This well-organized book advances two important objectives. The first is to provide a rubric for measuring post-internal conflict reconciliation and the second is an application of that rubric to Mozambique since the end of its civil war between the Frelimo and Renamo parties that ravaged the country from 1977 to 1992. The first is significant because—as noted by the author, a researcher at the University of Coimbra in Portugal—there is currently a lack of consensus regarding a robust and practical methodology for objective measures of reconciliation. The second is valuable given the paucity of research on Mozambique’s reconciliation process in particular, especially in English.
The book’s methodology relies on interviews with sixty-three people, including former combatants, political party members, civil society leaders, and others. The author also collected data through a questionnaire that was coded by experts regarding the applicability of various indicators to Mozambique. Finally, the author engaged in archival research at the Historical Archive of Mozambique and National Library of Mozambique.
Bueno advances the literature with her operationalization of the term reconciliation. She defines reconciliation as “the condition that results from the redress of balance of a social system through inclusion, truth, and justice” (11). She argues persuasively that analysis of those three characteristics—inclusion, truth, and justice—offers the best way to measure the reconciliation achieved by states recovering from internal conflict. She also breaks down each of those categories into subdimensions to increase their measurability and objectivity.
The book is composed of an introduction, five substantive chapters, and a conclusion. The organization of the book is logical and effective. The first chapter provides a review of the current literature regarding the measurement of reconciliation and revealing the flaws in existing approaches. It then lays out Bueno’s proposed operationalization of the term. The next three chapters each deal with one of the three elements of the concept. Chapter Two deals with inclusion, Chapter Three with truth, and Chapter Four with justice. Chapter Five analyzes the strategy that Mozambique actually used and what role transitional justice mechanisms (TJMs) can play in reconciliation.
According to Bueno, the most important criterion is inclusion (15). Inclusion involves full access to institutions of state power, including political, military, social, and economic. Parties excluded from the political structure will be disempowered and may be incentivized to revert back to violence. If one party to a conflict has greater access to political power than does the other, inclusion has not been achieved and therefore reconciliation will fail. Bueno argues that while inclusion was adequately addressed in the immediate aftermath of the Mozambican civil war and the signing of the General Peace Agreement (GPA) in 1992, the Frelimo Party subsequently instituted policies that excluded Renamo over time (35).
Bueno points to three primary ways in which inclusion failed in Mozambique. These areas were lack of representation of Renamo in the Mozambican military (38), the failure to provide pensions to Renamo veterans because no pension contributions had been deducted from their salaries (41), and substantial irregularities in elections subsequent to the 1994 elections (50). Bueno concludes that because of electoral unfairness “Mozambique could be characterized as a non-inclusive society in terms of the share of political power” (53). These failures of inclusion have, Bueno argues, undermined Mozambican reconciliation.
Truth is also necessary to reconciliation. Reconciliation cannot advance without agreement about what happened and what the parties are reconciling about. It can be accomplished in several ways, including public acceptance of responsibility and apology, collection of testimonies, the creation of a shared understanding through the publication of history books that paint a mutually understood picture of the conflict, the creation of memorials to victims and heroes, or investigations of abuses (17). In Chapter Three, Bueno argues that Mozambique failed in this dimension of reconciliation. Neither side has apologized for atrocities or acknowledged wrongdoing (74) and no truth commission was established (76). While inclusion was present at least at the beginning of the reconciliation process, truth was never seriously pursued (90). Failure to arrive at shared truth leaves major points of dissension unresolved.
Similarly, a lack of justice leaves resentments unresolved that prevent a durable peace (18). Justice is divided into two sub-elements: restoration and retribution (97). Achieving justice, even partial justice, helps victims to accept the past and move forward together. Without justice, past atrocities will remain festering wounds. Justice can be achieved through either “material and symbolic reparations or the punishment of perpetrators” (19). In the case of Mozambique, neither occurred. War crimes trials were rejected and instead blanket amnesties were issued, precluding any possibility of criminal charges for human rights violations committed during the war (102). Bueno concludes that “the development of the retributive and restorative subdimensions was minimal or close to zero” (104).
Bueno’s analysis leads her to the conclusion that the case of Mozambique “has been widely misrepresented as reconciled” (31). Mozambique relied on a two-part strategy for reconciliation: amnesty and traditional cleansing rituals at the local level (31). Bueno argues that the rituals were minimally effective and the amnesties counterproductive. She points to Renamo’s decision to abandon the GPA in October 2013 and the resumption of armed conflict until September 2014 as definitive evidence that reconciliation failed in Mozambique, arguing that it was at best pacified (xxv).
This book serves as an important addition to both the literature on postconflict reconciliation in general and Mozambique’s history of reconciliation efforts in particular. It offers both broad theoretical insights that are widely applicable and specific historical analysis of Mozambique. A minor criticism is that the book’s index lacks comprehensiveness. This book will appeal to anyone interested in either theoretical aspects of postconflict reconciliation or the history of Mozambique and is suitable for academics, practitioners, and interested lay readers.
