ABSTRACT
Nordstrom’s article, like that of Turton, asks that readers contemplate the politics of capaitalist states against those who resisted them. It concerns civil conflict in post-Independence Mozambique where a movement called Renamo fought a very ‘dirty war’ against the Marxist-Leninist government of Mozambique in the 1980s. Renamo, however, was controlled to a considerable extent by the armed forces of Apartheid South Africa, and the fighting in Mozambique was but one thearter in a larger war that South Africa waged at the time throughout southern Africa, to destabilize anti-capitalist regimes. There had been heavy U.S. investment in South Africa, so the U.S. government supported its South African ally in this war. In other words, the U.S. used South Africa as its proxy to wage a war in which South Africa, in turn, used Renamo as its proxy, and Renamo fought a ‘dirty war’. What parties in this sad circuit of normal monstrosities were guilty of crimes against humanity?
