Report on Citizenship Law: Mozambique for Mozambican citizenship or leave the country carrying no more than 20 kilos of personal possessions (Sumich 2013: 108). FRELIMO’s nation-building plans were focused on breaking with tradition and on promoting a modern Mozambican identity that would accommodate all ethnic, racial, regional and religious groups (Chabal 2002: 56). This involved the creation of a ‘new Mozambican man’, free from divisive regional and ethnic loyalties, and entirely committed to the party’s modernising socialist agenda. As Sumich (2013: 103) points out, full Mozambican citizenship was premised on loyalty to FRELIMO and ownership of a party membership card became the concrete symbol of being Mozambican. Those who did not conform were labelled ‘enemies of the people’ and punished accordingly, including by compulsive internment in reeducation camps where they had to work in the fields during the day and attend courses on Marxism-Leninism in the evening (Paredes 2014: 149-151; Sumich 2013: 100, 108). FRELIMO’s draconian measures soon alienated large segments of the population, particularly in rural areas, due to the party’s relentless hostility towards traditional authorities, which it saw as backward and utterly incompatible with the construction of a modern socialist nation-state (Chabal 2002: 56, 69, 99; Newitt 2002: 196, 199; Santos 2006: 48, 64-65). RENAMO, the rebel group raised and armed by the Rhodesian intelligence and sponsored by apartheid South Africa to destabilise Mozambique’s left-wing regime (Newitt 2002: 209-210; Macamo 2017: 207; Chabal 2002: 76, 132), was able to exploit the growing discontent among the rural populations and infiltrate large areas of the country as the civil war progressed into the 1980s (Chabal 2002: 28, 69, 100). Although the country was engulfed in a highly disruptive civil war, which paralysed the government, cut communications and forced thousands to flee to urban centres or to neighbouring countries (Newitt 2002: 212; Golooba-Mutebi 2004: 1-3), in the early 1980s, many of those who had renounced their Mozambican citizenship in 1975 returned to Mozambique and asked FRELIMO to take them back into the fold. This prompted the first amendment to the 1975 Nationality Act, by Law no. 2/82, of 6 April 1982,38 which introduced the possibility of reacquisition of Mozambican citizenship. The introductory text of Law no. 2/82 explained the reasoning behind the amendment, in an elaborate exercise in gloating and affirmation of the moral high ground. It started by stressing that the Nationality Act was a key legal and political instrument for the assertion of the ‘total and complete independence’ of the Mozambican people, and that it had been adopted with the goal of consolidating the sense of belonging to the Mozambican motherland. In order to eliminate all traces of colonialism – it added –, FRELIMO’s Central Committee had excluded the possibility of a Mozambican having dual citizenship and had made no provision for the reacquisition of Mozambican citizenship once it was lost on one of the grounds prescribed by law. Those who, ‘still tied by the umbilical cord to the colonial metropolis’ and without thinking, had renounced ‘their true citizenship’ when the revolutionary and ‘mental decolonisation’ process begun, later came to realise ‘the severity of their actions’ and had asked leave to return to Mozambique, alleging inability to adapt to the foreign country that they had chosen. ‘The party’ – the explanation went on – ‘did not ignore the situation and, in the spirit of clemency that had been its tradition, authorised the return to the country of hundreds of individuals who had requested it’. Since, however, the law did not foresee the reacquisition of citizenship, these individuals’ citizenship status remained undefined. In line with the spirit of the ‘clemency measure’ adopted vis-à-vis these individuals – i.e. to forgive their serious mistake, to allow their return to the motherland, and to allow them to reacquire 38 Text available at http://www.mint.gov.mz/images/pdf/MINT/Lei%20n%C2%BA.%20%202.82,%20 de%2006%20de%20Abril-Lei%20de%20Reaquisi%C3%A7%C3%A3o%20de%20Nacionalidade.pdf [28.03.2019]. RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2019/6 - © 2019 Author 13