Paper short abstract:

This paper explores non-official expectations of independence during years following Mozambican independence (1975-1978) through the perspectives of men and women who were considered Youth at the time.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores non-official expectations of independence during years following Mozambican independence (1975-1978) through the perspectives of men and women who were considered Youth at the time. When the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique (Frelimo) took over the state institutions from Portugal in 1975, their ambitious plans to bring about a New Socialist Society targeted among other social groups ‘the Youth,’ as active agents of the moral revolution that was thought to consolidate the values of the party in the hearts and minds of generations to come. Many young people took up this call with great enthusiasm, organising into reading groups and initiating voluntary work in support of independence and the party. For some of them, however, the tables quickly turned. With the foundation of Frelimo’s own Youth Organization, the Organizacao da Juventude Mocambicana, the party began to replace bottom-up independence enthusiasm, with top-down dissemination of its own version of the correct values of independence. Through branches of the OJM down to the level of the neighbourhood, Frelimo sought to transmit the new morality of independence to its young audience, using dance, poetry, song, theatre but also policing and punishment – distilling and forging what would later become the official history of independence.

This paper explores the above history through media sources, as well as oral history interviews conducted with members of the OJM and unaffiliated men and women who considered themselves Youth during the early years after independence.