Suffering for Territory: race, place, and power in Zimbabwe by Donald S. Moore Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press, 2005. Pp. 322. £15.95 (pbk.) (original) (raw)

2007, The Journal of Modern African Studies

  troubled states throughout the developing world, the book makes an important contribution. Mozambique's is an important and understudied experience, and Alden uses it to craft a thoughtful cautionary account of the limits of negotiated peace and economic and political liberalism in Africa. It is in highlighting the extensive international intervention this model requires that the book makes its greatest impact. It is not always clear, however, whether the main problem is that the model is infeasible, has never been properly carried out, or is undesirable even if it could be properly implemented. Nor does the author indicate the elements of a more desirable approach. And while the book does a good job of outlining international involvement in Mozambique's threefold transition over the past decade, the evaluation of the results for domestic politics is at times somewhat superficial. Nor is it informed by any substantive exploration of the mechanisms or dynamics of social and political change in general, and of liberalism in particular. Political, sociological and economic accounts of institution-building, for example, suggest that habituation to new sets of rules is a long-term, non-linear process, in which rules are introduced and imperfectly practised and only gradually internalised. Where then should we look for evidence of change in the short term ? Though the establishment of formal democratic institutions and market-based economies have, unsurprisingly, failed to transform Mozambican politics in this period, the placing of such reforms on the table has served to create political space and has brought to the surface fundamental struggles over both the principles and practice of allocating political and economic resources. Political assassinations, violent demonstrations and electoral boycotts provide striking and disturbing evidence of these struggles. But less visible outcomes can also be found. Mozambique's tough-minded independent media, while resting on a slender base, has had measurable impact on the way in which the business of politics is conducted in Mozambique. The advent of electoral competition has occasioned subtle but important changes in the balance of power within both major parties. There is of course no telling what might be the end result of these changes. But they deserve more thorough consideration than they are given here.