6

POTENT PORTABLES

Organizational Transformation beyond El Salvador

None of us here are politicians nor have the political capacity to rule the country.

—Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, September 27, 1982

[I] have won democracy for the people. That is why we will contest the elections.

—Renamo leader Afonso Dhlakama, November 19, 1992

Arguably, the FMLN case was too good to be true, in every sense of the phrase. It is a perfect case for exploiting subnational variation. Its leaders left a paper trail most researchers could only dream of. The upper echelons of the organization were not only ideologically committed but also more highly educated than even the average university classroom. The FMLN was too good to be true from a moral standpoint as well. To wit, they committed an uncharacteristically low level of violence against noncombatants. They rarely engaged in coercive recruitment. Indeed, they are so “good” that Amelia Hoover Green leveraged the case to build her model of combatant restraint.1 The organization and its postwar success may well be a function of a leadership that enforces restraint, spearheads wartime political engagement, and acts (during war) in such a way that mobilizing votes does not mean turning to the families whose children they stole. In short, was the FMLN’s success more a function of its goodness than it was its organizational structures?

In this chapter I ask, how well does the theory travel beyond the unique borders of El Salvador? This chapter traces attempted rebel-to-party transformations in two cases: National Resistance of Mozambique (Renamo) in Mozambique and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone. Renamo exhibits a successful transformation and transition into party politics; the RUF does not. After briefly discussing case selection, I use comparative process tracing to follow the groups’ organizational trajectories. The case comparisons follow the analytic progression of the FMLN case. I begin with the sociopolitical backdrops to the wars and the process of organizational formation. Next, I trace their respective evolutions with a particular focus on critical organizational junctures and how their structures changed. Finally, I conclude with their divergent attempts to integrate into party politics.

Renamo and the RUF are ideal case comparisons (vis-à-vis each other and the FMLN) for individual, (marco-)structural, and organizational reasons. First, I wanted to move outside of Latin America to test the theory’s portability. I chose two postcolonial cases in sub-Saharan Africa—the region with the most rebel-to-party transitions worldwide.2 The RUF and Renamo exhibited similar recruitment profiles for much of the war (young males with little to no formal education), conducted similarly high levels of indiscriminate violence against local populations (unlike the FMLN), and faced almost identical power-sharing opportunities at the end of their respective conflicts.3

From an organizational standpoint, the two cases allow me to test alternative theories of wartime organizational structures. Politically diverse organizational structures are often attributed to communist influence.4 Though chapter 2 demonstrated that the story is considerably more nuanced, the explanation may still be true at the aggregate level. After all, the FMLN was a communist movement, and it did build sophisticated proto-party structures during war. Renamo and the RUF allow me to get additional traction on testing this explanation. The RUF—like the FMLN—was born of exiled, radicalized students and professors of Sierra Leone’s premier university. Influenced by Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book, Karl Marx, Frantz Fanon, Fidel Castro, and the like, the initial core of the RUF espoused an ideology that was at least communist-adjacent.5 In contrast, Renamo arose in opposition to a communist regime. It advocated for free-market capitalism and religious freedom and was on the other side of the proxy wars that characterized the Cold War era. Thus, if the broad ideological bent is responsible for organizational form, we should expect proto-party structures to take root most comfortably in the RUF case.

I chose the RUF as a comparison case not because it was doomed to failure from the start, but—on the contrary—because the RUF was ostensibly poised for success. The initial organization had an educated and politically active core, a great deal of influence over disaffected men who could be recruited as foot soldiers, and nearly unobstructed access to rural populations with longstanding grievances against the All People’s Congress (APC) government. Furthermore, before the RUF’s first incursion into Sierra Leone, Muammar Gaddafi of Libya explicitly offered to fund the revolutionary movement on the sole condition that the RUF work toward transitioning into a political party. Thus, the RUF represents a good example of failure without falling into a straw-man problem.

Backdrops to Civil War

As with any rebellion, both Renamo’s and the RUF’s emergence and evolution are inseparable from the broader social, political, and economic contexts in which they coalesced. Here, I focus on the critical events and circumstances that directly influenced the rebellions.

The Mozambican Civil War

In the wake of Portuguese decolonization in 1974, the anticolonial rebel movement Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) seized power and created a one-party communist state. Owing much to Soviet sponsorship and influence, Frelimo adopted a series of policies with three main pillars: the nationalization of the economy, the unification of Mozambican identity, and the modernization of society. All social services were nationalized immediately upon independence. Frelimo made it illegal for churches or private citizens to run schools, practice medicine or law, or even hold funerals.6 The government pledged to bring health care to the whole of the country with a particular emphasis on rural areas, which it did with relative success in the early years of its rule.7 The state also nationalized land and agriculture—forcing peasants onto large, state-owned cooperatives to farm cotton and other underproductive cash crops.8 By 1977, Frelimo had fully nationalized industry as well. It adopted a zero-tolerance policy for political dissidents and sent anyone deemed o inimigo interno (the internal enemy) to reeducation camps.9 As happens, however, these camps became hotbeds of resistance, and Renamo would later capitalize on Frelimo’s convenient decision to house its opponents in concentrated areas.

In service of its second and third pillars, the government enacted draconian policies intended to unify Mozambican identity around the Communist Party. Under the guise of modernization, Frelimo went to massive lengths to dismantle traditional social structures—particularly in rural areas.10 In a move that profoundly destabilized rural life, the government stripped tribal leaders of their power, uprooted communities, and forcibly relocated them to “communal villages” run by “dynamizing groups”—grassroots committees that were elected within the party and tasked with local administration.11 Finally, one of the most consequential policies that would later play a key role in the civil war was Frelimo’s codified ban on religion.

One cannot fully understand the emergence and development of Renamo without first understanding the geopolitical context of Mozambique vis-à-vis Rhodesia and South Africa (I use Rhodesia to refer to the country prior to its independence in 1980; thereafter, I use Zimbabwe. This usage allows for an easier distinction between Ian Smith’s colonial regime and Robert Mugabe’s post-independence regime). A long, yet narrow country situated along the southeastern coastline, Mozambique was the sole source of port access for its landlocked neighbors. Rhodesia, in particular, conducted 80 percent of its international trade through Mozambican ports. This economic relationship was stable when both Rhodesia and Mozambique had white colonial regimes at the helm, but devolved quickly when Frelimo took power and was no longer enthusiastic about being the economic hub of an oppressive power. This problem compounded because Mozambique quickly became a safe haven for groups fighting for Zimbabwean freedom. To mitigate its security concerns, Rhodesia began conducting cross-border raids into Mozambique.12 In response, the Frelimo president Samora Michel closed the border, thereby cutting Rhodesia off from its main source of goods.

What were the implications of these policies and the geopolitical context in which they were enacted? The long answer is profound economic and social devastation that reverberated throughout the subcontinent. The short answer is, Renamo. Three factors worked in tandem to create fertile ground for a resistance movement in Mozambique. First, the social and economic policies enacted by the Frelimo government dismantled traditional structures of production and authority and replaced them with overly ambitious and underproductive state institutions aimed at exerting control over all aspects of daily life. These policies then coincided with both a massive economic crisis and one of the worst draughts the country had ever experienced. Together, these circumstances precipitated intense resentment among the population and concurrently exposed the state’s administrative weaknesses, both of which Renamo would later make a career out of exploiting.

The Sierra Leonean Civil War

In the wake of independence, Sierra Leone faced auspicious political opportunities and dire economic challenges. On the one hand, decolonization was peaceful, the new government inherited a variety of institutions that poised the country for success, and Black Africans were well integrated into “the country’s civil service and dominated white collar professions,” even before decolonialization.13 On the other hand, the economic climate left much to be desired. Diamond-producing areas in the east of the country were severely neglected. Infrastructure and public services including health care, education, and transportation were rapidly deteriorating, despite the government’s continued reliance on diamond extraction and sales for the majority of its income.14 People in the capital were benefiting handsomely from the wealth brought in by the mines in the east, while the people doing the labor in those areas saw none of the benefits. These widening economic disparities gave rise to deep-seated government resentment and ultimately tilled the soil for rebellion.

Even in light of the state’s economic problems, the country was theirs to lose. That loss came with Siaka Stevens. Though democratically elected on the APC ticket, Stevens took swift and extreme measures to consolidate power and push the country toward one-party rule. Sierra Leone’s political deterioration occurred on two dimensions: the intentional dismantling of democratic institutions and the gross mismanagement of the economy. Stevens abolished separation of powers, forced judges into retirement, vastly curtailed press freedom, and engaged in massive electoral fraud to ensure the party’s staying power.15 The APC stifled funding to the esteemed Fourah Bay College and sent undercover agents to monitor classrooms and union meetings.16 Students were expelled, faculty were placed on watch lists, and demonstrations were violently repressed.

On the economic side, Stevens and other top APC officials engaged in a “massive looting of state resources,” with minimal overhead cost. They lived lavishly in the capital and flaunted their money while much of the country fell into disrepair.17 Kwesi Aning and Angela McIntyre note that “access to resources became virtually impossible for non-APC members, and membership of the APC became a necessary condition for access to jobs and state resources.”18 Rural areas became increasingly isolated as Stevens allowed public infrastructure outside of Freetown to decay. Anti-APC sentiment ran rampant both in the neglected hinterlands of the country and in the urban centers where highly educated citizens graduated college only to meet an unending bout of unemployment.

The final contextual detail central to the RUF’s rise is the potes—periurban spaces on the outskirts of major cities that were initially home to wayward youngsters and petty criminals.19 Once exclusively the purview of the lumpen youth, undereducated young men “who live by their wits and who have one foot in the underground economy,” the potes became hotbeds of radical political socialization.20 The combination of crackdowns at the university and dismal job prospects sent college graduates into the streets. There, they found disaffected youth who were enthusiastic to hear criticisms of the government and eager to fight.

A Tale of Two Organizations

The table was now set for Renamo and RUF. Exactly how each organization emerged will help forecast its organizational prospects for long-term success.

Renamo: Grassroots Rebellion or Geopolitical Puppet?

Since the Rhodesian government could no longer stage cross-border incursions without risking international condemnation, the director of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) decided that in order to continue its mission in Mozambique, it needed a cover. And thus, Renamo was born. The CIO recruited Mozambican dissidents in service of a two-part project intended to destabilize the Frelimo government: (1) radio broadcasts of anti-Frelimo propaganda, and (2) armed force to conduct sabotage and reconnaissance. While some narratives of Renamo’s origin make the group out to be little more than a tool of Rhodesia, Renamo was not a vapid puppet bending to the will of Ian Smith’s government. The organization—and particularly, Orlando Cristina and other soon-to-be Renamo officials—understood the opportunity they had under Rhodesian sponsorship and exploited it to get a true Mozambican resistance force off the ground.

The CIO and the Rhodesian Broadcasting Company repurposed a military radio tower to make routine anti-Frelimo broadcasts in the hopes of riling opposition in Mozambique.21 The early broadcasts, however, were relatively ineffectual—they were short and had a distinctly pro-colonial and pro-Smith bent. While discontent with Frelimo was rampant, few were especially nostalgic for their colonial past. The exiled Mozambican dissident Orlando Cristina saw these broadcasts as an ideal opportunity to lay the groundwork for the political opposition he had long envisioned, but he also knew he had to play the game, carefully toeing the line between his political aspirations and Rhodesia’s interests.22 It only took a few months for Cristina to take control of the station and pivot toward an explicitly Mozambican agenda. Thus, while the armed resistance was still a work in progress, the newly titled Voz da África Livre galvanized the people.

Rhodesian attempts to build an armed force did not go especially well. Its initial group comprised a large number of former members of the Portuguese military, who were never going to be welcomed into local communities with open arms.23 The Frelimo defector André Matsangaissa came to Cristina and the CIO promising that he could successfully recruit Mozambican dissidents, which he did following a successful raid of one of Frelimo’s reeducation camps. While the CIO went out of its way to keep Voz da África Livre “organizationally distinct” from the armed wing, this distinction did not hold in practice or in the perceptions of Mozambicans at home.24 Once Matsangaissa convinced Cristina that his plan to recruit native Mozambicans was viable, Cristina began to explicitly discuss the movement in his radio broadcasts.

It is at this point that Renamo began coalescing into the organization that would shape its trajectory moving forward. In just over a year, Renamo went from a steady contingent of just under eighty members to an organization of well over a thousand.25 As the CIO began losing its grip on the organization, Matsangaissa began scoping out locations and then building domestic bases among sympathetic populations in the north of the country. They distributed goods stolen from Frelimo’s People’s stores (state-run stores offering subsidized goods to local populations) and hosted large gatherings in which they would discuss the government’s shortcomings.26 Locals viewed Renamo as protecting them from Frelimo’s policies. As one chief put it, “Frelimo never did anything in our areas—mambos could do rain ceremonies, n’angas could work, people could pray. . . . Renamo’s presence was the reason why Frelimo could never establish secretaries or communal villages. We were happy because Renamo protected us from Frelimo.”27

Though still heavily reliant on Rhodesian support, Renamo’s leaders nevertheless managed get an authentic Mozambican resistance movement off the ground. They had established local bases; created a public relations team, which forged relations with both local populations and foreign correspondents; and assembled a dedicated telecommunications wing to maintain central control.28 The telecom wing straddled the military and political-messaging divisions, thereby solidifying the ties between two aspects of the organization that Rhodesia had tried (in vain) to keep separate. Moreover, to leverage the power of local networks, Matsangaissa sought out feitceiros (witch doctors), whose power had been stripped by Frelimo.29 By reinstating and validating the legitimacy of traditional local power structures, Renamo was then able to convert those networks to serve the organization.

The RUF: A Hopeful Emergence

Putting aside limitless access to physical resources, if we were to equip a rebel group with maximal organizational advantages at its inception, the RUF stacks up quite well. From the inside, the group had a great deal of promise; from the outside, it had a great number of opportunities. First, as noted, grievances against the APC pervaded every facet of Sierra Leonean society. Rural populations were exploited for cheap labor with no recompense in the way of development, the unemployment rate in the cities skyrocketed, and civil society groups were violently repressed. Moreover, the weakness of the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) and lack of reach of the government into the hinterlands of the country meant that rebellion had a good chance of taking hold of rural areas.

While the soil for rebellion had long since been tilled, the tipping point of the RUF’s formation was a major government crackdown at Fourah Bay College in 1984. Violent repression of student demonstrations against the regime resulted in a three-month lockdown of the university and the permanent expulsion of forty-one students and three faculty members, who became the nucleus of the nascent RUF.30 From an organizational standpoint, the integration of disaffected student activists into the lumpen youth culture represents an ideal foundation for a revolutionary political movement. The educated core of the movement was politically savvy, had well-articulated grievances, and had established relations with a group willing to take on a combat role. They sought a return to democratic rule and the implementation of fair and regulated mining practices to aid in Sierra Leone’s development, which they argued would best be achieved by a prolonged revolutionary struggle. The lumpen youth—who were no strangers to organized violence—formed an ideal recruiting ground for the militant sect of the rebellion.31

Finally, to make matters even more auspicious, the expelled students and other radicals in Sierra Leone were recruited by Gaddafi for guerrilla and ideological training in Benghazi, Libya.32 Gaddafi set out to fund groups that would stage “antiimperial rebellions” in accordance with his Green Book ideology. Crucially, Libya was not merely a wartime patron; Gaddafi’s funding offer was contingent on the RUF converting itself into a political party.33

Taking Stock

Both organizations had fairly promising starts. They coalesced around a politically savvy core with clear visions for their countries’ futures, they had patrons willing to train and sponsor the movements’ growth, and they both faced local populations that harbored intense antigovernment sentiment. Renamo had more defined—and more diverse—organizational structures from the start, but fewer opportunities to fill them with skilled personnel; the RUF was a more inchoate organization, yet had a more educated pool from which to recruit.

However, early into their respective starts, both Renamo and the RUF experienced major organizational setbacks that disrupted their auspicious beginnings. For Renamo, 1979 was a comedy of errors. In the first place, the organization was growing faster than its disciplinary institutions could keep up. Though Matsangaissa envisioned an organization that was socially and politically embedded among local populations, opportunistic recruits began engaging in wanton and indiscriminate violence, undermining the organization’s objectives.34 But the organization’s problems were not just at the bottom. Matsangaissa was soon assassinated, sparking a leadership crisis within the organization, which the CIO tried to exploit to keep Renamo firmly under Rhodesian control.35 Finally, just as the new leader—Afonso Dhlakama—was trying to consolidate his tenuous power over the organization, Britain signed the Lancaster House Agreement, ceding control and granting independence to Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe). Consequently, Renamo lost its sponsor overnight.

The RUF faltered even earlier. It lost its political footing as it consolidated around Foday Sankoh. The highly educated activists, who formed the initial nucleus, became disenchanted with the organization’s direction as Sankoh pursued a more tight-knit relationship with Charles Taylor, the head of the NPFL in neighboring Liberia. They felt the RUF was liable to becoming a guise for wanton banditry, rather than the revolutionary political movement they intended. Prompted by these concerns, the majority of this early contingent defected from the RUF, choosing instead to continue their educations in Ghana.36 Thus, to the extent that the nascent organization comprised politically active university students on the one hand, and galvanized lumpen youth on the other, the loss of the former made the organization susceptible to being overrun by the tendencies of the latter. In organizational terms, this early fracture had a homogenizing effect on the RUF from which it never recovered.

The question for both Renamo and the RUF was, what would their leaders do in the face of these shocks? While their demise was not necessarily imminent in either case, Renamo faced considerably more obstacles. It had a new leader, who, by all accounts, was “bookish” and far less charismatic than his predecessor. Their political-messaging wing was funded by a government that no longer existed, stationed in a country where they were no longer welcome, and they operated out of a radio tower that belonged to the now-defunct CIO. Thus, while a grassroots fight in Mozambique still seemed plausible, keeping the Renamo political-messaging division intact seemed almost impossible. In practice, this challenge could well have set Renamo on the same path as the RUF: becoming an organization whose educated, political core had been abscised.

Any way we turn it, the RUF had a clearer path forward. For one, although the early educated core was skeptical, Sankoh was not necessarily a harbinger of organizational deficiency. He grew up associated with lumpen culture; he joined the SLA, attaining the rank of corporal and specializing in radio and communications; and he later became a student activist.37 In short, his experience had the potential to bridge social and logistical resources critical to the type of diversification that could have served the RUF throughout and beyond the war. Furthermore, the RUF had two external patrons willing to fund the rebellion, and it emerged among an aggrieved population ready to support and participate in an anti-APC movement.

Organizational Evolution: Resilience within Rebellion

Conveniently—at least from a narrative perspective—both conflicts divide naturally into three phases. For Renamo, those phases corresponded to its sponsors: its inception under Rhodesia, its transfer to South Africa, and finally, its break from regional sponsorship, resulting in its autonomous period. For the RUF, the phases are more idiosyncratic. The initial phase captures the first few years of the war, in which the RUF was making incursions from Liberia and quite effortlessly capturing territory along the east of the country. The second phase of the war was set off by augmented counterinsurgency efforts on the part of the SLA, which forced the RUF to reorganize and shift its tactics as it went on the defensive. Finally, the third phase of the war began in 1997, when the RUF and the SLA together staged a coup and took over the country until the war ended. For both groups, the onset of each phase represents a critical organizational juncture, in which leaders execute changes that shape the groups’ trajectories moving forward. Each juncture was characterized by a range of possibilities with varying implications for the groups’ development and rebel-to-party prospects. This section explores the most consequential decisions and their organizational consequences.

Renamo’s Wartime Evolution

Broadly, Renamo’s wartime evolution is characterized by impressive feats of organizational resilience in the face of an extreme dearth of resources. I trace the group’s survival, adaptation, and evolution as it navigates new leadership, changing sponsorship, and a massive disparity between the leader’s vision and his capacity to implement it. This case illustrates how a lack of financial, personnel, and material resources constrain the implementation of leaders’ organizational ideology of rebellion—and their corresponding attempts to effect change at the margins.

RESILIENCE AND PROTO-PARTY DEVELOPMENT UNDER SOUTH AFRICAN SPONSORSHIP

As far as organizational resilience is concerned, Renamo made an impressive showing in 1980. As Zimbabwean independence became imminent—and, with it, the expiration on Renamo’s welcome—leaders ramped up talks with South Africa in the hopes of negotiating a new sponsor and a safe location for Voz da África Livre.38 The negotiations were swift and the transfers began immediately.39 The deal with South Africa was a relief, but not a guarantee of organizational survival. All at once, Renamo was managing turnover in leadership, a change in sponsorship, and a major military setback after losing a military offensive at a newly established domestic base (Gorongosa) in the north of Mozambique. Thus, for Renamo, 1980 was a critical juncture if ever there were one. In service of both survival and the visions of the new leadership, Renamo undertook major organizational changes in this period, which would shape its future trajectory in important ways.

While organizational changes at the top can be particularly difficult, it was helpful that Dhlakama and his South African sponsors had a more aligned vision of Renamo’s future than did Matsangaissa and the CIO. Indeed, while the CIO at best tolerated Renamo’s political development, Renamo’s South African sponsors prioritized it. From the jump, Dhlakama was determined to take Renamo in a more explicitly political direction. The corresponding proto-party development occurred along three dimensions. The first was the expansion and formal integration of the radio station (Voz da África Livre) into the organization. Beyond quickly relocating the radio station to South Africa, the radio staff was instructed to begin writing anticommunist literature, pamphlets, and posters to help spread Renamo’s message more broadly.40 Zooming out, the expansion of the size and scope of the Voz team is a prime example of organizational repurposing at the unit level.

The second dimension of Renamo’s proto-party development in this period came in the push to develop a more sophisticated and cohesive political ideology. After all, if it wanted to expand its programming and literature, it needed substance with which to fill it. Here, we once again observe the convenient overlap in the organizational ideology of the leader and the preferences of the sponsor. Dhlakama believed that the only way to win the war was through meaningful political engagement with the people; the South African government wanted to shape Renamo into a viable political threat to Frelimo in the hopes of consolidating its own regional power.41 Thus, in 1981, Renamo released its first Program and Manifest. This document represents the first consolidation of Renamo’s political agenda. The manifesto calls for Mozambique to institute a multiparty democracy and an open-market economy, which by necessity also implies a cessation of Frelimo’s communal villages and collective agriculture programs.

Finally, Renamo (and its sponsor) worked to build up a domestic and international contingent of political representatives. Dhlakama was trained in diplomatic tactics, and by late 1980, he was traveling around Europe to drum up support for the movement.42 His diplomatic missions were quite successful, but constructing a domestic political-messaging front was considerably more difficult. Mozambique’s dismal literacy rate (again, 92 percent of the country was functionally illiterate in this period) created both top-down and bottom-up problems. On one side of the coin, it was nearly impossible to find people who were capable of working as political commissars.43 On the other side of the coin, Renamo faced a population that did not have the education to read—let alone understand—its message.

Though Dhlakama’s early attempts to create a wing of political commissars failed, Renamo used religious networks and spiritual narratives to forge links with local communities and indirectly advance a political agenda. I argue that religious rhetoric was strategically used in place of political mobilization, but that its effects were the same: fostering an identity separate from that of Frelimo, mobilization on common grounds, and internal cohesion. For example, one of the most well-propagated myths was that Dhlakama and anyone else who participated in religious ceremonies would be impervious to “communist bullets.” Here, we see an explicit fusion of religious and political concepts. Furthermore, by reinstating the power of tribal leaders—the authority structures that Frelimo tore down—Dhlakama evoked a clear image of an alternative and preferable organization of society under Renamo.

The sheer act of surviving both the leadership turnover and the South African hand-off constitutes a remarkable display of organizational resilience on the part of Renamo. And by all accounts, Renamo came back stronger.44 Its capacity to weather the leadership turnover and simultaneous move to South African command contributed to what Debra Minkoff calls a “repertoire of flexibility.”45 In short, the more shocks an organization successfully endures, the better it becomes at adaptation and finding novel solutions to both new and old problems.

Cutting the Strings: Renamo’s Transition to Autonomy

Renamo’s wartime resilience was about to be put to the test a third time as the respective presidents of Mozambique and South Africa came to the negotiating table and signed the Nkomati Accord—an agreement to stop supporting violent coups. At the outset, the Nkomati Accord and consequent reduction in South African support was a huge blow to the organization. Renamo was heavily reliant on its patron for ammunition, radio supplies, food, and medical equipment. But, once again, Renamo’s shocks seemed to come in twos: in addition to its loss of a sponsor and a foreign safe haven, Cristina (the head of the political-messaging division) had been recently assassinated. Renamo was essentially thrust into adulthood against its will, and these shocks had two important implications for the organization. First, with Cristina dead and no ability to reinstate the radio station inside Mozambique, Dhlakama made a major push to create a domestic political presence. Second—and often working against Dhlakama’s political goal—Renamo now faced a resource crisis, and as a result, its relationships with local populations varied wildly from relative stability in some areas to unimaginably brutal and exploitative in others.

BUILDING DOMESTIC PROTO-PARTY STRUCTURES

According to top Renamo officials, the break from South Africa catalyzed Renamo to augment and consolidate the political core of the organization. Beginning in 1984, Renamo fundamentally shifted its recruitment tactics in service of this goal. Dhlakama (despite his previous failure in 1980) began a recruitment initiative aimed at creating divisions of “political-military commissars”—people tasked with communicating the political goals of the organization to the foot soldiers and to the local people inside Mozambique.46

As is common, the political-military commissars were combat-ready, but their role within the organization was purely about communication. Internally, they provided political education to recruits—explaining why they were fighting and why the organization should accept future negotiations with Frelimo.47 The salience of this assignment cannot be understated. First, the aim of this unit represents the first real attempt to galvanize Renamo soldiers around a political message—as opposed to a religious one. Second, this message represents a clear push to soften members’ intransigence toward the Frelimo government. To put it in perspective, by 1984, the Renamo leadership was already planting the seeds of working toward a negotiated solution—a full eight years before any such agreement would come to fruition.48 By 1986, the political-military commissars were being deployed to engage civilian populations as well, which in turn helped the organization create “more credible liberated zones.”49 Renamo sought to install basic administrative structures and engage in political dialogue with the people under their control.

Renamo’s shift toward political recruitment in this era was not just about adding more skills to the bottom of the organization. Instead, it contributed to a critical restructuring, the effects of which carried Renamo forward into its political negotiations with Frelimo and eventual transformation into a party. Every addition to Renamo’s political structure from the bottom up requires a corresponding addition from the top down. For example creation of urban support networks (nucleos) also demanded a new set of roles and relations (in the form of an administrative and political-messaging staff) to be instituted at the top to manage those networks. This process is organizational diversification in practice. The top-down changes to correspond with its political recruitment were not limited to managing urban nucleos. Renamo’s foreign minister, Evo Fernandez, described the structure of their National Council as follows:

Renamo’s political structure is like this. First, again, there is the President . . . then the Secretary-General . . . then the National Council, which is made up of chiefs, military people, civilians, and so on. Then we have external and internal departments. The external departments include foreign relations, finances, information and studies . . . The internal departments include education, health, economy, and administration. Each department has a head who reports to the President.50

This account suggests a much greater level of organizational diversification than many conventional portrayals of Renamo include. While there is clear reason for Fernandez to exaggerate the breadth of Renamo’s political sophistication, similar descriptions of the structure are corroborated by a variety of sources. See, for example, the organizational chart depicting civilian administrative structures compiled by Carrie Manning in collaboration with Renamo officials, which depicts fairly extensive proto-party structures.51

Crucially, while this phase of the war is characterized by a significant growth in the group’s local administration and domestic political-messaging apparatus, locals’ experiences of Renamo on the ground often departed violently from Dhlakama’s vision. Mozambique’s extreme poverty, famine, and unskilled population made it impossible to achieve regional structural consistency. As a result, some areas—where personnel and resources permitted—were characterized by relative stability in which Renamo bolstered social services, built schools, and created administrative structures by repurposing legacy institutions from the Catholic Church.52 In other areas, however—particularly in the south of the country—Renamo’s tactics became increasingly brutal.

The autonomous period was defining for Renamo along a number of dimensions. First, by weaning itself off of foreign support, Renamo was forced to become the truly Mozambican nationalist movement it painted itself as from the start. The organization once again displayed marked resilience to its changing conditions and managed to thrive after relocating entirely to Mozambique. Second, and relatedly, the political-messaging division now comprised networks of domestic opposition to Frelimo—as opposed to the more privileged expatriates, who previously staffed the radio station. The new administrative and messaging structures assembled in this period ultimately formed the core of the party organization, though there was still considerably more to be done.53

The RUF’s Wartime Evolution

From a rebel-to-party perspective, the organizational evolution of the RUF is a tragedy of errors. Indeed, this case is a prime example of how early decisions can have deleterious and lasting organizational repercussions. Moreover, this cycle repeats itself throughout the war. At each major inflection point in the group’s wartime life cycle, decisions from the top served only to isolate the organization and drive it further from its ideological roots. In short, while rebels do think about organizations as much as I expected, not all leaders are organizational savants.

PHASE 1: 1991–1993

The Sierra Leonean civil war began when RUF troops stationed across the border in Liberia began making incursions into the east of the country. Due to the government’s severe neglect of both its armed forces and the eastern districts (those farthest from the capital), early incursions were swift and successful.54 From an organizational standpoint, the first phase of the war was marked by countless invaluable opportunities to create an organization poised for electoral success and a population poised for political mobilization. The most fundamental opportunity was the astonishing lack of opposition the group faced: RUF forces moved freely throughout the east of the country encountering little to no resistance from the armed forces. Additionally, citizens in these areas harbored particularly acrimonious sentiments toward the government due to its unmitigated neglect of the region. Finally, while the initial core of the movement had long since broken away, numerous radical intellectuals in the east of the country willingly joined the RUF in the hopes of mounting a political revolution in Sierra Leone.55 For example, Ibrahim Deen Jalloh—a political dissident and teacher at Bunumbu College—joined the movement along with his wife, who spearheaded the RUF’s women’s wing.56 Former RUF members recount that he forged crucial links between the movement and other Bunumbu intellectuals and that together they helped shape the RUF’s political message.57

The confluence of local support, the potential to reinvigorate the intellectual core, and the lack of pushback from government forces paved a smooth road for a relatively cohesive, diversified, and strongly embedded organization.58 And the RUF went into the war with sanguine hopes of rallying enthusiastic support for its cause. The question was whether the leadership would exploit or spurn these opportunities. Two organizational issues stood in the way of building the organization envisaged at the RUF’s outset: the first was the extent of its fragmentation, the second was Foday Sankoh.

In the first place, the RUF was decentralized and severely fragmented (characteristics that persisted throughout the war). This fragmentation existed on many dimensions: different area commanders had different approaches to waging conflict and engaging populations, leaders disagreed on the direction of the organization, and more generally, the RUF lacked institutions for communicating and enforcing codes of conduct. The consequence of this fragmentation was wide variation in the RUF’s structures and its approaches toward interfacing with local populations.59 In some areas, the RUF forged amicable ties, distributed supplies to communities, and implemented shadow governing institutions.60 A chief from Kailahun district paints an almost unrecognizable picture of the RUF: “The RUF had this social agenda which made sense to the people. . . . [They] did not come with the ‘face of war’ but with promises.”61 Ultimately, however, the RUF’s operations in Kailahun are more exemplary of the organization’s inconsistencies than its holistic trajectory.

In many other areas, however, the RUF relied more on engaging and recruiting from lumpen populations in hinterland potes than on efforts to forge linkages with local communities. This tack left locals feeling “at best ambiguous” toward the organization, despite harboring “violent opposition to the regime.”62 Focusing its early efforts on lumpen recruitment had lasting organizational consequences. Rather than taking advantage of a willing population that agreed with the RUF’s political message, it instead amassed a large group of undisciplined recruits, who exploited their affiliation with the RUF to extort and loot at will without regard to the organization’s code of conduct.63

Disjunctures in the organization were evident at the top as well, which precipitated the second problem. Following a bout of internecine fighting among the leadership, Sankoh’s priorities shifted toward consolidating his power over the RUF.64 Sankoh’s organizational decisions were guided by his fear of losing his place at the top. He perceived the Bunumbu College intellectuals as a direct threat to the loyalty that members had to him. According to former RUF fighters, Sankoh’s distrust of the intellectual elite governed both recruitment and promotion choices within the organization:“Most commanders came from poor backgrounds and the movement upgraded them. Foday Sankoh promoted the semi-literate because these were more loyal to him and were less likely to take over the movement. He did not like the educated ones.”65

Thus, Sankoh’s attempt to marginalize rather than embrace the RUF’s new political-messaging division meant that the ranks of the organization were swelling with the individuals who were least likely to have the skills needed to advance the RUF’s political agenda.

In addition to quashing structures that could serve the organization’s electoral future, Sankoh cracked down on anything he deemed a rival opinion. He executed popular commanders for challenging his decisions and effectively eliminated any institution (formal or informal) that would allow for bottom-up feedback to reach his ears.66 As one former member recounts:

The leadership of the RUF then changed to a five-man group and this changed our motto from “collective ideas and responsibility” to “five-man ideas and responsibility.” We, the general body, had no power to talk about changes affecting the success of the movement, which all of us, together with our late leader, had struggled for years to maintain. Anyone apart from the five-man team was considered an outsider. Now, most of [the outsiders] have either died or resigned from the party.67

Thinking back to the FMLN, Sankoh’s absolute repudiation of conflicting advice represents a stark contrast to the Salvadorans’ embrace of autocrítico. In the former case, the rebels actively sought critical feedback and interpretations of their progress to ensure they could learn from past errors. Here, loyalty was prized over aptitude—and the organization betrayed this deficiency at every turn.

PHASE 2: SHIFT TO A GUERRILLA MOVEMENT

The first major shock to the RUF came in the aftermath of a military coup in 1992. APC leaders were deposed and the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) assumed power. The new government proposed a ceasefire and negotiated settlement to the rebels, which included full amnesty for RUF fighters. The RUF strategically signed the ceasefire—with the intention that it would use the downtime to rebuild some of its military capacity. Unbeknownst to the RUF leadership, however, the NPRC government was doing the same. The government took extreme measures between 1992 and 1993 to augment and train the national army. As such, when the RUF rejected the full settlement, believing that it could now handle a conventional military struggle against the SLA, it was caught off guard.68 By the end of 1993, “eye witnesses describe a bedraggled RUF leadership contingent quitting Kailahun town . . . heading in the direction of the border forest reserves.”69

Lacking the military and organizational strength to face off directly with the SLA, the RUF undertook its first major strategic overhaul in 1993, kicking off the second phase of the war.70 This phase of the RUF’s organizational development is marked by three key decisions that pushed the organization further from its proto-party potential: (1) a retreat to hidden bases in the jungle, (2) the group’s official foray into illicit mining, and (3) its handling of the second round of negotiations.

The RUF leadership abandoned conventional military tactics in favor of retreating to the bush and adopting a more guerrilla-style strategy.71 The external challenges the rebels faced from the state move in lockstep with what we observed in the FMLN case: the groups waged conventional wars for a few years before augmented counterinsurgency efforts forced the respective insurgencies to embrace guerrilla warfare. Once again, however, these external shocks were filtered through different organizational lenses. Even the same technology of war can look very different across cases. To wit, most RUF units abandoned towns they occupied to “adapt to life in a series of secure forest hide-aways,” venturing out only to pillage for supplies.72 However, a shift to guerrilla warfare does not necessitate a shift to isolationism. Thinking back to the FMLN, when leader Cayetano Carpio was asked whether the organization had the capacity to wage guerrilla war on flat terrain, Carpio responded, “The people are our mountains.”73

While surviving this tactical transition and rebuilding its armed forces contributed broadly to the RUF’s resilience, the way the organization executed this shift had negative consequences for its rebel-to-party prospects. To accommodate its isolation, leaders shifted from directly administering civilian enclaves to appointing “collaborators” (often young boys with “lumpen sympathies”) to keep order and collect food and clothing for the RUF camps.74 Though this approach was called the “ideology system,” in practice it was little more than an institutionalized looting arrangement. Additionally, the RUF attenuated the scope of responsibilities for the ideological wing comprising the network of Bunumbu College intellectuals. Initially, this branch was assembled to disseminate the RUF’s ideology and work in community outreach. After the retreat, it was limited to internal ideological training—which mostly amounted to justifying new members’ forced conscription.75 Ideological training was sporadic, at best, and the content of that ideology almost never made it beyond the boundaries of the organization.76

The second major organizational shift in this phase was Sankoh’s decision to formally pursue diamond mining.77 This pursuit had three organizational implications. First, the move into the mining sector piqued the generosity of Charles Taylor, who suddenly found the resources to “augment his support for the organization . . . and bolster these operations.”78 As a result, the RUF found itself even more beholden to Liberian interests.79 Moreover, the RUF’s involvement in mining only amplified its incentives to keep civilian populations at bay, thereby contributing to the organization’s isolation.

Finally, this move altered the RUF’s funding structure. After all, diamonds are of little use to rebels without a relatively efficient mechanism for extraction and sales. As such, the organization evolved to prioritize the structures associated with this goal. The roles and relations created to facilitate diamond sales became defining features of the RUF. At the lower levels of the organization, captives and children were put to work as miners. At the midand upper levels, the RUF forged links to buyers in Liberia and elsewhere.80 Crucially, this restructuring represents a diversification move, just not a useful one where party transformation is concerned. Zooming out, this organizational change highlights why concepts like diversification are only useful alongside descriptors that specify the content of the new structures.

The third major organizational upset came in a surprising form: a negotiated settlement with a clause permitting the RUF to transition into legal politics. Immediately, the agreement exacerbated an evergreen chasm in the organization between the sect committed to pursuing a peaceful, political solution, and another sect in favor of continued fighting.81 The former comprised what few educated elites remained in the RUF, while the latter comprised mainly battalion commanders and lumpen recruits for whom fighting was a way of life with or without the RUF title. When it came to implementing the agreement, Sankoh acted as an obstructionist at every turn, which led directly to another flight of educated members in the upper echelons of the organization.82

However, this critical organizational juncture did not end with Sankoh’s domestic intransigence. On March 6, 1997, Foday Sankoh was arrested in Lagos, Nigeria, on suspicion of carrying out an illegal arms deal. After discovering his identity, Nigerian authorities detained and jailed Sankoh for two years. In response, the four RUF members (including Deen Jalloh—one of the Bunumbu intellectuals recruited early in the war) on the Commission for the Consolidation of Peace staged a palace coup in an attempt to take over the organization and facilitate the path to peace. Yet, loyalty to Sankoh ran deeper than the four had realized. To combat what they saw as a hostile, government-sanctioned takeover of the RUF, Sankoh loyalists set up an elaborate ruse. They constructed what appeared to be a welcome party for the new RUF leaders—complete with music, dancers, and food. Yet, as the celebration was about to begin, a commander gave the signal, the dancers fled, and armed men leapt from the bush. The four men were kidnapped and detained by RUF commanders, who opted instead to nominate Sam Bockarie—a former diamond miner, professional dancer, and hairdresser—as the interim leader in Sankoh’s absence.83 Thus, in the wake of Sankoh’s arrest, hopeful ideologues fighting for a peaceful political resolution to the war were replaced by “a group of embittered fatalists hell-bent on destroying those who had betrayed their leader.”84

Negotiated settlements bookended the second phase of the civil war. In both cases, the RUF was offered amnesty. In the second agreement, it was offered the opportunity to transition into legal politics. In the face of these opportunities, Sankoh pushed the organization toward an evermore homogeneous structure—severing ties with the most educated and politically savvy members at every turn. These splits not only jeopardized organizational cohesion broadly—which diminished adaptive capacity—but also evinced conflict between the majority of the RUF and those few cadres most needed for successful political transformation. Finally, the RUF’s control over mining areas incentivized recruits motivated to share in the spoils of war, rather than to contribute to the path to peace. Crucially, what we observe here is that when organizations are more structurally homogeneous, expectations from the literature hold.

PHASE 3: THE STRANGE(ST) BEDFELLOWS

Owing to an unpopular collaboration between the government and a grassroots civil defense force (the kamajors) following the 1996 elections, two groups inside Sierra Leone were left disenfranchised: the RUF and the SLA. The SLA was both resentful of the new president sidestepping the army in favor of the kamajors and notoriously corrupt—its members earning the nickname sobels (a portmanteau of “soldier” and “rebel”). In May of 1997, a group of junior SLA officers together with the RUF staged a coup ousting the new president and his party from Freetown.

Once again, the RUF faced an opportunity to make a play for legitimacy. With free rein over the capital, no military opposition, and nearly unbridled access to state resources, the RUF was ideally situated to make good on the egalitarian promises and democratic values on which the organization was supposedly built. Instead—and predictably—the RUF seized the opportunity to make major incursions into the mining areas in the east.85 Ex-combatants recall getting their hands on luxuries that were unavailable in the bush, and the desire for more led to infighting fueled by greed.86 As one former commander recounts, “From ’97, when we joined with the AFRC [Armed Forces Revolutionary Concil], the infighting in the RUF started. Because then we saw what officers were entitled to, so everybody wanted to be a commander. And they did not take orders anymore.”87 After a year, the Economic Community of West African States removed the junta government and reinstated President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Shortly thereafter, Sankoh was extradited from Nigeria, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death. Despite its extrication from the capital, the RUF remained militarily strong.

What little political ideology was left in the organization was eradicated in this period. Where leaders once relied on internal ideological training and behavioral monitoring wings to keep troops in line, they now relied on drugs and patrimonial exchange relations.88 Atrocities against civilians worsened during this era as the RUF fought tooth and nail to prove the government’s ineffectiveness. Crucially, this analysis is not just a retrospective characterization of the RUF. Combatants with long-standing affiliations actually referred to post-1998 recruits by a different name to highlight the changing composition of the organization.89 As one commander noted, “The ones who joined the RUF later on do not have the RUF ideology. We call them ‘Junta II’ because they joined after the junta period. These RUF combatants were not disciplined and were causing us a real headache. We feel that they betrayed and sabotaged the movement.”90

TAKING STOCK OF THE ORGANIZATION

While the RUF was never far from roving banditry, the chain of events that ensued following the second failed settlement unraveled what little political clout the organization had left. According to Krijin Peters, the time that the RUF spent in the capital alongside the AFRC “not only emptied the minds of the ideological commitment generated in the bush, but also undermined the movement’s organizational coherence.”91 This phase severely calls into question whether resource mobilization is sufficient for rebel successor party formation. The logic of these explanations is straightforward: with greater access to resources, the organization should be less prone to infighting and competition, since scarcity is mitigated. Indeed—particularly during the interregnum period—the RUF had access to state resources, the most consistent control of Sierra Leone’s mines since the start of the war, and nearly free run of the capital. Yet, the RUF’s sudden resource wealth served to divide rather than empower the organization. Again, this analysis does not mean to discredit the importance of resources entirely. Rather, it illustrates that resources alone are not only insufficient, but depending on the circumstances, can actually be inimical to the organization’s functioning.

Rebel-to-Party Transformation(s)

As their respective conflicts were winding down, Renamo and the RUF faced nearly identical legal opportunities to transition into electoral politics. Both negotiated settlements granted amnesty to members. Both included explicit clauses allowing for party formation conditional on disarmament and demobilization. Both set a future date for competitive elections. The question is whether and to what extent successful party formation was possible given the organizational resources at their disposal. I demonstrate here that both organizations committed to transitioning into electoral politics, but only Renamo made a real attempt at transformation.

Renamo

Although Dhlakama had been pushing Renamo in a more explicitly politically engaged direction since the early 1980s, the group’s First Party Congress in 1989 marked the true beginning of its transformation process. The goal was to discuss the future direction of the organization, and its content tracks directly with my expectations about the transformation process. Specifically, the First Congress served as an overt instance of the sort of organizational assessment I predicted in chapter 5. With an eye toward transformation, my theoretical framework predicts that leaders must conduct an organizational audit: taking note of what they have as well as what they need and creating a plan to implement those changes. Manning’s analysis of the meeting strongly corroborates this expectation as she argues that “the real significance of the First Congress was that it consolidated the fundamental changes that had been in the works since the mid-1980s and were aimed at moving Renamo closer to something resembling a coherent opposition movement.”92 The leadership made explicit reference to two core needs: to bolster political engagement and administration of Renamo-controlled areas and to augment existing structures that managed Renamo’s “political wing” in order to manage the transformation and take on postwar political roles.

Following the organizational assessment of the First Congress, Renamo embarked on its second major political recruitment effort. However, finding personnel who were even remotely qualified—to say nothing of willing—to take on high-ranking, party-relevant positions within Renamo was no easy task. Renamo’s brutality was not lost on individuals in even the more well-off areas. Moreover, finding anyone with over a second-grade education in the country was difficult in its own right. Nonetheless, bribing students with false promises of education and scholarship abroad after the end of the war, Renamo recruited heavily from schools and universities. Dhlakama sought to surround himself and the National Council with “political people . . . [who could] give political education classes” to all the heads of Renamo’s departments.93 Dhlakama’s objective—per his statements in the First Congress—was to ensure that existing administrative structures were poised to take on postwar roles. In short, this move is the organizational precursor to the structural repurposing my theory predicts.

The creation and trajectory of the Department of Political Affairs falls perfectly in line with my theoretical expectations. During the initial political recruitment drives in the mid-1980s, it was common for Renamo soldiers to forcibly recruit groups of people from a single area or a single school. In one instance, Anselmo Victor and some of his colleagues were kidnapped and placed into political-messaging roles. They were trained together and they worked and lived together at Renamo’s national headquarters.94 As I anticipate, the division was repurposed in its entirety to become the Department of Political Affairs under Victor’s command.95 This sort of reprioritization—retaining core structures with postwar relevance—mitigates the risks of organizational change.

Following the 1992 negotiated settlement, which granted Renamo a legal path to party formation, it held another Party Congress and enacted a two-pronged approach to transformation. In rural areas, Renamo worked to augment and legitimate its administrative capacity. It continued its wartime trends of relying largely on chiefs and local authorities to occupy administrative positions.96 Evidence from the ground indicates that the areas with the strongest administrative capacities were the ones with wartime structural legacies.97 In urban areas, Renamo worked to repurpose existing networks of clandestine support from the war into administrative and other party-relevant structures.98 A prime example of this formalization comes from Sofala Province. In 1990, the anti-Frelimo activist and underground Renamo supporter Manuel Pereira was named Renamo’s first provincial delegate.99 Pereira, in turn, assisted Renamo in creating other provincial delegations throughout the center and north of the country.100 At the war’s end, Pereira became the official provincial representative of Sofala in the Mozambican government. Moreover, two of the other delegate heads created in 1990 went on to become members of Parliament.101

Of course, Renamo’s transformation was not devoid of obstacles. While the organization made remarkable strides in augmenting divisions dedicated to governance and political messaging, it faced two major challenges to creating a functioning party. The first was a resource problem: Mozambique was in abject financial straits and could not afford even the most basic provisions for the party. Vincente Ululu, Renamo’s secretary general, at one point said, “We don’t need [political] training because Renamo during the war was a politico-military movement, so we have experienced personnel. We need money to create conditions to be able to function.”102 The scramble for basic supplies was so dire that at one point Dhlakama claimed, “Renamo’s financial problems threaten democracy in Mozambique.”103 To be sure, material resources were not the only scarcity. Finding skilled individuals capable of filling in the organizational gaps was still a challenge in a country with the lowest literacy rate in the world.

The second impediment to Renamo’s organizational transformation was its severe internal fragmentation. Having spent the last few years of the war prioritizing the recruitment of educated members for roles in administration, education, and political messaging, Dhlakama created a fissure in the organization. Although the new recruits benefited the organization by imbuing it with the relevant skill sets needed to operate in the political realm, they were nonetheless greeted with suspicion and resentment from foot soldiers who had been in the bush since Renamo’s early days.104 Wartime resentments grew into full-fledged internal conflicts as it became increasingly clear the new recruits would transition into the highest-ranking political positions and, thus, the highest-paying jobs. From an organizational standpoint, these tensions pose a very high risk of fracture; from a conflict standpoint, we might expect such rifts to manifest in the form of spoilers.

Ultimately, the “solution” to the second problem was a matter of bribery. High-ranking officers whose low levels of education disqualified them for government or military positions were trained in trades to be drivers or cooks. Foot soldiers accepted payoffs, sometimes from demobilization funds, other times from Frelimo, which bribed defectors to join its organization in exchange for jobs and information.105 Despite—or perhaps because of—the longevity of the war, the general consensus is that demobilization was otherwise a relatively quick and easy process. Many foot soldiers on both sides (though more from Renamo than Frelimo) were redirected into the new, integrated Mozambican Army.106 The concept of a job with pay largely compensated for the bitterness of not qualifying for a prestigious government post after the war.

1994 ELECTIONS AND RENAMO’S FUTURE

The loss of two leaders and two sponsors made Renamo no stranger to resilience under duress. In the lead-up to the 1994 elections, Renamo leaned heavily on the proto-party divisions it built during war. The organization was still in an understaffed and tenuous state, but crucially, so was Frelimo. Neither had ever campaigned for voluntary support without a gun in hand, and interviews with citizens suggest that many had no idea what to expect from either. Renamo incurred another sizable hiccup as both parties began campaigning. Having renounced communism, Frelimo began to steal much of Renamo’s wartime rhetoric about free markets, free religious practice, and democratic institutions. This made the two parties even more undifferentiable in the eyes of the people. In the end, Renamo billed itself as a “coalition of the marginalized” in an attempt to appeal to those who Frelimo exploited during the war.107 Frelimo made explicit attempts to remind people of Renamo’s wartime atrocities.

The 1994 elections culminated in an executive win and legislative majority for Frelimo, but a sizable allocation of seats to Renamo.108 As with the Salvadoran case, province-level vote share tells an even more nuanced story in direct support of my theory. The provinces with the most well-established proto-party structures (Sofala, Manica, Zambezia, Nampula, and Tete) also cast the most votes for Renamo. Out of the 112 seats they won in the 1994 elections, 98 were from these provinces alone. In essence, the people voted to repurpose wartime political structures into peacetime governance.

Attempted Transformation in the RUF

As the Sierra Leone civil war came to a close, the RUF, once again, found itself staring down opportunities it was unfit to exploit. Leveraging its military advantage, the 1999 Lomé Agreement granted the RUF a considerable amount of power in the transitional government. In addition to facilitating a path to transition into a political party to compete in elections set for 2001, the RUF won amnesty for Sankoh and a guaranteed post for him (as well as four additional cabinet posts) in the Transitional Government of National Unity.109 The accord provided the right for the RUF to legally register as a party within thirty days of signing, set up an international trust fund to finance the transition, and explicitly provided “training for RUF membership in party organization and functions.”110

Despite the massive concessions made in the RUF’s favor, Sankoh, Bockarie, and other war-profiteering commanders managed to stonewall the accord’s implementation. Commanders kept troops in the dark about the terms of the agreement, fearful that war-weary fighters would jump at the opportunity to take advantage of the reintegration packages.111 Sankoh—aware that “the RUF would not fare well in national elections”—even mobilized a final incursion into Freetown in 2000 in the hopes of continuing the RUF’s influence over the country by force.112 The incursion failed and Sankoh was arrested, at which point Issa Sesay took charge of the RUF. He, unlike previous leaders, was committed to disarmament and pushed the RUF in the direction needed to implement the peace deal.113

After the two parties signed the final ceasefire agreement the previous May, the Sierra Leone civil war was officially declared over in January 2002. To finalize the Lomé Accord’s implementation, the RUF needed to demobilize its rank-and-file combatants and transform what was left into a party in time to compete in the upcoming elections in May of that same year. Scholars acknowledging the RUF’s eventual failure nonetheless argue that “the possibility of transition to democratic politics . . . cannot be ruled out a priori.”114 The authors cite Renamo as a counterexample—an insurgent group that was also a product of external sponsorship, frequently used as a proxy to fight regional conflicts, managed to transition into a party, so the RUF could (have) too. I argue, however, that key deficiencies in the RUF’s organizational structure—identifiable a priori—made the RUF Party (RUFP) especially unfit for transformation.

An assessment of the RUF’s structure at the end of the war reveals that the process of transforming into a party would require a ground-up construction of the party apparatus and a reorientation of the organization’s priorities. As demonstrated earlier, the organization systematically marginalized and dismantled the structures most apposite to party formation. From the standpoint of organizational adaptation, these deficiencies make organizational change both difficult and highly risky.115 The organizational and behavioral legacy of the RUF gave rise to three challenges that ultimately proved insurmountable for the fledgling party: (1) a small pool from which to draw willing and politically skilled recruits, (2) a high risk of resentment from “bush commanders” and other insiders who were passed over in favor of outside recruits, and (3) the challenge of mobilizing constituents from civilians who only interacted with the RUF in a violent capacity. First, the manner in which the RUF developed and dispersed its message made political recruitment a formidable task. Its linkages to politically active university affiliates were severed early on in the war, which left civilians largely unfamiliar with the political aims of the organization. Unable to rely on active supporters with ideological commitments to the organization, the RUF was forced to settle for educated opportunists to fill political posts.116

The second challenge the RUF faced was how to manage internal resentment as high-ranking yet illiterate commanders were passed over in favor of competent outsiders. For example, after the junta period, the university lecturer Paolo Bangura joined the RUF to help form a political-ideological wing.117 During the 2002 elections, it was Bangura who ran for president on the RUFP ticket, despite being affiliated with the organization for only a few years. His short tenure, however, was characterized primarily by quarrels with Sankoh loyalists, and he resigned following the RUFP’s electoral failure.118 This endemic resentment on the part of the military wing mirrors Renamo’s experience. I argue, however, that Renamo’s successful transformation (and transition) highlights the organizational advantage of having even minimal proto-party structures as a legacy of wartime.

Finally, in addition to the scramble to patch together a functioning political party, the real obstacle was a matter of figuring out how to appeal to a country they themselves tore apart. The challenge of electoral mobilization existed on two dimensions. On the one hand, the RUF would have to find a way to convince the civilians—and, indeed, its own ex-combatants—that placing power in its hands would be wise. On the other hand, RUF leaders had to figure out what message they wanted to use to attempt to earn that trust in the first place. The junta period compounded this problem. Specifically, the RUF’s brief time at the helm of Sierra Leone’s government gave both citizens and low-ranking members unique insight into how the RUF leadership dealt with power. Those who were with the RUF from its early days noted that the AFRC collaboration and exposure to “city life” corrupted the leaders and desecrated the RUF ideology.119 Consequently, the RUFP not only needed a substantive message, but it also had to convince voters that trusting the party with power would not just produce a redux of the junta period.

In the run-up to the elections, the RUFP tried and failed to rehash its bush ideology—painting itself as a party for socialism, agrarian self-sufficiency, and wiping out corruption in government and mining.120 Put simply, from the moment of its inception, the RUFP was a company without a product—and it showed. Despite overcoming the severe personnel shortage to field 203 candidates in time for the May elections, the RUFP failed to win even a single seat.121 In all, nine parties competed for 112 parliamentary seats in the election, yet only three parties—the Sierra Leone People’s Party, the APC, and the Peace and Liberation Party—surpassed the 12.5 percent vote threshold needed to be awarded seats in the legislature. Adding insult to injury, the APC—the party in large part responsible for Sierra Leone’s downfall into autocracy and civil war—garnered more votes than the RUFP by an order of magnitude in all but two provinces.

Epilogue: The Kailahun Exception

Beyond other cases, in which comparably brutal civil wars culminated in substantial electoral victories for the (former) perpetrators of violence, the most compelling evidence for the role of political diversification for the RUF’s failure comes from Kailahun district. While the RUFP’s electoral defeat was substantial, Table 6.1 reveals that the magnitude of its loss was not uniform. In this section, I explore the RUFP’s most substantial electoral outliers: Kailahun district, in which the RUFP earned 7.8 percent of the vote share.

Nestled in the southeast corner of Sierra Leone, Kailahun district provides a fascinating shadow case that runs counter to the grim narrative characterizing most of the country. Kailahun was one of the first areas that the RUF settled in after its initial incursion into Sierra Leone. Yet, the group that set up shop in many areas of this district evolved very differently from the rest of the movement.122 An RUF commander makes this point explicitly: “The life in the combat zone was different from the life in the rear. In the rear, nobody was forced to work on private farms. . . . Everything was for the betterment of the movement.”123 Indeed, the RUF’s decentralization made for considerably more intraorganizational variation than is typically recognized. Due in part to the local conditions and recruiting opportunities, select RUF cadres stationed throughout Kailahun evolved in a fundamentally different way than most others throughout the country. In stark contrast to the more forward camps (i.e., the westward bases approaching Freetown), the RUF established proper liberated zones characterized by relative stability and consistent interaction between the rebels and local populations.124

TABLE 6.1. Percentage of vote share by party in the 2002 parliamentary elections

Away from the front lines of the war, the RUF was considerably more integrated into local communities. It built social service divisions that provided health care, education, and interest-free banking.125 Various civilians also recall working on shared farms, the significance of which should not be understated. Not only did these farms help provide for the communities at a time when famine was rampant throughout the country, but, more importantly, the communal farms represent an instantiation of the RUF’s agrarian ideology. According to Peters, the “rear” and more stable areas (such as Kailahun) also had more reliable and institutionalized mechanisms in place to help prevent civilian harassment. As such, the civilians in Kailahun saw a group not only rebelling against the state, but acting as an alternative.

While in the RUF we made different types of farms: rice, yam, and swamp. We even made farms right inside Kailahun town. It was both the combatants and the civilians who made these farms. There is a big common farm which was aimed to promote unity among us. . . . The produce of the communal farm is for the betterment of the whole community.126

We worked two times a week at the [RUF] farm in Pendembu, and sometimes we received food for work. Here in Pendembu there were free medicines, but not too much. There was also free primary education.127

Finally, RUF cadres in Kailahun had a higher retention of educated members due in large part to the contingent of recruits drawn from Bunumbu College. I argue that their retention of politically educated members, institutionalized liaisons with local communities, and lower propensity to engage in the wanton violence that came to characterize the RUF more broadly accounts for the significantly higher vote share for the RUFP from Kailahun as compared to the rest of the country.

Lessons from Renamo and the RUF

The divergent rebel-to-party experiences of Renamo and the RUF support my organizational theory of transformation on key dimensions. First and most broadly, these cases demonstrate that the theory travels outside of Latin America and can account as precisely for rebel-to-party failure as it can for success. Second, the analyses presented in this chapter provide additional tests of alternative explanations of rebel successor party formation. If ideology (particularly leftist ideology) were the driving force of both organizational structures and rebel-to-party success, we would have observed a robust proto-party legacy in the RUF. Similarly, if material wealth provided an independent advantage—rather than one mediated by the organizational structures through which it flows—the RUF still would have come out ahead.

Finally, both cases support the link between proto-party structures and postwar voter mobilization. While organizational structures do not necessarily translate into electoral appeal, the utility of proto-party structures transcends organizational boundaries. Beyond providing an anchor of stability in a volatile time, structures dedicated to governance, local administration, and social service provision enable the organization to forge the types of political linkages that are later conducive to political mobilization. The stark evidence of geographical distinctions in both Renamo’s and the RUF’s organizational development is telling. The capacity to convert wartime proto-party linkages to postwar party votes is as evident among successes as it is among failures.