State terror out of a position of strength The reasons behind South Africa’s choice to support RENAMO’s terrorism during the Mozambican Civil War

Abstract

This paper focuses on the rather underdeveloped academic field of state terror. More precisely, it seeks to explain why South Africa supported the terror of the anti- communist resistance movement RENAMO during the Mozambican Civil War from 1977 to 1992. According to most theories, this question remains a paradox as terror is commonly seen as a tool of weak actors rather than strong ones, such as South Africa. To get to the bottom of this paradox, this paper applies an innovative theory of the American professors Raymond Duvall and Michael Stohl. According to them, specific military experiences in the past, the belief in the ability to control the terror process and a high degree of vulnerability of the target population render terrorism perpetrated by strong states more likely.