The “logic” of Renamo civil war violence: Trans-border communities and Renamo incursions in Eastern Zimbabwe, 1980s-1992.

Abstract

This study investigates the dynamics of civil war violence by Renamo forces among trans-border communities in Honde Valley from the early 1980s to 1992 when the Mozambican Civil War ended. In its venture to understand reasons given by ordinary people in Honde Valley for forging relationships with Renamo, this article does not seek to dismiss but to make sense of the violence. The article analyses the targets of violence to determine whether there was a switch from indiscriminate to selective violence or vice versa. Through adding another stratum of analysis to this discussion of wartime relationships, this study discusses violence in the context of Renamo's relations with foreign civilians and Mozambican refugees living in a country whose official international policy was anti-Renamo. It concludes that the relationship between the Honde Valley people and Renamo forces was complicated and sometimes qualified as "being with" Renamo, at times "being with" the Zimbabwe security forces and at yet other times as non-aligned. By examining this dimension of the relationship, this article does not seek to sanitise the acts of banditry, looting and killing by the Renamo units, but to expose currently silenced micro-narratives of the incursions in the Honde Valley

Blurred Lines: Intersections of Ethnography and Rape in South Africa and Mozambique

“…As with other border areas, Renamo initially outlawed cross‐border trade around Pafuri, but as the war progressed, Renamo found itself more dependent on mobilizing private sources of support from border communities and local markets (Mwatwara 2020). As Mwatwara (2020) writes, sometimes Renamo would chase down payment defaulters or request information or goods from local sources and then retaliate if they were let down. As I discovered in Dumela, retaliation often involved sexual violence, decapitations, and torture.…”

“…Although structural aspects of violence and exclusion are very important, a more reflexive concern is how people re‐construct themselves after violence. These are personal stories that show the individual tactics of survival and agency, where women become strategists and navigators of violence instead of passive victims (Mwatwara 2020; Utas 2005). In this sense, although there are fundamental differences between me and my interlocutors, our experiences of rape and violence are modalities of a wider system of patriarchy, where violence by men features as a way of controlling—or expressing a loss of control—over resources and conditions.…”

On Renamo ‘War’, Entrepreneurial Synergies and Everyday Life in the Honde Valley Borderlands, c.1980s–2020

“…Ethnic and cultural relations forged between Renamo fighters and Honde Valley civilians before Zimbabwean independence are important to our explanation of how Mozambican rebels could operate stealthily in zones where the Zimbabwean government applied several counter-insurgency operations. 18 Local narratives reveal that defining who was, and who was becoming, Renamo in the Honde Valley borderland is complex and poses several questions about how nation states concoct citizenship and the identities of populations that they seek to control. It was easy for some Zimbabweans to join the Renamo ranks and for Mozambican Renamo bandits to become part of Honde Valley communities because of the local patterns of life, transnational marriages, kinship connections and friendships, as well as the overlapping geographies of economic and political life.…”

“…19 These connections even shaped how Renamo operations, including looting and violence, occurred. 20 In his study of the Tangwena borderland communities, about 80 kilometres north of the Honde Valley, Donald Moore noted that many people revealed how Renamo followed kinship connections or political networks across the border, sometimes attacking villages to settle old scores through collateral damage. 21 Similar studies in the Kenya-Somali borderlands also demonstrate how shared historical experiences fostered by common ancestry, religion, culture, economic exchanges and transnational networks, among other things, caused substantial fusion and fission of identities during the 1950-60s pan-Somali movement and the 1990s Somali civil war'.…”

People’s War: Military supplies during the Mozambican Civil War, 1976-1992

“…A recent study by Mwatwara shows that RENAMO used game meat and animal products such as elephant tuskers and rhino horn to establish a complex commercial network with civilians in the borderland of Mozambique and Zimbabwe. 83 In the process, those who honoured their trading commitments enjoyed a good relationship with guerrillas while those who defaulted were selectively punished. 84 Mwatwara's study shows the complicated nature of the "logic" of violence perpetrated by RENAMO and puts into question the idea that RENAMO violence was indiscriminate.…”