Albino Pereira de Jesus Jopela

This book analyses the politics of memorialization of the struggle for independence in postcolonial southern Africa with special reference to Mozambique. The aim is to scrutinise the different ways in which liberation heritage discourse is used and mobilised to construct a range of socioeconomic and political values in the southern African. The book illustrates how the recent heritagization of the liberation struggle in southern Africa is orchestrated to legitimate those in power. Departing from the definition of liberation heritage as exclusively the historic material remains related to the struggle for independence, it frames heritage as discourse and explores the ways in which the hegemonic heritage discourses have influenced the narratives and practices of heritage in postcolonial Africa. It shows how this perpetuation of Western paradigms was shaped by geopolitical and socio-economic circumstances at play nationally, regionally and globally, and cleverly adopted by the ruling elites of former national liberation movements to pursue their own nationalist agendas. By illustrating the networks of meanings and practices on which liberation heritage rests, as well as the socio-economic, cultural and political work it does, this book makes its key contribution to the embryonic body of knowledge about heritage processes in the southern Africa region.