Ken Wilson is a programme officer with the Ford Foundation in Harare. He has been conducting research in northern Zambezia for a number of years.

In November 1993 one of the most senior United Nations officials in Maputo opened his off the record briefing with the sentence: "Well the peace process goes remarkably well despite the United Nations, Renamo, and Frelimo." This is indeed the case. At the official level the process crawls forward painfully more than a year after the General Peace Accords were signed in Rome in October 1992. Though recent months have seen progress begin at last on the electoral and demobilization processes, conflict, distrust and ineffectiveness remain. It sometimes appears that only the will of ordinary Mozambicans, and the ultimately finite flow of aid dollars into the pockets of the participants, is maintaining the process at all.

At the grassroots level the desire of ordinary Mozambicans for peace has been the main factor propelling the peace process forwards. While the UN, Frelimo and Renamo have manoeuvred for political advantage, struggled with internal bureaucratic and political divisions, and revealed a limited capacity to implement what is agreed upon, ordinary Mozambicans - soldiers, churchmen, petty officials, displaced men and women, local chiefs - individually and collectively have grabbed the initiative and created their own "peace agreements" at the local level. In what follows, we turn our attention to how a "people's peace" was created in the District of Morrumbala, an area of northern Zambezia Province.

The situation at the time of the signing of the accords

Morrumbala was in the grips of a serious famine in 1992.** In Renamo areas there had been three years of inadequate rainfall. Agricultural production was already in serious decline due to the absence of marketing structures to maintain incentives and tool supplies. Difficulties were compounded by increasing taxation of food and labour on the declining population remaining in the Renamo zones. Renamo schools were closed due to the famine: the children had no strength to study. The situation was desperate.

In the camps around the Frelimo garrison of Morrumbala conditions were similarly grim. The crops in the field around the town were a write-off in 1991-2; even drinking water supplies were short. The few times the government sent food aid to this zone of low political priority and great military danger, most of it was stolen en route by businessmen with government and military connections. Furthermore, what food did arrive was often "diverted" by the local administration and soldiers just to keep themselves alive. Frelimo schools were closed because the teachers - virtually unpaid - had gone to the marshes of the Tchire river to search for water lily roots. By late 1992 the people of Morrumbala were living off gathered foods. Large scale famine mortality was imminent.

Thus, the pitiful irony at the national level was repeated locally. Famine facilitated peace. Morrumbala's administrator stated bluntly at the time "political questions have become secondary to the emergency situation."

Preparing for peace

During September 1992 local Renamo units organized meetings through the chiefs, informing people there would be peace on October 1st. This was despite the fact that the senior Renamo generals had at that time no commitment to signing. When Renamo did sign the peace agreement, local "fumo" chiefs in Boroma immediately informed people there was freedom of movement, an end to all taxation of food, and freedom of commerce. In Derre, the Renamo commander told the population to immediately report any misdemeanour by his troops. Indeed, in Zambezia as a whole in the early weeks only in Maqueringa base did a Renamo commander restrict out-migration from his area.

Meanwhile, on 7th August 1992 the government finalized its post- war plan for the district, specifying carefully the demands it would face - e.g. 100,000 returnees from Malawi - and noting the massive resources needed to deal with them in the short and long term. Resources it knew it would not get. These plans focused on a "peasant option": that is they sought to re-establish pre-independence private commerce, post-independence service structures, a network of key roads and bridges, and a cash cropping peasantry under a traditional leadership. The government would seek NGOs to support a rapid return to the land using canoes and boats on the marshes and minimal road transport: none of the grand United Nations plans for transit centres and roundabout convoy transport were considered in order. Peasants must get back to their own land, and "there must be an agreement with traditional socio-political structures for land allocations."

Six days after the signing of the October 1992 peace agreement, the Government organized a meeting in Morrumbala and the Administrator explained the provisions of the peace agreement, telling people they were free to move and to trade with Renamo zones. However, at a similar meeting for the displaced people of Derre, then living in the neighbouring District of Nicoadala, the people shouted down the administrator when he tried to persuade them to wait for government clearance and to accept transit or settlement camps before leaving for their homes in areas controlled by Renamo. This is despite the fact that it is amongst the people of Derre that the government counts its strongest support in Morrumbala: by the mid-1980s most of the Frelimo secretaries in Derre were popular chiefs or their close relatives, some of whom, such as Rondao, played key roles in restraining the Renamo advance at that time.

Making local cease fires

It is widely believed that local commanders of Renamo and Frelimo troops in Zambezia as elsewhere in Mozambique, had in fact arranged secret and private cease fires long before the official signing in Rome. It is perhaps for this reason that ten days after the signing, and before parliamentary ratification, Renamo gathered at an abandoned mission, 10 km outside of the district capital, with their population another 5 km behind, and called for the government administration to come and discuss peace. The significance of the churches at local levels as symbolic foci of reconciliation mirrored their contribution in Rome.

After this initial contact the process was unstoppable. By mid- December 1992 the district administrator had taken the initiative, establishing direct contact with Renamo commanders in 7 of the 10 localities in which they were based. By late January 1993 there was a Renamo official resident in Morrumbala organizing programmes with him.

These first meetings between Renamo and Frelimo were joyous. In neighbouring Milange the rival commanders got drunk together and danced, although some of the Renamo commanders would not dance thinking it was immoral. Of a meeting on 15th December in Morrumbala, Mozambican journalists reported incredulously "the Renamo soldiers greeted us as if we had known them for ages." Photos of Frelimo's Morrumbala district commander embracing the Renamo commander of Boroma were published in the Maputo weekly Tempo.

The people's peace

People were on the move immediately in Morrumbala, just as elsewhere in Mozambique, declaring in quiet triumph the end of the war. Nearly everyone within a few days walk of their home visited it for an inspection. Confidence in the agreement as expressed by going home shook any possibility of the fighting continuing. Neither the government nor Renamo could challenge it.

Local soldiers also desperately wanted peace, and their enthusiasm helped make it possible. A Renamo commander stated to the Mozambique press in mid-December 1992: "I am happy that the war has ended, so I have in my head many projects which I want to do. If I can just get authorization to go to my home (he has a wife and three children in Sofala) I am really anxious to see it. Write there in your newspaper and tell my relatives who are in Manica that I am alive and I am awaiting orders to return home." And commenting on Renamo breaches of the ceasefire: "Here nothing has happened; when our commanders perceived the problems of Alta Zambezia and Nampula, they called our attention to not causing any confusions of that nature because the war had finished this time."

Demobilization and banditry

According to the terms of the General Peace Accords the United Nations was to assemble the combatants, meet their food requirements and disarm them from 15th November 1992. In a less clear fashion the UN was supposed to secure the transportation routes and humanitarian aid. Of course, the UN failed to do this in late 1992, and only began to make substantial progress with even the basic preparations in late 1993. The consequences of this in Morrumbala in the period immediately after the ceasefire were quite serious. Government troops without logistical support resumed their pilfering of aid supplies and taxing on the main roads. Meanwhile, Renamo soldiers were forced to obtain food once more by taxing the starving peasantry. A failure of cantonment and disarmament also facilitated a flourishing trade in weapons, threatening long term banditry.

In the face of these difficulties, the ex- combatentes were not idle. The Frelimo District army commander described to the press how he became aware of freelance bandits composed of deserters from both forces raiding on the Morrumbala road, and how within weeks of the signing of the peace agreement, (I quote) "in co-ordination with the [Renamo] commander of the central base of Chevele, . . . we did an offensive against these deserters and we came out victorious." Fortunately he had not been stopped by the letter of the law. At the same time, in the face of delays in UN de-mining efforts (Zambezia not being prioritized in that programme), local soldiers of both sides did some useful work in demining the roads.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of the peace agreement took all of us learned observers by surprise. We assumed that with an uncommitted leadership and weak international mechanisms and undisciplined armies it would not be implemented. How stupid we were. That very vacuum was what created the space for the "people's peace" to flourish. After all I had myself written of Morrumbala in early 1992: of the "striking energy . . . with which Derre people envision a future peace"; cautioning "the constraints of the peace negotiations and the ability of a ceasefire agreement to end military activity and violence in Zambezia" notwithstanding. However, I had actually doubted "whether some kind of post-war euphoria . . . would be able to transcend emergent social processes [the struggles behind and a consequence to the war]." Although during late 1992 and 1993 I was wrong, it is still too soon to consider the "people's peace" secure. Mozambique is currently the scene of unprecedented uncertainty and as yet unresolved struggle.

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** Ed. Note: As Wilson has explained in some of his other writings, Morrumbala is an area that Renamo has dominated since the early 1980s. Taking advantage of peasant alienation with Frelimo policies, Renamo early on succeeded in establishing a popular base for itself in Morrumbala, and in instituting an administrative regime which was less punitive and exploitative than in many other areas. Nonetheless, by the late 1980s Renamo too had succeeded in alienating much of its war-weary popular base, thus setting the stage for the "people's peace."

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