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In a series of speeches given across the northern reaches of newly independent Mozambique in 1983, president Samora Machel sought to encourage unity among his increasingly disenchanted populace by constructing a common enemy: a figure he often specifically frames as a threat to public health, whether parasite, infection or deformity. This article explores these uses of pathologization and public health by the state and pro-state media during the Mozambican nation-building period, and shows how Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa’s 2013 novel, Entre as Memórias Silenciadas, exposes and subverts these associations using the motif of the dissident dying or dead body.