I recall taking a bus in the mid-1970s from Dar-es-Salaam to Maputo, the capital of the newly liberated Mozambique. As the bus entered the square in the middle of the city, I could see a huge banner inscribed with a quote from the Mozambican revolutionary Samora Machel: “For the Nation to Live, the Tribe Must Die.” The tribe here referred not to the ethnic group—as in a cluster of culturally unique people—but to political identification with the ethnic group. The message was that every potential source of competing identity had to be cleansed in order to homogenize the nation.
