ABSTRACT
The demise of political vanguardism destabilized the hitherto close association between difference and anti-patriotism. As Jorge Rebelo, then chief of Frelimo propaganda, put it in 1990, “Today we cannot pretend that everyone is with Frelimo.”1 The advent of multiparty politics indicated that legitimate difference, both between the party and the polity and within the polity itself, would gain recognition. It remained to be seen, however, what kinds of differences would be recognized and how they would be cast in official discursive and political practice; which social bases of dissent would be legitimized and by what rationale; and whether Frelimo’s classificatory schema, as described in Chapter 1, could accommodate these changes and how.
