Une relecture nécessaire : la genèse du parti-État FRELIMO

The Frelimo state-party : a reassessment of its origins. At its formation in 1962, FRELIMO was no more than an alliance of unstable social fractions and ethnic groups with opposing tendencies. The crisis of 1968 resolved these internal contradictions in favour of the military and «revolutionary intellectuals» thus signalling the defeat of merchants and traditional authority. The guerilla movement received a boost but the peasant/military alliance was maintained more by the exigencies of war than by a social project internalized by the peasantry. The state apparatus then in formation was a generic factor of fragility as its object was the incorporation of rural society in the urban project of forging a Nation.