state that did not allow room for dissent. But to deny Renamo's ties to apartheid regimes, who had their own agendas for creating havoc within Mozambique, is intellectually dishonest. (International edition)