Mozambique Establishes a Transitional Authority

Mozambique Establishes a Transitional Authority

On 18 September 1974, the Portuguese government handed over power to a transitional government, dominated by FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique – Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), pending the territory’s receipt of full independence. FRELIMO was formed in 1962, as a national liberation movement set up by Mozambican exiles in Tanganyika, and was headed by Eduardo Mondlane. The movement waged a successful guerrilla war against the Portuguese colonisers from 1964 to 1974. FRELIMO received support from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Algeria, Egypt, Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo) and, to a limited extent, the People’s Republic of China.

The Portuguese Armed Forces staged a bloodless coup in Portugal in 1974, popularly known as the “Carnation Revolution”, which abruptly ended Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal and instituted a democratic dispensation. The revolutionary coup was organised by the “Movimento das Forças Armadas” (Armed Forces Movement), composed of military officers who opposed the regime, but it was soon coupled with an unanticipated popular civil resistance campaign. General Antonio Spinola became Portugal’s first president after democracy and the coup also resulted in the granting of freedom for overseas colonies, thus ending the long and draining colonial war in Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau.

The colonial withdrawal from Mozambique was exclusively a matter of negotiation between Portugal and FRELIMO, which was the only organised and globally recognised resistance movement at the time. On 7 September 1974, the agreement on the transfer of power from the Portuguese to FRELIMO took place in Lusaka, according to which Joaquim Chissano was to head a transitional government for one year. In protest to this agreement and on the same day the ultra-right settlers in Lourenco Marques had attempted a coup against the new to-be government. They seized the radio station, but it did not take long until the Portuguese armed forces, backed by FRELIMO forces, restored law and order.

The negotiations resulted in a provisional government being put in place on 18 September 1974, made up of representatives from both sides. This was the last straw for the Portuguese settlers in Mozambique. They fled in their thousands. Some stayed for a short while trying to get their financial assets with them. And indeed, many succeeded in the monetary chaos that followed. All over big containers were standing in front of the gates of their rich houses. In the countryside the cattle were killed or found roaming about. The Portuguese were not thrown out, but feared the worst from a black, socialist government and by the time the new constitution was introduced, there were only about 20 000 out of 200 000 people of Portuguese descent left in the country.

When the eventual constitution was published, in June 1975, it stated that the President of FRELIMO would also be president of the new nation, to be known as Mozambique. During this time, FRELIMO president was Samora Machel, who had taken over the leadership, after a disputed leadership of the deputy president, Uriah Simango, following the assassination of Mondlane in 1969. Samora Machel made his historic trip from Rovuma to Maputo and landed in Lourenco Marques on the Eve of the Independence Celebrations, on 25 June 1975. Machel wanted to underline that Mozambique was one country in all its vastness and diversity, and all its citizens were the Mozambican “Povo” (People/Population).

In Portugal, the “Carnation Revolution” got its name from the fact that almost no shots were fired during the coup takeover and the subsequent action by Celeste Caeiro, a restaurant worker, who offered carnations to the soldiers when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship. Caeiro’s gesture was matched by other demonstrators, who followed suit by placing carnations in the muzzles of guns carried by soldiers, as well as on the soldiers’ uniforms. The “Carnation Revolution” or military coup on 25 April 1974 in Lisbon, produced major social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes. These changes also affected the overseas colonies through the “Processo Revolucionário Em Curso” (“Ongoing Revolutionary Process”).

It resulted in the Portuguese transition to democracy and the end of the Portuguese Colonial War. Negotiations with African independence movements began, and by the end of 1974, Portuguese troops were withdrawn from Portuguese Guinea, which became a United Nations member state. This was followed in 1975 by the independence of Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Principe and Angola in Africa and the declaration of independence of East Timor in Southeast Asia. These events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens from Portugal’s African territories (mostly from Angola and Mozambique), creating over a million Portuguese refugees – the “retornados”.

The new political leaders in Mozambique, following the institution of a transitional government on 18 September 1974, had had to change their skills from being guerrilla fighters to running a country. FRELIMO took over the big industries and the big plantations left behind by the Portuguese without the manpower to run them, with very few educated people to help. It was admirable yet disastrous to see ordinary workers taking over and having to manage factories or state farms and to see young children taking over posts as directors in education and health facilities because they had had a bit of formal education.

“Grupos Dinamisadores” (“Dynamic Groups”) were introduced by FRELIMO at all levels of activities to manage both the life in the neighbourhoods and in the work situation. These Groups would hold meetings with the population and explain FRELIMO policies, and they would issue certificates and travelling documents, listen to grievances, make decisions on the running of a workplace. They were Frelimo’s backbone in this completely new order of life. During this first year, Lourenco Marques got its present name, Maputo, and a few months later most of the street names were changed to their present situation and the University of Mozambique was to be called after FRELIMO’s first president, the University of Eduardo Mondlane.

In response to the revolutionary developments in Portugal and the subsequent transitional arrangements in the former colonies of Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique, the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party (SACP) issued a statement to the effect that “The whole of progressive mankind celebrates the fall of Caetano’s fascist regime. But for the people of Portugal and those of unliberated Africa, the event has a special significance. After fifty years of fearless resistance our comrades in Portugal’s revolutionary underground, liberated from Caetano’s jails, emerging from their enforced illegality and returning from exile, are leading the Portuguese people to consolidate and advance the historic gains of the April events.”

Interestingly, the SACP Statement emphasised that “In the embattled Portuguese colonies in Africa the armed liberation forces of FRELIMO, PAIGC and MPLA, after decades of struggle, have made a direct contribution to the toppling of one of the oldest and most entrenched fascist regimes. In doing so they have made a giant stride in their own advance to inevitable victory. The events are a major set-back for Vorster, Smith and those groups in Mozambique and Angola still dedicated to minority rule. It is no longer possible for Portuguese imperialism to be in intimate and open embrace with them. They fear that the sweep of the Portuguese revolution may erode completely this important pillar of the unholy tripartite alliance.”

Mozambique under FRELIMO, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) leadership understood the relationship between the exploitation of their people and the exploitation of the masses in Portugal. The correct definition of who was the enemy had always been an essential point of principle, and they all asserted that the enemy was not the Portuguese people, “themselves victims of fascism”, but the Portuguese colonial system. The phenomenal success of the guerilla movements in Portugal’s African colonies was rooted in the cardinal factor of the mobilisation and active participation of the people themselves in the fight for their own liberation. Portugal’s efforts to destroy the armed freedom fighters failed because of the support they received from the people.

Alvaro Cunhal, the then General Secretary of the Portuguese Communist Party, also reiterated this observation, by saying that “The struggles of the people of Mozambique, Angola and Guinea were a very important contribution to the development of the popular democratic struggle up to April 25 and the advances which followed it. We also believe that the struggle of the Portuguese people before and after April 25 contributed to the independence struggles of the people that had for so long been dominated by Portuguese colonialism.”

FRELIMO President, Samora Machel, on the opening of a new front in July 1974, in the Zambezia province of Mozambique, put it this way, “Because they were grasped by a determined people and guided by FRELIMO’s correct line, our weapons liberated the land and liberated the people … Because ours is a popular struggle, because it is just, because we were able to define our target correctly, the national liberation struggle of the Mozambican people and the brother peoples of Angola and Guinea-Bissau, brought about the fall of fascism in Portugal. This is a victory of our solidarity with the Portuguese people, our consistent allies in the struggle against colonialism and fascism.”

Immediately after taking over, on 18 September 1974, Prime Minister of the transitional government of Mozambique, Joachim Chissano warned the racist South African government that peace would not prevail if it did not change its racist apartheid policy. Speaking on his official visit to Tanzania, Chissano said that his country was not going to change its policy as far as the liberation of Africa was concerned. He warned the Ian Smith regime and the apartheid government that Mozambique “will have no political relations with racist regimes”.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Nadja Manghezi, “‘They Were Part of Us and We Were Part of Them’: The ANC in Mozambique from 1976 to 1990”, Online Publication.
Alfred Nzo, “Our Perspectives”, Sechaba, Vol. 9, No. 1, January 1975.
FRELIMO, “ANC Victory is Near”, Sechaba, Vol. 9, No. 3, March 1975.
Joachim Chissano, “No Peace with Apartheid”, Sechaba, Vol. 9, No. 4, April 1975.
Samora Machel, “The People March Forward”, Sechaba, Vol. 9, No. 8/9, August/September 1975.
Editorial Notes, “The Events in Portugal”, The African Communist, No. 58, Third Quarter, 1974.
Alexander Sibeko, “Portugal and Africa – Breaking the Chains”, The African Communist, No. 59, Fourth Quarter, 1974.
Sol Dubula, “An Interview with Alvaro Cunhal”, The African Communist, No. 60, First Quarter, 1975.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.

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