The Ghost of Gulamo Nabi: The 1983 Case that Fractured the Façade of Multiracial Unity in Mozambican Socialism

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article argues that the landmark legal case of Gulamo (also spelled Goolam or Gulam) Nabi, a Mozambican resident of Indian-origin (Indo-Mozambican) caught smuggling shrimp into Swaziland, signalled a critical fracture in the façade of Mozambican socialism. Nabi was sentenced to death by firing squad for fish smuggling and price gouging. Like a ghost, Nabi’s legacy haunted my ethnographic fieldwork on Indo-Mozambican identity and belonging in the twentieth century. This article explores the depth and breadth of contemporary domestic narratives around perceived social and economic infractions by Indo-Mozambicans over the long durée. It argues that the post-colonial government used Nabi’s punishment as a show of force both domestically and internationally, particularly with capitalist South Africa and its territories. The case served as an ethnographic entry point to better engage the trials and errors in Mozambique’s process of nation building, national identity formation, and the creation of a multiracial, socialist state in Africa.