Abstract
"Ethnic Mobilisation in Politics - Machangana Ruling Over" is an article that composes a chapter of the ongoing Thesis entitled "The Influence of Ethnicities in Political Conflicts in African States: The Case Study of Mozambique (1976-2019)". It aims to analyse ethnic mobilisation to political support as a potential influencer in the emergence of political conflicts in Mozambique.
The main conclusion shows that in Mozambique there is a strong ethnic support to politics, in such a way that each presidential candidate and his Political party has its bastion in his ethnic origin. However, it is not a result of ethnic mobilisation, but in a scarcity of political records, the voters scrutinise the candidate based on the easiest information available, which is ethnicity.
The article reviews the role of ethnicities in South Africa and Angola to be used as a brief comparison with Mozambique, from which we concluded that, the more ethnicities play an important role in politics, the country is likely vulnerable to political conflicts. The study is a result of participant observation field research in Mozambique.