BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: 'TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY' AND DEMOCRATIC DECENTRALIZATION IN POST-WAR MOZAMBIQUE |
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| Authors: | WEST HARRY G; KLOECK-JENSON SCOTT |
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| Institution: | Harry G West is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. He has conducted research in Mozambique over the past six years
On 23 June 1999, Scott Kloeck-Jenson was killed along with his wife Barbara and their two children, Zoe and Noah, in a car accident in South Africa. Scott's death is a great loss to the community of scholars and policy-makers working in Mozambique. He and his family will be dearly missed by friends both in Mozambique and at home in the United States. Scott was in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Resident Program Manager for the University of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center's Research Project m Mozambique. He had conducted research in Mozambique over the past three years. |
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| Abstract: | The end of civil war in Mozambique has been accompanied by democratizationof political processes, as exemplified by the 1994 multi-partypresidential and parliamentary elections. Under the rubric ofdemocratization, the issue of state decentralization has alsobeen raised. Current political debates focus on what role ‘traditionalauthority’ might play in local governance. Advocates arguethat ‘traditional authority’ constitutes a genuinelyAfrican form of local governance, while detractors suggest thatthese institutions were irrevocably corrupted by their involvementwith the colonial administration. This article challenges notonly the black-and-white framework in which the present-day‘legitimacy’ of ‘traditional authority’has been debated, but also questions the value of the term ‘traditionalauthority’ itself. The article explores the diverse historiesof kin-based political institutions in Mozambique, arguing thatthe meaning and function of ‘traditional authority’has been transformed many times over with changes in the largerpolitical contexts in which local institutions have existed.As a result of historical events, the issue of ‘traditionalauthority’ is, today, intimately bound up with the dividebetween the ruling FRELIMO party and the opposition, RENAMO.Only by approaching the issue of ‘traditional authority’through an understanding of its variegated and contentious historywill policy-makers and Mozambican residents alike be able totranscend existing political divides on issues of local governance. |
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