The Ultimate Safari

Mozambique became independent from Portugal in 1975 and was immediately plunged into a brutal civil war between Marxists and anti-communist forces. The political situation in southern Africa was being widely reported when “The Ultimate Safari” was published in 1989; it is set one year prior in 1988 as white, minority-ruled South Africa continued to fund anti-Marxist guerrillas in Mozambique in their fight against its leftist government. These are the so-called “bandits” in “The Ultimate Safari.”

While the Cold War raged elsewhere on the planet, in southern Africa, the fear of communism (partly due to its link to Black empowerment movements) was a driving force in South African political circles. South Africa was still ruled by a white minority fearful of communism and wary of a repeat of the political turmoil in nearby Zimbabwe and Mozambique, both of which fell to communism and expelled many of the former white leaders. When Mozambique's Marxist president, Samora Machel, died in a plane crash in 1986, reports suggested that South Africa was behind the supply of materials in the downing of the plane. The South African government openly supported the Marxist rebels, resulting in a prolonged and bloody civil war in Mozambique.

The South African policy of destabilization along their north-western boarder resulted in the death of thousands of Africans, mostly farm, fishing, and mining laborers who lived in rural communities. An unanticipated consequence of the turmoil was the subsequent food shortage after many farmers and fishermen were murdered and their crops and boats destroyed. With food supplies dwindling, death could come from starvation as easily as from the rebel’s weapons. Fleeing was one of very few options open to the rural populations of Mozambique as Gordimer portrays when the family in “The Ultimate Safari” decides to flee.

Today, migrants from Mozambique cross the same border as the characters in this story to find jobs in South Africa. No longer refugees, they are a migrant population that work the lucrative mines and farms along the border. However, the poverty of Mozambique can, in large part, be traced back to South Africa’s policy of destabilization during the country’s formative postcolonial years.