PEKKA VIRTANEN

THE POLITICS OF LAW IN MOZAMBIQUE: CUSTOMARYAUTHORITY AND CHANGING PREMISES OF LEGAL REFORM

ABSTRACT. During the last thirty years Mozambique has undergone two major processesof socio-political transformation, which have culminated in the creation of new legalsystems. The first change took place at independence in 1975, when a state-socialist systemwas adopted; the second came twenty years later when a liberal-democratic model wasembraced. Setting out from Lotmanian semiotics, this paper analyses the political contextof legal change in Mozambique. The analysis shows that the collapse of the radical projectin the 1980s was linked to the new centre’s failure to establish its metalanguage over theperiphery, and to penetrate and transform the cultural memory of the rural population.During this period the political culture of the ruling party changed from rule-focusedto expression-focused, becoming at the same time increasingly defensive and pragmatic.During the latest phase political debate has concentrated on local communities and therole of customary institutions. Both are burdened with contradictory textual memories,which the parties have failed to reconcile. However, due to its strong institutional posi-tion the ruling party has managed to maintain centralised control, albeit with an alteredmetalanguage to support it.

INTRODUCTION

During the last decade a precipitous demise of the socialist state systemin both the industrialised ‘second world’ and the developing ‘third world’has led to an unprecedented process of legal change. Guidelines for reformhave been sought predominantly in Western legal tradition, but especiallyin the case of third world countries also from pluralist models drawingupon local religious and/or ethnic identities. Under socialist rule thesealternatives had been excluded and banned for ideological reasons.

The socialist model was introduced to Africa during the process ofdecolonisation, which coincided with the peak years of the Cold War.However, while most of the radical or Afro-socialist regimes of the1960s sought to develop some kind of a hybrid system with ingredientsfrom the received Western model mixed with socialist and traditionalAfrican components, by the mid-1970s a few African countries hadadopted a more orthodox Marxist doctrine. Among them were the formerPortuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, which had gained inde-

International Journal for the Semiotics of LawRevue Internationale de Semiotique Juridique 17: 53–75, 2004.© 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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pendence in 1975.1 In Mozambique anti-colonial forces assembled underthe FRELIMO national front and, supported by the Socialist Block, hadadopted an increasingly radical posture during the course of the libera-tion war; in the socio-political confusion of the transition period (1974/5)any remaining representatives of alternative political views were silencedor exiled. In 1977 the ruling national front was transformed into theFRELIMO Party, and Marxism was espoused as the official doctrine.Within a few years refractory elements of the opposition had organisedthemselves into an armed resistance movement called RENAMO, whichreceived support from minority rule regimes in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia)and South Africa. Combined with external pressure from the West andinternal failures of the FRELIMO government the civil war led to newpolitical and legal reforms, and eventually to the multi-party elections of1994.2

In this paper I will analyse the basic contents of the early FRELIMOpolicy for dismantling colonial institutions in independent Mozambiquefor creating a system of socialist law. Subsequently I will look intothe move towards a pluralist legal system in the present multi-party erafollowing upon the failure of the radical project in the late 1980s. My mainresearch question is threefold: how was the radical doctrine transformedinto specific laws and political arguments to support them, how were theselaws received by the population, and how did these processes change whenthe political system was fundamentally altered in 1994? The study is basedon Lotmanian semiotics, supported by a rhetorical analysis of the structurethe argumentation used in the legislative process.

Previous studies based on semiotic and rhetorical analysis have iden-tified a number of permanent components in the radical Marxist doctrine,among them the concept of politics as a struggle between two oppositepoles (class struggle), and an examination of the future and the pastaccording to these poles. Another central characteristic is the use of twopatterns of argumentation, formal-doctrinal and practical, in policy formu-lation.3 These characteristics are also central to the legislative process,which is the main instrument for bringing about orderly political change.

1 Ottaway, D. and M. Ottaway, Afrocommunism (London: Africana PublishingCompany, 1981), 1–12.

2 Hall, M. and T. Young, Confronting Leviathan: Mozambique Since Independence(London: Hurst & Co, 1997). FRELIMO is an abbreviation of the Portuguese name Frentede Libertação de Moçambique, while RENAMO is an abbreviation of Resistência NacionalMoçambicana.

3 Palmujoki, E., Vietnam and the World: Marxist-Leninist Doctrine and the Changes inInternational Relations, 1975–1993 (London: MacMillan Press Ltd, 1997), 10–14.

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In both the legislative process and judicial interpretation communica-tion has a crucial role.4 A minimum condition for successful communi-cation is a common code between participants. By common code I meannot only the same natural language, but also a common understanding ofnorm, linguistic reference and pragmatics. A code can thus be understoodas the sum of those structural rules which transmit a culture and thusconstrain individual behaviour. The relation of a culture to the sign and tosignification comprises one of its basic features, and therefore it is relevantwhether the relation between expression and content is regarded as theonly possible one or as merely conventional. Accordingly, it is possibleto distinguish between cultures directed mainly towards expression andthose directed chiefly towards content. Cultures directed primarily towardsexpression have a conception of themselves as an aggregate of correcttexts, whereas cultures directed mainly towards content see themselves as asystem of rules. The distinction is, however, relative and the same elementsof culture can serve both functions in different contexts.5

The concept of identity also presupposes some kind of boundary. Therecan be no ‘us’ without ‘them’, and this forces a culture to create notonly its own type of internal organisation but also its own image ofexternal disorganisation. Based on the given code the world is dividedinto the domain of objects which have significance, and objects whichexist but lack significance according to the adopted modelling system.Consequently, the first act of interpretation consists in identifying the layerof culturally relevant phenomena in the world, this providing a crucialpoint of entry for subsequent decoding.6

The highest point in the structural organisation of a semiotic system isreached when it creates its own metalanguage by describing itself, or in apolitical community when it provides a normative description of ‘us’ and‘our project’. The basic mechanism of self-description is universal: onepart of a culture’s core structure creates its own system of norms, which itstrives to extend over the whole culture. In the new centre this system ofnorms is fully accepted, while on the periphery the relationship betweenexisting semiotic practice and norms imposed from above often becomesstrained. In some cases such tension leads to accelerated maturing of onesub-culture and the emergence of an alternative system of norms. In the

4 Perelman, Ch., Le raisonnable et le deraisonnable en droit: au-dela du positivismejuridique (Paris: Librairie Generale de Droit et de Jurisprudence, 1984), 85–90.

5 Lotman, Y., Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (London: I.B. Tauris& Co, 1990), 11–13; Lotman, Y. and B.A. Uspensky, “On the Semiotic Mechanism ofCulture”, New Literary History 9 (1978), 211–232.

6 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 131–142.

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sphere of politics this means a process of socio-political transformationwhich culminates in the creation and enforcement of a new legal system.7

In the Mozambican context both attainment of independence from colo-nial rule in 1975 and transition to multi-party democracy in 1994 can beinterpreted as such culmination points.

The primary data used in this study consist of selected Mozambicanlegal documents which address the role of local institutions in resourcemanagement, and political texts prepared to support them. The data can bedivided into two phases: that deriving from the period of single-party rule(1975–1994), and that from the period of multi-party democracy (from1994 onwards). The first period is characterised by an attempt to createa monolithic socialist state under the direction of a Marxist vanguard,the second by a search for a pluralist political culture concomitant witha market economy and separation of powers.

For the first period the study relies on laws passed by the People’sAssembly and those supporting documents which the party/governmentofficials had prepared to explain and justify them. The latter category alsoincludes a number of ostensibly scientific texts produced by high-rankingFRELIMO members or others directly involved in the policy formulationprocess. The second period is characterised by public debate betweengovernment and opposition, and consequently it is possible to analyse theformulation process until the new multi-party National Assembly passedthe respective laws. In addition to approved laws, also proposals debatedin public and related supportive and critical texts are used. Besides docu-ments created in the preparatory process and related studies, the studymaterial here includes newspaper articles which may be considered as partof the political debate.8

The choice of data reflects such recent theoretical discussions aspost-colonialism, and the related strive for breaking loose from the prede-terminism of established theoretical frameworks.9 In Mozambique theproblems in socio-political development and legal change are not reducibleto hasty modernization, class struggle or international power politics, eventhough these issues are also involved. Therefore, my analysis of legalchange is based essentially on legal documents and supportive political

7 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 128–142.8 As both Lotman (supra fn. 5, at 58, 218–219) and Perelman (supra fn. 4, at 56–67)

have noted, all texts reflect reality only in a selective, distorting way. In this study newsare not considered as descriptive data about political events covered, but as contributionsto political debate. Cf. Schudson, M., “The Politics of Narrative Form: The Emergence ofNews Conventions in Print and Television”, Daedalus 3 (1982), 97–112.

9 See e.g. Norval, A., Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse (London: Verso, 1996),2–11.

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texts. This does not mean that I consider such data somehow neutral:it is interesting for political and legal analysis exactly because it isprogram-like; it aspires at establishing new semiotic structures.

1. DEFINING THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY

The Portuguese colonial administration in Mozambique was character-ised by political centralisation and cultural assimilation, whereby it stroveto extend the semiotic system of the metropole over the entire territory.Though the Portuguese did in fact make use of such personal law institu-tions as customary authorities and indigenous reserves, these institutionswere totally subordinated to the Portuguese legal system. According toofficial policy their status was essentially transitory. Customary laws werenot codified systematically (as they were by the British in their Africancolonies), and it was expected that they would wither away as the indi-genous population was gradually ‘civilised’.10 In practice, however, thesystem continued to comprise important aspects of pluralism on the peri-phery, and especially régulos (traditional chiefs) wielded considerablepower locally. Incomplete coverage of the centre’s normative system wasalso acknowledged in colonial legislation, and for example forest regula-tions identified chiefs as legitimate representatives of their communitiesgranting them various rights.11

When the final negotiations for Mozambican independence tookplace in 1974, FRELIMO had already risen to a predominant posi-tion within the nationalist opposition, and took over the governmentfrom the Portuguese without elections in 1975. In a characteristicallyprogrammatic new national constitution, which the FRELIMO CentralCommittee approved five days before independence, a drastic change in thesemiotic system’s metalanguage was announced.12 As a self-proclaimedvanguard of Mozambican workers and peasants the political leadership ofFRELIMO effectively imposed itself and its system of rules at the centre.Its Socialist orientation was already evident in the original version of theConstitution, which declared land and natural resources to be the propertyof the state and gave priority to collective forms of production. Principles

10 Bossa, J.S., “O regime de concessão de terras aos indıgenas nas colonias de Africa”,Boletim geral das colonias 11 (1935), 3–27; Moreira, A., Polıtica ultramarina (Lisboa:Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1961), 334–339.

11 Regulamento Florestal de Moçambique 1965, Art. 41 (128–129).12 A program is a system of semiotic rules by which human life experience is trans-

formed into culture. In contrast to culture, which is connected to past historical experience,program is directed to future. Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 214.

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of democratic centralism were further strengthened in amendments madetwo years later when the front turned into a Marxist-Leninist party.13 Inthe amended version the FRELIMO Central Committee was given thetask of creating systemic unity by defining principles of legislation anddetermining the development goals of the state.14

A crucial point in the new Constitution was to define the borders ofthe political community established by the declaration of the People’sRepublic. Although in geographical terms the objective of the new statewas to extend its power over the entire national territory ‘from the Rovumato the Maputo’, not everybody residing within these limits was regarded asone of ‘us’. ‘The people of Mozambique’ came to mean those ‘engagedin building a new society under the leadership of an alliance of peasantsand workers represented by FRELIMO’.15 All activities which might beconsidered to ferment internal divisions based on cultural factors such asreligion and ethnic or regional identity were declared illegal. On this basischanging the mentality underlying colonial and customary structures wasdefined as one of the new state’s fundamental objectives.16 According toLotman and Uspensky this is a key aspect of political program’s unifyingfunction: it defines an artificially schematised image that is raised tothe level of structural unity. When imposed on a socio-culturally diversesociety it exerts a powerful regulating influence by introducing order andeliminating contradiction.17

While in principle all Mozambican citizens over 18 years of age weregranted for the first time the right to vote and be elected to political office,the Constitution included a clause for exceptions.18 In the first new law,the Electoral law of 1977, the boundary of the semiotic system was clari-fied when those individuals who had been involved in ‘colonial structuresof oppression’, were prohibited from running for political office.19 Thiscategory was made operational in the first electoral process in the sameyear, when over 1,500 candidates were rejected in local-level electionson the basis of the said law. Of these almost half were representatives

13 Constitution 1975, Art. 2–3, 8, 11.14 Constitution as amended in 1978, Art. 43, 45 and 50.15 Supra fn. 13, Preamble and Art. 2–3; Cf. Machel, S., “The People’s Republic

of Mozambique: The Struggle Continues. A Speech Delivered by the President inIndependence Day, 25th June 1975”, Review of African Political Economy 4 (1975), 14–25.

16 Supra fn. 13, Art. 4, 26, 36.17 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 226.18 Supra fn. 13, Art. 28.19 Electoral Law 1977, Art. 14; Cf. Frelimo, Mozambique – du sous-developpement au

socialisme. Rapport du Comite Central au IVe Congres du Parti Frelimo (Paris: EditionsL’Harmattan,1983), 118–119.

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of customary authority whom the new rulers considered compromised.20

These elements, which represented the now defunct system of Portuguesecolonialism, were considered as part of the nonorganised world beyond the‘new society’.21

In the new semiotic system adopted by FRELIMO political principleswere to predominate over legal norms. Initially the approach was mainlycontent-oriented, and it was represented as a system of rules definedby the Marxist code. FRELIMO’s guidance to emerging institutions ofpopular justice such as dynamising groups (GDs) was based on classperspective, and practical interpretation of inherited colonial legislationwas left to lower levels. Those parts of colonial statutes which wereconsidered to be contrary to the Constitution were automatically revoked,but other parts were maintained,22 and there were no juridical grounds formaking the distinction. On the other hand the Constitution criminalizedany acts carried out against the objectives of the worker-peasant alliancerepresented by FRELIMO, and thus gave an open mandate for politicallymotivated judgements.23

2. CONSTRUCTING THE ‘NEW SOCIETY’

Content-oriented cultures typically conceive themselves as an active prin-ciple which must expand to areas of ‘nonculture’.24 In the enthusiasmof the early years of independence in Mozambique this was reflectedin radical visions for reforming the penal system, which emphasised re-education of criminals through collective, organised work. It was believedthat even habitual offenders could be ‘freed from the influences andnegative habits of the exploiting classes’ and transformed into ‘newmen’. Therefore, it was assumed that most reactionary and even counter-revolutionary elements could still be recovered for the ranks of the ‘newsociety’.25

20 Assembleia Popular, “Relatorio da Comissão Nacional de Eleições a AssembleiaPopular”, Boletim da Republica, I serie, no. 150 (1977).

21 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 219.22 For example the Forestry Regulation of 1965 mentioned above (supra, fn. 11)

remained technically in force up to 1999 when a new Forestry Law was passed.23 Supra fn. 14, Art. 36, 79; Cf. Baltazar, R., “Towards Popular Justice”, in Principles of

Revolutionary Justice, ed. A. Sachs (Maputo: State Papers and Party Proceedings, 1979),51–54.

24 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 220.25 FRELIMO, “On Crime” (Circular to Dynamising Groups, 11 August 1976). In Prin-

ciples of Revolutionary Justice, ed. A. Sachs (Maputo: State Papers and Party Proceedings,1979), 36–39.

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One of the most characteristic achievements of the early legislativeprocess was the Land Law, passed in 1979. Socialisation of land hadalready been proclaimed by the Constitution and turned into reality bythe exodus of most large-scale landowners and the subsequent creation ofstate farms and co-operatives. The class perspective, which characterisedthe new code, was evident in the definition given to family farming. Itexplicitly excluded the use of wage labour, as this would mean creationof differences within the subject population and ‘exploitation of manby man’. The dominance of the new metalanguage was consolidated bycentralisation and unification: in the socialist state the use of land wouldbe controlled solely by the state through the Ministry of Agriculture, andat a lower level by the new district councils.26

From 1975 onwards communal villages (aldeias comunais) wereexpected by FRELIMO to become the main tool for expanding the newsemiotic system to rural areas. In official documents they were describedas a point of convergence of rapid socio-economic modernisation and anintensified class struggle.27 Very soon the escalating civil war, however,turned the villages to a defensive instrument for establishing an exclusivespatiotemporal border between ‘us’ and ‘them’. At this point there was achange in the official characterisation of the ‘other’ from merely ‘noncor-rect’ and thus recoverable to ‘incorrect’ and actively hostile.28 For exampledispersed settlements surrounding communal villages were identified withthe old mentalities of colonialism and traditionalism-feudalism, whichthreatened to return in disguised forms to destabilise the emerging ‘newsociety’. In this context such cultural practices as initiation rites, traditionalmedicine and lobolo (bride price) were classified along with tribalism,regionalism and individualism as elements of anticulture which were tobe destroyed. Consequently key representatives of traditional society suchas ex-chiefs, spirit-mediums and traditional healers were indicated aspotential exponents of tribalism and thus as evil ‘class enemies’.29

Despite party efforts to extend the normative self-description of the‘new society’ over the whole national territory, the relationship betweencentre and periphery became increasingly strained. According to officialparty rhetoric the ideal model of its political program was progressively

26 Lei de Terras 1979, Art. 15–16, 29–31, 42, and Preamble. Instead of reflecting themoral experience of the population, law was viewed as a generative mechanism to realiseFrelimo’s political program.

27 Machel, supra fn. 15, at 22–23; Santos, M., “Discurso de abertura” (Presented at theFirst National Meeting on Communal Villages, March 1980).

28 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 219.29 Frelimo, “Resolução sobre questões sociais e culturais” (Presented at the First

National Meeting on Communal Villages, March 1980); cf. Machel, supra fn. 15, at 22.

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turning into Mozambican semiotic reality.30 However, in many ruralareas the gap between local semiotic practice and the normative struc-ture imposed on it by the party-state in the centre was actually widening.Instead of being a derivation from the ideal norm, the semiotic reality lyingunderneath even such ‘correct’ models as communal villages was actuallybecoming its contradiction.31

According to an analysis prepared by party cadres for the first nationalmeeting on the communal village program in 1980, a majority of registeredvillages did not fulfil even the basic criteria for socialist production andwere characterised by a total absence of structures responsible for politicaldirection.32 At the peak of their development in 1982 communal villagescovered less than 20 per cent of the rural population, and the majority wereimposed on the population as a solution to practical problems of politicalcontrol and economic development, or as part of disaster relief.33 Theywere communal villages only in a strictly nominal sense, often just emptyfacades to fend off the centre’s infeasible demands.34 Even the People’sTribunals, which were in most cases dominated by loyal FRELIMO cadres,tended to uphold customary norms rather than transform them.35

3. FAILURE OF THE RADICAL PROJECT

By the early 1980s failure to implant its normative structure in the peri-phery was acknowledged by FRELIMO leadership, and in its FourthCongress in 1983 they declared strengthening the party-state a priorityissue. According to the Central Committee’s report, the party neededto invigorate especially its local structures, which had proved unable topenetrate the periphery and control the work of local assemblies and exec-utive organs.36 Thereafter the type of political culture changed rapidly

30 See e.g. Machel, S., “Report from the CC of Frelimo to the Third Congress”,Tricontinental 52 (1977), 39.

31 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 129.32 Frelimo, “Analise sobre as aldeias comunais existentes” (Presented at the First

National Meeting on Communal Villages, March 1980), 5; Verschuur, C., M. Corrêa Lima,P. Lamy and G. Velasquez, Mozambique, dix and de solitude (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1986),59–98.

33 Verschuur et al., supra fn. 32, at 63–67; Alexander, J., “The Local State in Post-warMozambique: Political Practice and Ideas About Authority”, Africa 67 (1997), 1–26.

34 Geffray, C., A causa das armas: antropologia da querra contemporânea em Moçam-bique (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1991), 17–22.

35 Gundersen, A., “Popular Justice in Mozambique: Between State Law and Folk Law”,Social and legal studies 1 (1992), 257–282.

36 Frelimo, supra fn. 19, at 98–102, 115–125.

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from content-oriented towards one based on normative texts, notably thespeeches of President Machel. These were presented as the ‘correct line’against the ‘incorrect’ political alternatives, which were now interpreted asa unified system of anticulture instead of nonorganised chaos waiting to beorganised in revolutionary societies by FRELIMO.37

In the Congress the party leadership adopted an increasingly formalapproach to law, which eliminated discretionary powers in judicial inter-pretation. Failure of the centre to establish a unified system of rulesderived from the Marxist code on the periphery was believed to encouragelapse into politically incorrect and all too tolerant decisions in lower-levelcourts.38 Even though the new approach was at least in part a sequelaof the rapidly escalating civil war, it was also visible in the strict linetaken against black marketers and other representatives of the informalsector, who were included in the growing category of ‘class enemies’.The subsequent re-introduction of such forms of corporal punishment aspublic flogging and the death penalty, both of which could be imple-mented even for an offence like black marketing, drew serious protestsfrom human rights organisations. Another example of the increasinglyruthless approach towards ‘the enemy’ during this period was the forcibledeportation of a large number of marginal city-dwellers to peripheral ruralareas in the North during Operation Production in 1983–1984.39

The new political line was, however, not implemented uniformlythroughout the semiosphere. Rigid control of the socio-political sub-system was combined with a more pragmatic – and less doctrinally correct– agricultural policy. In 1983 FRELIMO acknowledged formally that thebig state farms had been an economic disaster and that the co-operativesector played only a marginal role in agricultural production. In a prag-matic move away from socialist collectivisation, a key element of Marxistmetastructural self-description, the new strategy gave priority to family andprivate sector production.40 This change must be placed in the context ofthe government’s desperate attempt to re-capture the peasants, whom thenew forms of socialist production combined with growing rural impover-ishment caused by RENAMO’s extermination strategy had alienated fromthe centre’s political project. Instead of expanding the system was now

37 See e.g. Santos, supra fn. 27; Cf. Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 217–221.38 Frelimo, supra fn. 19, at 115, 133; Monteiro, J.O., Power and Democracy (Maputo:

People’s Assembly, 1989), 47–52; Cf. supra fn. 4, 56–57.39 Sachs, A. and G. Honwana Welch, Liberating the Law: Creating Popular Justice in

Mozambique (London: Zed Books, 1990), 14–16; Amnesty International, Mozambique –independance et droits de l’homme, 1975–1989 (Paris: Les editions francophones d’A.I.,1989), 20–26.

40 Verschuur et al., supra fn. 32, at 91–103.

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striving to hold its ground in its core area – among peasants and workers.41

According to Lotman and Uspensky this is a typical strategy for culturesdirected chiefly towards expression.42

After the death of Samora Machel in 1986, the new President JoaquimChissano soon disassociated himself from the Marxist doctrine. On theperiphery the impact of loosening control was fairly soon felt, often in thetacit abandonment of previous norms based on the Marxist code. By theFifth Congress of FRELIMO in 1989 the ending of the civil war – even if itmeant relinquishing the monopoly in defining the system’s metalanguage– had become the first priority.43 In 1990 the People’s Assembly passeda new constitution, which embraced political pluralism through multi-party democracy, universal suffrage and periodical secret elections. It alsocreated an independent judiciary, thus eliminating the previous subordin-ation of legal institutions to political organs of state and party.44 Finally acease-fire agreement between the government and RENAMO was signedin Rome in 1992.

The change called for a re-interpretation whereby key concepts weregiven new semantic content compatible with the changed semiotic context.The political culture had now turned fully away from one premised onrules and content to one premised on expression, on what things arecalled.45 According to the FRELIMO leadership’s retrospective interpreta-tion a process of deepening democracy had started from the first Assembly,which consisted of deputies all directly nominated by the party leadershipor acting ex officio. In 1977 the assemblies were elected by way of a gradu-ated system from base to top, based on lists prepared by party leaders. In1986 the Provincial Assemblies elected deputies to the national level, stillunder the guidance of the party.46 By 1989 multi-party elections, whichin 1977 had been dismissed as “electoral farces of the bourgeoisie”,47

were described as a logical fulfilment of FRELIMO’s long-term polit-ical objectives. What was left of the original normative structure wasconcern for unity, expressed in clauses prohibiting any political move-

41 Dinerman, A., “O surgimento dos antigos regulos como ‘chefes de produção’ naProvıncia de Nampula (1975–1987)”, Estudos Moçambicanos 17 (1999), 95–256; suprafn. 34.

42 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 221.43 Supra fn. 2, at 200–216.44 Constituição 1990, Art. 30–31, 107, 134, 164.45 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 217–218.46 Monteiro, supra fn. 38, at 18–20.47 Machel, S., “New Legislative Power. A Speech to the People’s Assembly, 31 August

1977”, in Principles of Revolutionary Justice, ed. A. Sachs (Maputo: State Papers and PartyProceedings, 1979), 48.

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ments with an exclusive ethnic or cultural basis. However, exclusion ofindividuals from the political community due to their class position wasalso a thing of the past.48 By 1991 transformation of the centre’s meta-structural self-description was complete and the Sixth Party Congressproclaimed FRELIMO a social democratic party.49

4. CUSTOMARY INSTITUTIONS AND THE STATE

Perhaps the most visible indicator of the loosening grip of the Marxist codein the early 1990s was public attention accorded to customary authorities,whose continuing existence had been muted since independence in offi-cial discourse. By the 1994 multi-party elections traditional chiefs werecourted by prominent members of both the government and the opposi-tion. President Chissano held formal meetings with customary authoritiesin various provinces both before and after the elections. His initiativewas seconded by governors, and followed up in many places by districtlevel authorities. The opposition parties responded by demanding imme-diate and unconditional recognition of customary institutions as authenticrepresentatives of African culture.50 Going this far proved, however, toomuch for the ruling party. For them customary authority symbolised botha return to the past in terms of an unscientific world of ancestor worship,rainmaking and witchcraft, and negation of modern unitary citizenship byrecognition of hereditary privileges and pluralist notions of law.51

Actually the process of change had set in two years earlier with consid-erable external probing. In 1992 a project was initiated in the Ministryfor State Administration to study the role of customary authorities inthe decentralisation planned as part of the democratisation process. Thisprogram took a strong stand in support of formal recognition of customaryauthority, which aroused controversial cultural memories in some quartersof the FRELIMO leadership.52 Subsequent public discussion was struc-

48 Supra fn. 43, Art. 32, 69.49 Chichava, J., Participação comunitaria e desenvolvimento: o caso dos grupos dinam-

izadores em Moçambique (Maputo: Assembleia Municipal de Maputo, 1999), 45.50 See e.g. “Envolver autoridades tradicionais na resolução dos problemas locais”,

Notıcias (government daily newspaper, Maputo) 22 March 1995; “Autoridades tradi-cionais cooperão com o governo”, Notıcias 18 May 1995; “Chissano e seu Executivoganham confiança dos regulos”, Notıcias 18 July 1995; “Renamo defende reintegraçãoimediata dos chefes tradicionais”, Notıcias 18 July 1995; “Integração dos regulos facilitaraa governação”, Notıcias 19 August 1995.

51 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 58.52 West, H. and S. Kloeck-Jenson, “Betwixt and Between: ‘Traditional Authority’ and

Democratic Decentralization in Post-war Mozambique”, African affairs 98 (1999), 455–

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tured by contradiction between premises established in the still lingeringMarxist code, and those of pluralist argumentation emerging from boththe national periphery and abroad – and even within the ruling party. Thefollowing analysis of this debate in the legal arena is based on the notionof the memory of a text. According to Lotman, a text has a capacity topreserve a memory of the contexts in which it acquires interpretation. Thismeaning-space a text creates around itself enters into a relationship withthe cultural memory already formed in the consciousness of its audience.By reconstructing the type of ‘common memory’ which different texts andtheir audience share, differences in underlying semiotic systems can bestudied.53

The way customary authority was described in Mozambican govern-ment media tended to place it in the colonial context: ex-chiefs’ claims tocolonial regalia and privileges were brought to the fore, as well as attemptsto re-establish the coercive powers they once held. On the other hand tran-scendental aspects of customary institutions (for example rain ceremoniesand witchcraft beliefs) were ridiculed as irrational and repulsive. Theseinstitutions were therefore placed outside of the modern world as anticul-ture. In general ex-chiefs were depicted as backward and somewhat naive,and thus easily manipulated by opposition parties.54 However, while manyex-chiefs probably missed their colonial privileges, it is less obvious howthe cultural memory of colonialism can explain the widespread support forcustomary authority in rural areas.55

Even with the conciliatory policy of the early 1990s many FRELIMOcadres continued to regard the chiefs as ‘sons of Caetano’, and thusdenied their foundation on common African heritage. Especially thosewho remained fixed in the Marxist code claimed that the only remnantsof customary authority were those of the colonial system, as its Africanpredecessor had totally disappeared. Consequently they insisted thatanyone who sought to legitimise his position by custom or inheritancesubscribed to the political order of colonialism, and must therefore be

484. The project was initially funded by the Ford Foundation and later by the USAID;the Germans funded another series of studies under both bilateral co-operation and theFriedrich Ebert Foundation.

53 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 18, 63–64.54 “Regulos e curandeiros aplicam pena de morte”, Notıcias 27 April 1995; “Da recu-

peração colonial ao condicionamento”, Notıcias 24 October 1995; “Chefes tradicionaisquerem suas insignias”, Notıcias 3 November 1995; see also supra fn. 52, at 464–466.

55 Dinerman, supra fn. 41. Some studies seem to suggest that the emphasis given tothe control function actually came from local level state administration, which envis-aged customary authority as an extended arm of the central state on the rural periphery.Alexander, supra fn. 33, at 8; supra fn. 52, at 481.

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dismissed as a ‘servant of the colonial-feudal structures of oppression’.56

In their semiotic system expression, or a historically fixed relation betweensign and signification predetermined content.57

When new legislation on the role of community authorities was finallypassed after various delays in the year 2000 it was an anti-climax to thepolitical debate. Semiotically a law bill can be conceived as a text, whichis in a relationship of mutual activation with its readership. It strives tomake at least a majority of legislators to conform to it, to force on them itsown system of codes, and the readers respond in the same way.58 However,instead of having the status of law, the new statute was an edict passedby the Council of Ministers without public discussion in the Assembly.59

By excluding political opposition from the process a critical consensus-building function was missed and no common basis of reference wasestablished. Even though the edict refers to traditional chiefs, it equatesthem with party/GD secretaries as individuals to be consulted by stateauthorities, and does not give them actual powers or veto rights.60

5. ‘CUSTOMARY’ AS A LEGAL CONCEPT

In 1995 the Ministry of Agriculture set up an Inter-ministerial Commissionfor the Revision of Land Legislation to prepare a proposal for a revisionof the 1979 Land Law.61 The new semiotic context provided by liberal-democratic theory was reflected in justifications for the project: law wasno longer expected to change reality, but to reflect it more adequately.62

56 A notable defender of the Marxist line within FRELIMO was S. Vieira. See “Sobreautoridade tradicional (I)”, Domingo (government weekly newspaper, Maputo) 27 October1996.

57 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 217.58 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 63.59 “O Estado vs Autoridades comunitarias”, Demos (independent weekly newspaper,

Maputo) 16 August 2000; “Reconhecimento dos lıderes comunitarios deve ir a AR”,Notıcias 23 August 2000.

60 Decreto no. 15/2000. Formas de Articulação dos Orgãos Locais do Estado com asAutoridades Comunitarias.

61 Tanner, C., Law-making in an African Context: The 1997 Mozambican Land Law(FAO Legal Papers Online 26, 2002), 11–15. In the early 1990s a process aiming to changeland tenure legislation was initiated with donor funds. Originally bilateral funding wasoffered by the USAID for a study of the options for a reform, which would help the govern-ment to facilitate privatisation and dismantle remaining structures of collective productionin agriculture. The project was channelled through an American University, and formallylocated in the Ministry of Agriculture in Maputo. Parallel studies in support of the landtenure reform were also carried out by FAO in collaboration with the ministry.

62 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 214.

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Privatisation of land was promoted on the grounds that land sales werealready taking place, while recognition of customary practices and insti-tutions was justified by their de facto power in rural communities. Withregard to both issues the need for revision was rendered urgent by theincapacity of the state to manage the process as stipulated by currentlaws.63

In the proposal of the Land Commission and subsequent debateconsiderable attention was given to customary institutions as a meansto protect rural people against individualist speculation linked to themarket economy. In conformity with the 1990 Constitution the proposalretained land as state property, but it sought to protect land rights acquiredthrough inheritance or occupation according to customary practices, andto strengthen the role of customary authorities in land management.64 Theexpression ‘customary’ was, however, strongly resisted inside FRELIMOdue to its denotation to a supposedly archaic political system. The firstpublic version of the document from January 1996 had already retractedfrom the formal recognition of customary law and respective institutions,which was granted in the Land Policy of 1995.65 Now even the condi-tional recognition of customary authorities given in the proposal wasstrongly opposed by representatives of the national land authority, whodemanded its reformulation as ‘local authorities’ and deletion of any refer-ence to ‘customary law and practices’.66 For an influential section of partyleadership customary institutions, being in contradiction with the officialself-description of Mozambican society, had no relevance or had simplyceased to exist.67

In a working document prepared for the National Land Conference heldin June 1996 a new concept was introduced with an eye to reconcilingdifferent cultural memories with regard to ‘customary’. According to thenew proposal inheritance and management of land according to ‘customarysystem’ would be acknowledged, and communities could transfer use

63 Carrilho, J., “O debate actual sobre a questão das terras rurais em Moçambique”,Extra special no. (1992), 11–14; Mario, T.V., “Anteprojecto da Lei de terras: em defesa doscamponeses”, Extra 17 (1996), 48–52; Myers, G., “Reforma da posse da terra da polıticade terras em Africa”, Extra special no. (1992), 2–6.

64 Milagre, D., J. Eliseu, E. Nhachungue and F. Nhantumbo (eds), “Anteprojecto da leide terras com comentarios de entidades socio-profissionais e publico”, Extra 17 (1996),2–47.

65 Supra fn. 61, at 22–35.66 Supra fn. 64, at 2, 35.67 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 128–129.

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rights to outside investors by a formal agreement.68 When the LandBill was finally presented to the National Assembly in September 1996the concept ‘customary system’ was again withdrawn from the reviseddocument, along with ‘customary law’. Devolution of power to inde-pendent local-level institutions was thus consistently prevented.69 The newproposal was criticised by lawyers, who noted that it allowed decentral-isation of land management only in urban (planned) areas, maintainingtherefore the Marxist tradition of centralised state control.70 This critiquehad little effect: in the final version, which was passed by the Assembly inOctober 1997, control over rural land was decentralised only to provinciallevel.71

As noted by Lotman, whole layers of existing cultural phenomenawhich from the point of view of the dominant metalanguage are marginalhave no place in the idealised self-description of that culture. Being irrele-vant for the centre’s modelling system, they are placed beyond the borderof the semiotic system despite their actual existence on the periphery.72

In Mozambique the Marxist doctrine placed customary institutions in thehistorically surpassed semiotic system of colonialism. They were depictedas feudal remnants, which could not survive the onslaught of the liberatedenergy of popular masses – peasantry and the emerging working classlead by the party vanguard. While class perspective was subsequentlyabandoned by FRELIMO, it held on to the universalist idea of ‘modern’,which lies behind both Western liberal-democracy and Marxist socialism.However, communication is only possible when there is some degree ofcommon memory. By insisting on an exclusive model of communication

68 ‘Rural community’ was defined as “a customary entity which groups familiesand individuals in conformity with traditional uses and customs, established on aterritory which includes areas of habitation and agriculture, whether cultivated or fallow,forests, sites of cultural importance, pastures, sources of water and areas of expansion”.‘Customary system’ was defined as “a totality of rules, norms and practices of a deter-mined population which establish, among other things, the rights with regard to land andnatural resources, including their management”. Milagre, D., J. Eliseu, E. Nhachungue,F. Nhantumbo, A. Malache, B. Latif and A.P. Pita (eds), “Conferência nacional de terras,Documento de trabalho e plenarias”, Extra 18 (1996), 2–30.

69 On request from the highest political leadership in the country the territorial scope inthe definition of ‘local community’ was limited to locality or smaller area, and referenceto ‘customary’ was omitted. Otherwise the definition of rural community was adopteddirectly. Milagre, D., J. Eliseu, E. Nhachungue, F. Nhantumbo, A. Malache, B. Latif andA.P. Pita (eds), “Projecto de Lei de revisão da Lei no. 6/97, de 3 de Julho”, Extra 18 (1996),32–47; supra fn. 61, at 32–33.

70 Garvey, J., “A terra – do estado ou do povo?”, Extra 18 (1996), 56–61.71 Lei de Terras 1997, Art. 22–23.72 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 129.

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based on a particular interpretation of politics and history derived fromthe metalanguage of Western modernism, the ruling party has effectivelyrefused to accept the fact that all existing semiotic systems are transectedby boundaries of different sub-cultures, and each of them is struggling tomaintain some kind of unified collective personality.73

6. POLITICS AS FORGETTING

According to Lotman and Uspensky forgetting is one of the key functionsof culture. There are, however, two kinds of forgetting: excluding thoseobjects and events which according to current semiotic norms are nones-sential, and purging of elements from the reserves of collective memory.The latter case involves disintegration of the respective sub-culture asa unified collective personality.74 In Mozambique the purgatory versioncame up in the context of new forest legislation in January 1998. In thefirst published version of a Forestry and Wildlife Bill no reference wasmade to customary authorities, but it included a new category of protectedareas, those for ‘exclusive communal use’ according to ‘customary normsand practices’. These areas were intended for ‘the protection of sacredforests and other sites of historical and cultural importance for the localcommunities’.75 Protection of traditional cemeteries and other ceremo-nial sites had already been discussed when the Reform Land Law wasdebated,76 but in the final version the issue was dropped.

According to the Marxist code tombs of chiefs and other monumentsused for ‘obscurantist or reactionary purposes’ were elements of memoryto be destructed, not preserved.77 The contradiction was acknowledged inthe formulation of a new version of the Forestry Bill in December 1998:protected areas were now called ‘zones of communal use’, and ‘sacredforests’ were replaced with ‘forests of religious interest’. Contentiousreference to exclusive rights and traditional religion, which representedanticulture for FRELIMO hardliners, were thus avoided.78

73 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 63–64, 138.74 Lotman and Uspensky, supra, fn. 5, at 216.75 Direcção Nacional de Florestas e Fauna Bravia, Anteprojecto de Lei de florestas e

fauna bravia (Maputo: Ministerio da Agricultura e Pescas, January 1998), Art. 9.76 Supra fn. 64, at 30–31.77 FRELIMO, supra fn. 29, at 9.78 Direcção Nacional de Florestas e Fauna Bravia, Anteprojecto de Lei de florestas e

fauna bravia (Maputo: Ministerio da Agricultura e Pescas, December 1998), Art. 9.

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Regarding decentralisation, both versions of the Forestry Bill referredto local resource management institutions (committees/councils) whichwould consist of different local interest groups and state authorities.Recognition of community rights to share in benefits from forest resourcesand to create partnerships with the private sector was, however, removedin December.79 Critical commentors noted that state authorities seem toforget that in a democratic system based on people’s sovereignty the statecannot speak for communities and other interest groups, who should bedirectly represented in the management process.80 In the end definition ofthe functions and powers of management councils was once again with-drawn from public political debate by passing the task to the Council ofMinisters.81

The legislative processes discussed above follow a pattern which hasbecome typical in Mozambique. A further example is the project forconstitutional revision, which was rejected after the national elections of1999. In the debate customary authority again emerged as one of the keythemes. While the opposition parties demanded its institutionalisation as afundamemtal part of Mozambican cultural identity, FRELIMO proposedinstead to rehabilitate dynamising groups to represent communities. Inthis way it tried again to fix the correct field of designations to post-independence period while forgetting ‘nonessential’ connections to demo-cratic centaralism of the one-party system. This was rejected outright bythe opposition parties, who reminded that GDs were part of the old Marxistparty/state structure.82 Throughout the multi-party era the ruling party haschosen to forget or destroy those elements of memory which do not fitwith its own revised ‘correct texts’, instead of using the new democraticinstitutions to forge a mutually acceptable ‘common memory’ togetherwith the political opposition.

79 Supra fn. 75, Art. 24–25, 30; supra fn. 78, Art. 25,27.80 Negrão, J., L. Brito and P. Da Silva, Parecer tecnico ao Projecto do lei de florestas

e fauna bravia (Maputo: Inter-ministerial Commission for the Revision of Land Legis-lation, 1999); Salamão, A., “Institutional Co-ordination and Harmonizing Formal andCustomary Law in the Management of Natural Resources”, in Sustainable Developmentin Mozambique, eds. B. Ferraz and B. Munslow (Oxford: James Currey, 1999), 83–87.

81 Lei dos Recursos Florestais e Faunısticos 1999, Art. 31, 35.82 “Revisão da Constituição: Poder tradicional gera controversia”, Notıcias 26 October

1998; “Custos polıticos adiam a introdução do poder tradicional em Moçambique”, Demos28 October 1998.

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7. CONCLUSION

When FRELIMO gained power at independence it did so from a posi-tion of periphery: for the Portuguese authorities the guerrillas representeddisorganisation and chaos, the opposite to colonial law and order. InMozambique the transition of power was unusually total and abrupt, andthe new rulers found themselves in an awkward position as they tried toestablish their own semiotic system to replace the colonial order. In face ofthe scarcity of resources they chose to maintain key administrative struc-tures inherited from the colonial power, to be staffed by loyal FRELIMOcadres and gradually revised to support the emergent system. Politicalculture was thus initially conceived as a system of rules, and the sameapproach was adopted with regard to law, the main instrument of thepolitical community’s self-description. Instead of abolishing all coloniallaws, the party drafted a new constitution to guide selective applicationof the inherited legal system. What the new rulers maintained by designwas the vertical structure of power, which placed the party at the top ofthe hierarchy. This centralised system of command soon cast its shadowover local institutions of people’s power, many of which failed to functionbeyond their initiation.

The new metalanguage was not legitimised by continuity, but by a breakwith all preceding stages of society, whether colonial or pre-colonial. Thebreak with colonialism was paralleled by continuity with the liberationstruggle. Conformity with the rules established in the political programwas also used at the outset for identifying the rural population in termsof those ‘creating the new society’ in communal villages and state farms,and those who preferred to remain in scattered lineage-based homesteadsin their ancestral lands. Fixed to traditional culture, the latter were viewedas backward looking and superstitious, and therefore as belonging to thechaotic outside.

Even if FRELIMO’s Marxism was somewhat homespun,83 it providedthe dominant code for political communication until the late 1980s. Theobservation made by Palmujoki with respect to formalist vs. pragmaticargumentation in the Vietnamese context is to a great extent also validfor Mozambique. There recourse to these two strategies was evident espe-cially since the early 1980s, when the combination of external pressuresand internal failures began to be manifested in economic stagnation andincreasing estrangement of the rural population from the socialist projectof the party. At first the party leadership in Maputo turned to even moreformalist rhetoric, which was accompanied by attempts to strengthen

83 Supra fn. 2, at 62–68.

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ideological mobilisation and control of the rural periphery. In practicethis meant divulgating a number of ‘correct texts’, typically speeches ofPresident Machel. Ideological measures were, however, accompanied byincreasingly pragmatic action by local administrators and party cadres,who often interpreted the Marxist code very flexibly, or simply disregardedit. In the field of law, de facto pluralism was a typical state of affairs inmany rural areas despite official insistence on the unitary model.84

By the late 1980s recourse to Marxist reasoning was on the waneeven among the party leadership, and in 1989 Marxism was formallyabandoned. In its place increasingly literal use of key vocabulary discon-nected from the old semantic context became the dominant mode.85 Theretrospective invention of a common memory of democratisation underFRELIMO rule is a case in point: recurrent and often contradictory elec-toral reforms were made to look more plausible by presenting them aslogical steps in a chain leading up to the final goal of multi-party democ-racy. A means reluctantly accepted for reasons of political necessity wasturned to an end.

Reasons for deserting the Marxist code, and by implication the radicalproject, constitute a controversial problem which goes beyond the scopeof this article. It is, however, of interest to note some parallels betweenthe Mozambican experience and similar processes when Bolshevik rulewas established in Soviet Central Asia,86 and later when collective formsof production were implemented in Vietnam.87 In all three cases the rootproblem seems to have been the new rulers’ failure to come up withpremises of argumentation which would be acceptable to the population onthe periphery: there was no shared cultural memory to support the revolu-tionary program. At least in Mozambique the inherent truth of the premiseof a class struggle and the superiority of the ‘new society’ over the old weretaken for granted, and those who did not accept them were simply brandedas class enemies and placed outside the semiotic system. However, even ifFRELIMO’s brand of modernisation was acceptable to the party elite, andthe content of historical materialism was comprehensible to an intellectualvanguard, many others found the new rule and laws alien and abstract.

84 Supra fn. 35, at 273–274.85 Here it is interesting to note a parallel with Aletta Norval’s conclusions concerning the

changes in apartheid discourse in South Africa when it was loosing its hegemonic position.Supra fn. 9, at 301.

86 Massell, G.J., “Law as an Instrument of Revolutionary Change in a Traditional Milieu:The Case of Soviet Central Asia”, Law and Society Review 2 (1968), 179–228.

87 Kerkvliet, B., “Rural Society and State Relations”, in Vietnam’s Rural Transforma-tion, eds. B. Kerkvliet and D. Porter (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 65–96.

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Whereas Mozambique’s inherited circumstances and ruthless destabil-isation by neighbouring minority rule regimes were indisputably majorfactors in the failure of the radical project, there were also importantintra-systemic causes. Even Marxist-oriented scholars have admitted thatFRELIMO’s failure to adapt its metalanguage to the semiotic contextsof its predominantly illiterate and rural audience at least partly explainsthe surprisingly rapid success of the externally induced and politicallyconfused alternative project of the armed opposition.88 As the centre lostits initial dynamism and became increasingly rigidly organised and author-itarian, contradiction between the periphery’s semiotic practices groundedin local cultural traditions and the alien structural norms imposed fromabove finally led to a rupture.89

By 1994 a second culmination point was reached when the first multi-party national elections were held, and the opposition was transformedfrom ‘armed bandits’ operating beyond the border of the semiotic systemto a legitimate element within it. This process also made the new parties’political projects legitimate and formally equal to that of the ruling party.As FRELIMO leadership found transition to a market economy compat-ible with the existing vertical structure of power, the economic componentin the radical project was quietly abandoned even before transition tomulti-party democracy. On the other hand, all moves to create horizontalstructures of power in rural areas have been blocked by the ruling party.90

In this context political debate has focused on a few key expressions suchas customary authority, or the issue of whether traditional chiefs and thestructures of power they represent should be given a formal position in theadministration of local resources. In pragmatic terms this has been inter-preted as an attempt by FRELIMO to prevent the opposition from creatinglocal power bases around chieftaincies, which are generally believed tobe overwhelmingly pro-RENAMO.91 The issue has, however, a deepersignificance.

According to Lotman and Uspensky one of the sharpest forms of socialstruggle in the sphere of culture is the obligatory demand to forget thoseaspects of historical experience which are not compatible with the centre’s

88 See e.g. Saul, J., “Liberal Democracy vs. Popular Democracy in Southern Africa”,Review of African Political Economy, no. 72 (1997), 219–236.

89 Cf. Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 128.90 According to such critical scholars as John Saul, FRELIMO’s adoption of the liberal-

democratic model under the pressure of Western donors has actually undermined genuinepopular empowerment while giving free reign to powerful neo-colonial forces. Supra fn.88, at 226–228.

91 Supra fn. 52, at 467–468.

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political program.92 In cultural memory based on tradition a chief is therepresentative of an organic local community, a semiotic system based onextended family and lineage, customary norms and a common set of reli-gious beliefs. The concept of family provides a code for its metalanguage:the chief is a symbolic father to his community and first son to foundingancestors, who are the real owners of land and its resources. By extensionhe/she has also become a key intermediary vis-à-vis the state.93 While itis easy to turn the analogy of family on its head and place chiefs in thecolonial context as ‘sons of Caetano’, the rhetoric device does not abolishtheir evident local support and adaptability to socio-political changes. Thehistorical continuity of a normative order, internalised in childhood andreinforced in daily life, provides a strong anchorage against destructiveforgetting by an alien culture.

Even so, the ‘new FRELIMO’ has been reluctant to give up the ideathat the central state is the best guardian of weaker individuals, who aretypically visualised as ignorant and impoverished peasants. During recentlegal reforms this reluctance was manifested in a refusal by state andparty authorities to condone any designation of local institutions whichwould have an independent basis of power. For some members of the statebureaucracy re-institution of traditional chiefs would be appropriate if theywere subordinated to the district administration with merely a consultativefunction. For others they remain backward, corrupt and inefficient – orsimply do not exist in the ‘modern world’. From a semiotic point of viewthe perpetual debate over explicit reference to customary institutions inthe statutes reflects the divergent cultural memories of competing semioticsystems, or different ways to delimit the domain of objects which havesignificance.94

Some of the comments critical of customary authority are wellgrounded, and recognition of institutions of power based on local customor inheritance is clearly difficult to fit together with the premises of modernegalitarian and democratic governance.95 However, while delimitation isa necessary condition for the survival of a semiotic system, it does notfollow that all that is different from the dominant normative structuremust be excluded or destroyed as ‘irrational’ or ‘evil’.96 The state is also

92 Lotman and Uspensky, supra fn. 5, at 216–217.93 See e.g. Bourdillon, M., The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the Contemporary

Shona, with Special Reference to their Religion (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1987), 103–118.94 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 63–64.95 Supra fn. 4, at 53–54.96 Lotman, supra fn. 5, at 131; Cf. supra fn. 9, at 303.

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capable of abusing its citizens,97 and in the present socio-economic situ-ation the central state in Mozambique is unlikely to muster the resourcesneeded to extend its effective presence to peripheral areas. Therefore, aclandestine return to a vertical structure of power is not a solution and aneffective means to decentralise power to local institutions with high innatelegitimacy must be found.

Department of Political Science and International RelationsFIN-33014 University of TampereFinlandE-mail: mariola@mbnet.fi

97 Nunes, J., I. Baptista, A. Sandoval, E. Santos and B. Ames, Estudo sobre corrupçãoem Moçambique. Relatorio final (Maputo: Etica, 2001).

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