Patrícia Jerónimo Mozambican citizenship –, the Permanent Commission of the National Assembly established that the Council of Ministers would have the power to grant Mozambican citizenship to those who, having lost it, applied for reacquisition and met the following requirements: (a) established domicile in national territory; and (b) offered political and moral guarantees of reintegration into Mozambican society. The Council of Ministers was also given the power to decide, if serious motives so justified, that the reacquired citizenship would have the same effects as citizenship by origin. Around this time, FRELIMO’s leadership started to realise that it had to ‘temper its socialist ambitions’ (Chabal 2002: 117) and move toward a mixed economy, in order to boost industrial production and obtain foreign aid from the West (Sumich 2013: 109; Newitt 2002: 213; Macamo 2017: 207). In 1984, Mozambique joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank39, and was admitted among the African Caribbean and Pacific states covered by the Lomé Convention with the European Union. Also in 1984, Mozambique signed the Nkomati Accord with South Africa,40 a pact of non-aggression by which both countries agreed to stop giving military support to the ‘rebel movements’ (RENAMO and ANC) on each side (Newitt 2002: 213). Although South Africa failed to meet its end of the agreement, the Nkomati Accord was followed by widespread international condemnation of RENAMO’s extreme violence (Chabal 2002: 85). FRELIMO, on its part, was increasingly keen to put an end to the civil war, but it was necessary to wait for the end of apartheid in South Africa, in 1990, to see RENAMO convert, under pressure from Pretoria, into a political organisation prepared to negotiate peace with the FRELIMO government (Chabal 2002: 86, 118, 132). Before that, in 1987, the 1975 Nationality Act was amended a second time, by Law no. 16/87, of 21 December,41 mainly with the purpose of repealing the provisions which discriminated against women, as explained in the introductory text to the Act. Article 8 (1) now recognised as Mozambican citizens the children born abroad to a Mozambican father or a Mozambican mother, provided that they or their legal representatives declared their wish to be Mozambican and that they renounced any other citizenship. Per Article 8 (2), children born abroad before independence to a Mozambican father or mother who had taken part in the liberation struggle as members of FRELIMO were also entitled to Mozambican citizenship by origin, with no further requirements. The automatic loss of Mozambican citizenship for women who married foreign men, prescribed by Article 14 (1) (e), was replaced by the loss of Mozambican citizenship for anyone who did not expressly renounce the foreign citizenship acquired by marriage, which did not eliminate gender discrimination, as women were most likely to acquire their husbands’ citizenship by marriage, but had the advantage of providing a safeguard against statelessness.42 Furthermore, Law no. 16/87 gave the women who had lost their Mozambican citizenship under the original version of the 1975 Nationality Act the opportunity to reacquire it either by proving that they had not acquired another citizenship or by expressly renouncing their foreign citizenship if they had [Article 20 (1)]. Per Article 20 (2), the reacquisition had the effect of returning the beneficiaries to the legal status they had had before losing their Mozambican citizenship. 39 The first structural adjustment program designed by the IMF and the World Bank was signed in 1987 (Santos 2006: 40). 40 Agreement on Non-Aggression and Good Neighbourliness between Mozambique and South Africa, signed on 16 March 1984; available at https://peacemaker.un.org/mozambique-southafrica-nkomati84 [12.05.2019]. 41 Available at https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/448596164.pdf [27.03.2019]. 42 Besides, Law no. 16/87 left untouched the provision in Article 10 according to which only foreign women (not men) were entitled to acquire Mozambican citizenship on the grounds of marriage to a Mozambican citizen. 14 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2019/6 - © 2019 Author