Trick or treat: the relationship between destabilisation, aid and government development policies in Mozambique 1975-1990

Abstract

Aid, destabilisation and government development policies are uneasy bedfellows. Efforts to correlate them beem considered an an attempt to mix oil and water. Foreign aid is usually seen as an altruistic flow of resources; destabilisation as a conspiracy, and goverment development strategies as a positive sffort to change the socio- economic snd political reality of a country to the better. The results of my research on Mozambique. Based on the simultaneous use of multiple methods of social science, shows that the conventional wisdom approaches to the relationship between aid, development strategies and destabilisation, which see the first two factors as positive and the third as negative. Are simplifications which reproduce the blame lying schemata of the holders of state power: the combined effects of the three factors in post colonial Mozambique converged to create a vicious spiral of social-breakdown. Challenges fron different social forces who werw nwgwtivwly afected by the government policies, were designated by the holders of state power as destabilisation, considering the assult against the state as an act of banditscolonial or imperialist lackys. Development aid, on the other hand, consisted notonly in the transfer of resources but also of influences, prssures and sanstions. Development strategies and associated policies are characterised by value endogeneity and heterogeneity. The so- called destabilisation had a social in the Mozambican political economy and had an impact on changing it. The group under attack by the goverment policies: capitalists, shop-keepers, rich peasants, tradicitional elites eventually became more powerful, sometimes even taking advantage of the same policies. A new rich class was emplowerwd and supported in changing development strategies and the political system. The class nature of the members of government was also changed.