Colonialism, liberation, and structural-adjustment in the modern world-economy: Mozambique, South Africa, Great Britain, and Portugal and the formation of Southern Africa (before and under European hegemony)

The starting point of the present dissertation is the study of the historical formation of Southern Africa as an integrated region of the modern world-economy. This is considered through the analysis of the main forms of successive, unequal relationship between the core and the peoples of Southern Africa in general, those of present-day Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa in particular. The forms of relation analyzed are models of domination and control defined by the core: slavery, colonialism, decolonization, neo-colonialism, and present-day neo-liberal structural adjustment. In Southern Africa, they assumed also specific structures as forced labor, apartheid, and the Rhodesian UDI. As a form of anti-colonial, anti-systemic response to the imposition of those models a specific process of national liberation was developed. It assumed new strategies of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid armed struggle creating, at the same time, specific structures of direct and indirect resistance; of regional and systemic geo-strategies; and of cultural and post-colonial collective identities. Most importantly, it originated coherent projects of development for the future. After the early 1960s, "national liberation" was regionally assumed. It led to the military defeat of Portuguese colonialism and Rhodesian UDI. However, its illusions and initial implementation were smashed under a complex, highly destructive process of regional, military and economic destabilization led by Rhodesia, first; by South Africa, afterwards. This collapse made possible the end of apartheid in South Africa. But it resulted as well in the imposition of structural adjustment to the totality of the region. A concluding elaboration of possible, alternative scenarios to today's situation is presented. The study of slavery, colonialism, and structural-adjustment as succeeding models of relationship between the core and the peoples of Southern Africa implied the need to consider the region before European hegemony and as part of the Indian Ocean human space. Arabic, Indian, and Chinese primacies of maritime command and trade; the multiplicity and characteristics of the trading networks and flows defining them; their secular influence on the coastal peoples of East-southern Africa; and the local impact of the development of the world-economy leading to the formation of Southern Africa are equally discussed and analyzed.