Date: Thursday 3 October
Time: 2:00pm-4:00pm
Venue: The CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab, 66 Greatmore Street, Woodstock, (Entrance on Regent Road).
Launch Programme:
Welcome: Heidi Grunebaum, CHR.
“The Jihadi Insurgency in Cabo Delgado: Ideology, Protagonists and Causes,” – Liazzat Bonate, Centro de Estudos Africanos, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane.
“Seven years down the line: The persistence of structural problems in Cabo Delgado” – João Feijó, Observatório do Meio Rural.
“Here the mashababe, there the army: War in Cabo Delgado in social media and songs,” – Paolo Israel, Department of Historical Studies, UWC.
Chair: Boaventura Monjane, PLAAS, UWC.
Followed by a QnA.
This special issue focuses on a ‘new war’ which began in the northern Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado in 2017. As the introduction to this special issue explains:
The war began in the context of the discovery of new natural resources, the setting up of transnational extractive industries and of an economic crisis generated by the ‘hidden debt’ scandal. Harsh military responses from the Mozambican government and international actors – SADC and Rwanda especially – have not halted the insurgency, which has dramatically expanded, especially since the insurgents declared their allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) in 2019, causing massive internal displacement of the civil population.
God, Grievance and Greed: War in Cabo Delgado (Mozambique)… aims to bring historical and ethnographic depth to the study of this conflict. The issue draws together a series of layered interventions reflecting the multi-faceted nature of the events, as well as their social and human dimensions, without silencing the voices of the people involved. This introduction serves to frame those interventions, establishing a broad chronology of the conflict; provide an overview of the complex history of Cabo Delgado; discuss the literature produced so far on the insurgency; and locate the events in Cabo Delgado at the interface between local dynamics – capitalist extraction, the erosion of democratic processes, youth marginalisation, ethnic conflict – and global jihadism.