Paper short abstract:

This paper explores FRELIMO’s concepts about urban citizenship in socialist Mozambique. Such concepts animated heated moral arguments among urban citizens about who deserved to live in towns. Ordinary residents were prone to denounce their fellow city dwellers as unworthy socialist citizens

Paper long abstract:

Between 1974 and 1988, the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO, the ruling party of independent Mozambique) launched several campaigns to clean the cities of so-called 'anti-socials' and 'immoral elements of society', seen as enemies and an obstacle to the socialist revolution in Mozambique. Thousands of people were sent to internment camps in remote areas throughout the country during the first ten years of socialist experiment. This process of social engineering was also carried out by urban citizens who denounced, hunted down, and helped to expel their fellow city dwellers. This paper argues that less than its Marxist or socialist appeal, it was the moralist character of FRELIMO's project that compelled ordinary urban citizens to participate in the cleansing campaigns against their fellow compatriots. FRELIMO's project was launched in a fertile terrain where urban residents were already engaged in moral arguments over who was worthy living in a urban setting.Urban citizens did not engage actively in the clean up operations merely to fulfill FRELIMO's socialist goals. In the capital city of Maputo and the second city of Beira, ordinary citizens were able to seize niches of opportunity within the broader debate over moral citizenship to settle personal affairs, to get rid of embarrassing family members or competitors for local social capital, and to secure profitable access to housing and other scarce resources.