VOLUME 12 NO 1 109 PARTY INSTITUTIONALISATION IN MOZAMBIQUE ‘The Party of the state’ vs the Opposition Adriano Nuvunga and Eduardo Sitoe Adriano Nuvunga is a PhD student in the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique e-mail:
[email protected] Eduardo Sitoe is Professor of Politics and Governance in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique e-mail:
[email protected] ABSTRACT The article probes party institutionalisation in Mozambique and argues that only three of the more than 50 registered political parties there are ‘effective’, namely Frelimo, which is highly institutionalised; Renamo, which is collapsing organisationally yet has a high level of social rootedness; and an institutionalising MDM. The article concludes that although the opposition parties are partly to blame for their misfortunes, the nature of Frelimo’s relationship with society bears the main responsibility for the impoverishment of the opposition parties because it makes it difficult for opposition parties to break in and challenge its control over the state. INTRODUCTION There are few published studies on Mozambican political parties and those there are focus on elections. Studies of political parties have covered the following: the Frelimo party ideology (Brito 1988); building opposition (Manning 1998); strengths and weaknesses of multiparty democracy (Nuvunga 2005); the Frelimo-Renamo two-party system (Carbone 2005); the Renamo-UE coalition (Kadima & Matsimbe 2006); The Movimento Democrático de Moçambique (Mozambique Democratic Movement – MDM) as a new force (Chichava 2010a) and the MDM as a new 109 110 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ELECTIONS opposition party (Nuvunga & Adalima 2011).