Goncalves and Machava

Arquivo morto: notes on institutional memory in postcolonial Mozambique Euclides Gonçalves Kaleidoscopoio – Research in Public Policy and Culture and Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research University of Witwatersrand Benedito Machava Princeton University Abstract In Mozambican bureaucratic practice “arquivo morto”, literally translated as “dead archive” refers to a site where documents that are inactive or have been taken out of circulation are kept before they are eventually destroyed. Starting from the arquivo morto, we explore the life cycle of documents backwards in order to understand the place of institutional memory in Mozambican governance. Based on ethnographic research in district administrations in northern, central and southern Mozambique, we show that the arquivo morto is not the primary locus of institutional memory. Differently than bureaucracies where information primarily kept and retrieved from sources in paper or digital support, Mozambican gives importance to individuals in position of political or bureaucratic authority. As a result, Mozambican governance is based on a shallow institutional memory, allowing for institutions and processes to be contested but also built anew according with the political and economic context of the day. Introduction In the past two decades the archives have become important sites where historians and anthropologist interrogate the state and governance. Attention has been given to the workings of the colonial and apartheid state (Stoler 2002; Hamilton at al 2002; Hull 2008; Feldman 2008) to postcolonial rule (Riles 2000, Tarlo 2001; Hull 2012a; Kafka 2012, Weld 2014, Mathur 2016). In these works, archives are seen as repositories of documents that are more than “simply instruments of bureaucratic organizations, but rather are constitutive of bureaucratic rules, ideologies, knowledge, practices, subjectivities, objects, outcomes, even the organizations themselves” (Hull 2012b: 251). In this paper we take Stoler’s (2002) and Hamilton et al (2002) lead and look at the process of constitution of the archive. Here, arquivo morto as a repositories of documents it simply our starting point as we work backwards to understand management of information in Mozambican bureaucratic practice. Our interest in the arquivo morto has less to do with the past than with the present. The things, documents and people in it are of our interest in as much as they can provide us with insights into governance in contemporary Mozambique. Our focus on management of information has lead us away from traditional medium of support of information that constitute documents. In a bureaucratic context where oral documents are as important as the written ones, we argue, figures of political and bureaucratic authority become repositories of institutional memory. From this, emerges a mode of governance that is based on short institutional memories, allowing for institutions and processes to be contested but also built anew according with the political and economic context of the day. The bulk of data for this paper was collected during field research for our doctoral research project. Additional information was collected in the course field other field research trips conducted from 2015 to 2018 in districts of the Maputo, Gaza, Inhambane, Tete, Niassa and Cabo Delgado the provinces. In our combined experience of field research in Mozambique, accessing documents from local state is often a laborious process even when documents we sought were under legal obligation to be publicized or its information had already been disseminated to the broader public. Examples include local government officials’ messages delivered on commemorative dates, minutes of District Local Council Meetings or lists of beneficiatiaries of the District Development Fund. The difficulty increased whenever we requested to access information of historical significance, often kept at the arquivo morto. Following this introduction, we describe how the management of information was central to the building of the postcolonial state both in opposition to its colonial predecessor and the number of challenges it faced during the periods the government sought to establish a state of socialist orientation. Here we show how from the first years of independence, a distinction between friends and enemies placed administrative secrecy was as a central element in the reforms and bureaucratic practice. Then we turn to a discussion of the arquivo morto as a site where documents are stored for long periods of time but also as sites where people, documents and things are recycled, brought back into bureaucratic circulation or taken to another lives outside the state bureaucracy. The next section describes public functionaries at work and the handling of documents and sharing of information. Here, we highlight the importance of political and bureaucratic figures of authority as repositories of institutional history. Before the conclusion, we discuss advances in the current regulatory framework 1 and the ways law remains distant from dominant practices of management and dissemination of information developed during the first decades that followed independence. State reform and vigilance Following independence in 1975, the Mozambican government sought to radically reform the colonial administration. Given the vision of a socialist project and the fact that most competent public servants had worked or experienced the state during colonialism, the reform was designed as a double edged ritual of purification. On the one hand, there was the need to destroy the inherited colonial state apparatus which still reflected the racism, elitism and exploitation that characterized the colonial project and, in particular, a multitude of bureaucratic procedures that delayed service delivery and policy implementation. On the other hand, the reform aimed at purging the state apparatus of the enemy within. Some public functionaries were seen has having been contaminated by colonialism and the spoils of capitalism. One part of the reform followed the principle of “destroying the colonial state apparatus” in order to build the socialist project. The other part was presented as a fight against the enemy within, epitomized in the figure of the Xiconhoca. Six months within the independence of the Mozambique the ruling party made the following diagnosis: At the level of the state apparatus, the bourgeoisie uses the positions available to them to block the implementation of Frelimo’s political line... real political struggle is intensifying between us and the bourgeoisie at the level of the state apparatus. In the name of the technique they create obstacles to the implementation of revolutionary measures [...] This domination of ideas of the bourgeoisie is felt especially amongst some Mozambicans who, although not having great means of fortune, they have been profoundly culturally and ideologically contaminated by capitalism through the Portuguese colonial bourgeoisie.1 In the enthusiasm of independence and the quest to establish the party throughout the country, colonial symbols and documents were removed and in some cases vandalized. At district administrations, a significant proportion of the documents left by the colonial administration was transferred to the National Archives in Maputo. By February 1976 during the Eight Meeting of the Central Committee and at the First National Seminar of the State Apparatus and Public Service held in October, speeches made references to the enemy within.2 For all the edict work on the reform of the colonial state, five years after independence, the situation had not improved. In fact, plans designed on paper for all the sectors, in particular the economic, health and education sectors presented mixed results in which the losses seemed to outweigh the gains thus, frustrating the promise of a betterment of the living conditions of the masses leading then President Samora Machel to launch at the beginning of 1980 a series of “presidential offensives” set to address concrete problems and to strengthen party control over the state (Marleyn, Wield and Williams 1982). The resulting “self-criticism” exercise characterized the state as a heavy and bureaucratised machine – a machine conceived to oppress the people, never to liberate and support the creative energy as we think our state should be. In other words, our state apparatus was not yet ours, built in line with our conceptions 1 Reunião do Estado Maior General das FPLM de 10 a 13 December 1975 in Tempo 296 2 Prior to that see Xiconhoca 2 and at the measure of our objectives. In second place, that state was profoundly infiltrated by physical and ideological agents of the enemy, which inevitably was reflected in its style and methods of work, in its (lack) of sensibility towards the problems of the people, it’s (in)capacity to implement the orientations from the party.3 The exercise of “self-criticism” produced a number of resolutions that included a declared war on the enemy within,4 and the permanent character of the offensive. As one of the resolutions of the offensive, the ruling and single party took upon itself the responsibility to the lead the state and society and also the task of identifying and neutralising the infiltrated.5 At the level of the state apparatus, the 6th Session of the Popular Assembly in July 1980 emphasised the continuation of the “purification of the state apparatus from the unruly, incompetent, negligent, sloppy, corrupt and saboteurs6.” In this, the people were

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