by Guy Arnold
Following the 25 April 1974 Revolution in Lisbon, talks between the new government and the PAIGC were held in London during May. Then, at the end of August, at a meeting in Algiers, Portugal and the PAIGC signed an agreement, which brought to an end 400 years of Portuguese rule. The Portuguese agreed to recognize Guinea-Bissau on 10 September and to withdraw all their military forces by the end of October. There were to be no reprisals. Maj. Pires, the PAIGC representative at the Algiers meeting, said that the agreement was ‘the natural and logical outcome of the liberation struggle’ and that the next step was to work for the liberation of the Cape Verde islands. In fact, though the PAIGC had represented both territories at the talks, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde were to go their separate ways. On 9 September Gen. Spinola signed a document, which officially ended Guinea-Bissau’s status as an overseas territory of Portugal.
It had been a textbook struggle with the party mobilizing the masses rather than liberating them from above. The PAIGC instituted social reforms in the areas that it liberated during the long war and throughout the war the PAIGC maintained remarkable unity; this, it was agreed, owed a great deal to the leadership of Amilcar Cabral. After independence had been achieved the greatest problem facing the new state was its poverty. A slow rapprochment with Portugal followed.
The Portuguese gave independence to the Cape Verde islands, where there had been no fighting, on 5 July 1975 under a PAIGC government, for when pre-independence elections were held on 30 June, 85 per cent of those qualified to vote did so and 92 per cent of these voted for a PAIGC government. The first President of Cape Verde, Aristides Pereira, was a founder member of the PAIGC and had become its Secretary-General in January 1973 following the assassination of Cabral. A commission was set up to consider a Cape Verde–Guinea-Bissau Federation. On 12 January 1977 a Council of Unity was established to search for a formula of unity to bind the two countries but in fact by then it was becoming clear that they would remain two separate states. In 1980, following the November coup in Guinea-Bissau, the unity proposal collapsed and in Cape Verde the ruling PAIGC was renamed the PAICV (Partido Africano da Independência de Cabo Verde).
MOZAMBIQUE
The Central Committee of FRELIMO issued a communiqué after its meeting of 9–14 May 1970 in which it confirmed the election of Samora Moises Machel as acting President and Marcellino dos Santos as acting Vice-President until the next Congress. These appointments replaced the Council of the Presidency, which had been set up in April 1969 following the assassination of Dr Eduardo Mondlane, FRELIMO’s first leader. The communiqué emphasized the importance of political education and stressed that military victories were the result of political work. Meanwhile, the Portuguese had embarked upon the construction of the massive Cabora Bassa Dam in Tete province, leading Zambia’s President Kaunda to declare that Zambia would ‘do all in its power’ to get international support withdrawn from the project. He claimed that though ostensibly economic the dam was political, designed to spread South Africa’s military influence further north. Once South Africa had invested so much money in the scheme it would have to send troops to defend it. Kaunda said Zambia was telling countries intending to participate in the dam that it was ‘a question of conscious and deliberate decision: Are they going to support apartheid by spreading it further north or are they going to invest their money elsewhere?’4 The Italians subsequently decided to withdraw from the dam consortium. In South Africa, however, it was claimed that despite international objections the dam would go ahead and though FRELIMO guerrillas were infiltrating Tete province near Cabora Bassa the Portuguese military was not worried.5 In contrast to this optimism, FRELIMO claimed that the struggle in Tete was developing fast and that the Portuguese were trying to depopulate the area by moving people into ‘protected villages’. In June the Portuguese army, under Gen. Kaulza de Arriaga, launched a major campaign against FRELIMO.
These Frelimo claims were substantiated in 1971 when refugees from the fighting in Tete began to arrive in Malawi where the refugee population reached a figure of 5,000; as a result Malawi-Portuguese relations deteriorated. FRELIMO activities in Tete province increased through 1971 and included attacks upon the railway that supplied Cabora Bassa. After FRELIMO had cut the Blantyre–Salisbury road that crossed Tete province, President Banda informed the South African government of the threat to its communications and Pretoria responded by sending four planeloads of arms and three Ferret scout cars to Malawi. By that time armed FRELIMO bands had begun moving over Malawian territory. A further blow to the Portuguese in 1971 came with the withdrawal of the Roman Catholic White Fathers from Mozambique because, they said, they could no longer support the policies of the Catholic hierarchy which upheld the colonial regime.
Despite Portuguese attempts to persuade themselves and the outside world that they were in full control of the situation in Mozambique, this was belied by the facts. In mid-1971 they placed Tete province under a military governor. More generally, defence expenditure revealed the extent to which its African wars were absorbing more and more of Portugal’s political and economic attention. Defence expenditure for the overseas provinces had jumped from R115,500,000 in 1961 (35.6 per cent of government spending) to R280,000,000 (40.7 per cent of total expenditure) by 1970 and no end appeared to be in sight. Portugal imposed a blockade on goods for Zambia passing through Beira, prompting Kaunda to accuse Portugal of threatening an invasion of Zambia. He said that over 21 months there had been 40 border incursions by the Portuguese and that 50 Zambian civilians had been killed, injured or kidnapped.
According to a special correspondent of the Rand Daily Mail writing in February 1972, in the space of a year FRELIMO had turned the Tete province into a third front. Their prime target was the Cabora Bassa Dam. No road in the 65,000 square kilometre Tete province could be guaranteed free of mines, railway lines were sabotaged repeatedly, ambushes of road transport had become increasingly common and the area had become a battleground for classic guerrilla war actions. Moreover, FRELIMO guerrillas were widely regarded as heroes by the local people. The Portuguese admitted that there were about 2,000 guerrillas in Tete and had deployed 10,000 troops to deal with them. These guerrilla activities were causing anxiety in both Rhodesia and Malawi. Ian Colvin6 estimated the strength of the FRELIMO guerrillas between 1,500 and 3,000 in Tete where there had been none three years earlier. The road to Cabora Bassa had been tarred so that it was difficult to mine but ambushes remained a danger. In February 1972 Admiral H. Biermann, the Commander-in-Chief of the South African Armed forces, visited Mozambique to consult Gen. Deslardes, the Portuguese Chief of General Staff about the situation in the territory. At the end of the same month Smith visited South Africa and discussed the Mozambique war with Vorster. Their conclusion was inescapable: that Mozambique had to be defended in the long term if South Africa was not to risk a hostile state on its Indian Ocean border that would cut off Rhodesia from the sea. In June 1972 Will Hussey, writing in the Johannesburg Star’s Africa News Service, said: ‘It must be stated clearly, now, though it may irk the Portuguese, that the state of the war in Tete is serious and carries grave military and political dangers for all of southern Africa in the long term.’ And Gen. Kaulza de Arriaga, Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese forces in Mozambique, warned in December 1972, in the official Portuguese Digest Mozambique and the Political-Strategic Outlook, that ‘the battle against terrorism’ in Mozambique was the key to the survival of Western influence in the world. He went on to argue that South Africa was an object of ‘Communist neo-imperialism’ to control the world. ‘Thus the battle for southern Africa would perhaps be the decisive one; and that battle has already begun. Tanzania… serves as the bridgehead… From this bridgehead the fundamental objectives are Mozambique and the Republic of South Africa.’ Such exaggerated claims about communist aims formed a major part of the white minority arguments in defence of their struggles against nationalist guerrillas at that time.
Portuguese morale in Mozambique declined thr
ough 1973: FRELIMO was making steady advances, the Rhodesian border had become less secure as the war across it intensified while the guerrillas were approaching the line of the Beira Corridor. Gen. Kaulza de Arriaga, who had spoken confidently of defeating FRELIMO at the beginning of the decade, required another 10,000 troops and these were transferred to Mozambique from Angola. By the end of the year FRELIMO forces had successfully moved into the Tete province where an outer circle of protected villages (aldeamentos) surrounded Cabora Bassa, which had its own defensive garrison, and crossed the Zambezi to open new fronts in Manica and Sofala provinces. At the same time FRELIMO was consolidating its administration in the northern territories under its control.
Portuguese problems were compounded during the year by the news of the Wiriyamu massacre that received worldwide attention. According to a report in The Times7 a huge massacre had occurred in December 1972 at the village of Wiriyamu in Tete province when 400 Africans were killed by Portuguese troops in reprisals for aiding the guerrillas, causing 5,000 people to flee into Malawi. The Portuguese government denied that any massacre had taken place. However, news of the massacre led to opposition demands in the British Parliament for the cancellation of the forthcoming visit of Dr Caetano to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance. The Heath government refused to cancel the visit but further evidence was forthcoming at the United Nations. Father Adrian Hastings, a Roman Catholic priest who had first revealed the evidence of the massacre, appeared before the UN Decolonization Committee on 20 July and claimed that it was only one of many massacres over recent years. Gen. Arriaga responded in an interview in Die Welt by claiming that there had been two cases of military excesses and that the soldiers responsible had been punished. According to Le Monde8 Arriaga said Portugal was in the midst of a defensive war, yet during 10,000 military operations over the previous two and a half years only 10 cases of excesses had been reported. Writing in the Diario de Lourenco Marques, Mgr Alvim Pereira, the Archbishop of Lourenco Marques, clearly came down on the side of the Portuguese government when he defended the Church hierarchy who were accused of not denouncing the reported massacre. He said the Church in Mozambique was entirely free of the Portuguese government but that the question of political independence was outside the sphere of the Church, which could not take a stand on it. He wrote, ‘Some would like the Mozambique hierarchy to condemn the Portuguese Government for its policy of integration, and place itself on the side of the so-called liberation movements.’ The Archbishop continued, this attitude ‘has been taken up by various foreign priests and a few Portuguese and has earned for some expulsion from Mozambique and even prison… Independent of the personal position of each priest, the Church cannot show itself against or in favour of the independence of any territory’. The Archbishop then went on to the attack: after stating that the Mozambique bishops had been accused of ‘not being on the side of the so-called liberation movements’ he said that they could not be on their side ‘on any grounds, even if only because of the atrocities which these movements have perpetrated’. He regretted that people believed the alleged Wiriyamu massacres so easily and used them to attack Portugal.9 The affair and the way it was defended did Portugal considerable harm.
Meanwhile, both South Africa and Rhodesia were demonstrating increasing unease at the advance southwards of FRELIMO forces and the inability of the Portuguese under Gen. Arriaga to stop them. Rhodesia made great efforts to secure its eastern flank. In January 1974 Max Hastings revealed in the Evening Standard that the Rhodesian Army (400 troops of the Rhodesian Light Infantry) and the Special Air Services were carrying out sweeps in Mozambique to search out terrorist bases. By this time the Portuguese campaign to win ‘the minds and hearts’ of the eight million Mozambicans had come too late. The 250,000 whites were becoming increasingly restive. In order to increase its size and effectiveness the army was ‘Africanized’ up to the rank of captain and new all-African commando units were deployed for search-and-destroy operations against the guerrillas. There was some evidence of a change of policy in Lisbon early in 1974 when the government recognized the black nationalist ‘Third Force’ group of small professionals who were given permission to form a pressure group in Lisbon, the Grupo Unido de Mocambique (GUM). The Cabora Bassa Dam remained the key to the Portuguese plan to integrate Mozambique with the white economies of Rhodesia and South Africa. The dam was on schedule for an operational opening in 1975.
During February 1974 FRELIMO increased the intensity of its campaign in the Tete province, targeting the Beira–Malawi railway that brought supplies for the Cabora Bassa Dam. Writing in the Rand Daily Mail10 Dennis Gordon argued that the next six months would see whether Portugal could halt the advance or the war would reach South Africa’s doorstep: ‘FRELIMO opened its “fourth front” of the war in the Beira district last June. Since then, terror activity has spread south rapidly. If FRELIMO breaches the Beira-Umtali (Rhodesia) axis, where there has been terrorist activity since the new year, the movement will be on the last leg of its plan to “liberate” the whole country.’ A few weeks later Will Hussey, writing in the South African Star,11 said that even its most ardent detractors grudgingly admit that the FRELIMO guerrilla attack in Mozambique was making formidable strides. The tactic of intensifying the war with frequent, widely separated attacks plus landmines tied up 60,000 Portuguese troops.
Suddenly the situation changed dramatically with the 25 April Revolution in Lisbon (see below) and a date for Mozambique’s independence was set for 25 June 1975. The agreement to this effect was signed by Portuguese and FRELIMO leaders on 7 September 1974 in Lusaka, Zambia. There was to be an interim government under a FRELIMO prime minister with six of nine ministers appointed by FRELIMO. Rear-Admiral Crespo was appointed Portuguese High Commissioner until independence. On hearing of the independence agreement the white settlers formed the Mozambique Popular Movement and mounted a revolt in Lourenco Marques on 7 September; this was led by former Portuguese commandos, the ‘Dragons of Death’ and a right-wing group FICO (I stay), which briefly obtained control of the airport, the power station and the oil refinery. They also claimed to have seized control in the towns of Beira, Nampula, Quelimane and Vila Cabral. They released 200 former members of the secret police. In Lisbon the new Chief of Staff, Gen. Francisco da Costa Gomes, ordered the troops to ‘re-establish peace and tranquillity’; he said the agreement with FRELIMO would be upheld. FRELIMO, for its part, told its supporters to refrain from provocation. Portuguese military strength in Lourenco Marques was increased from 600 to 10,000 and some FRELIMO forces were flown in from Tanzania. On 20 September in Lourenco Marques the interim government was sworn in: Joaquim Chissano, number three in the FRELIMO command, became Prime Minister with six FRELIMO and three Portuguese ministers making up his cabinet. An 80-minute speech by Samora Machel was read to the new government: ‘It is necessary to liquidate the superiority complexes and inferiority complexes created by centuries of colonialism.’ Machel indicated that there would be no room for ideological opposition; that attempts would be made by South Africa and Rhodesia to form a mercenary task force to cause problems; and that FRELIMO now accepted the Cabora Bassa Dam and would co-operate with the Portuguese in removing mines on the access roads to the project.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MOZAMBIQUE
The Portuguese went over to the offensive in 1970 with a massive assault on FRELIMO on three fronts; they employed 35,000 troops and 15,000 tons of arms and ammunition and were assisted by South Africa whose helicopters transported the troops to front-line positions. They claimed to have killed 651 FRELIMO for 150 Portuguese dead and also claimed that in 1970 as a whole 7,000 FRELIMO members and sympathisers had surrendered and over 1,800 had been captured. For its part, FRELIMO claimed that Portugal never admitted to more than 10 per cent of its casualties. Despite these claims to have delivered a major defeat to FRELIMO in 1970, the following year the Portuguese had to begin all over again. Gen. Kaulza de Arriaga launched a second major campaign earl
y in the year yet by May 1971 the security position in Tete had become so bad that the whole province had to be placed under the rule of the military governor. The Tete war drew in the Rhodesians whose forces operated far into the province in pursuit of terrorists. Traffic through Tete from Rhodesia to Malawi was sufficiently interrupted for insurers to declare it a war risk. At the end of 1971 FRELIMO claimed to have launched 800 operations in the two months of October and November; to have destroyed 107 camps and posts; to have killed 3,000 Portuguese and destroyed 344 military vehicles; to have shot down four aircraft and five helicopters; to have destroyed 15 war-boats on the Zambezi, sabotaged dozens of kilometres of railway line and blown up 20 trains. They claimed to control one quarter of the country. Accepting the propensity of combatants to exaggerate their achievements, it was nonetheless plain that FRELIMO rather than the Portuguese army was in the ascendant. By 1972 Portugal had increased the size of its armed forces from 50,000 to 60,000 of whom half were black and said they had eliminated one fifth of the FRELIMO forces. Yet in September 1972 FRELIMO opened a new front in the Manica–Sofala area bordering Rhodesia. By this time the Cabora Bassa Dam area was ringed with triple defences while the Portuguese were trying to control the peasant population in the war zones by the rapid extension of the system of aldeamentos (protected villages); they settled one million peasants in 500 aldeamentos of which 120 were in the Tete province where a further 85 such villages were being created.
Portugal hung on to its African possessions for their economic value but by the 1970s was exhausting itself in the fight to keep them. Portugal embarked upon a new policy in 1972 when it thrust a measure of economic independence upon Angola and Mozambique and demanded cash payments for imports. In consequence, Mozambique faced growing shortages. That year Ian Colvin wrote in the Daily Telegraph, ‘Mozambique could be described as the sick man of southern Africa.’ A major blow to Portuguese pretensions came when the White Fathers decided to withdraw from Mozambique because they found it ‘impossible to apply their principles of the Africanization of the Church’. Father van Asten, Superior General of the Order in Mozambique, said, ‘In countries where the Church is officially persecuted and forcibly reduced to silence it still has a worthwhile witness to bear, but in a country like Mozambique where the regime openly proclaims itself Catholic and the Protector of the Church and yet in practice uses it for aims that have nothing to do with the Gospel, a Church that is unable to speak out is the reverse of a witness to its mission.’ In response to this statement, the colonial government expelled all the White Fathers. Dr Rui Patricio accused the White Fathers of ‘inviting the inhabitants of Mozambique to rebel and join the nationalist movement FRELIMO’.12