THE BATTLE FOR MOZAMBIQUE

Frelimo, the Mozambique national liberation movement, has been fighting a bitter armed struggle for the last eight years to overthrow the Portuguese colonial regime. It it a war without quarter, in which the Frelimo guerrilla bands are pitted against young Portuguese conscripts armed with the latest NATO weapons and backed up by the colony's powerful white supremacist neighbours, S Africa and Rhodesia. Portugal spends a staggering 42 per cent of its budget on armed forces — most of which goes to pay for the three colonial wars the dictatorship is waging in Africa: in Guinea-Bissau, Angola and Mozambique. 'Defending the people of the overseas provinces, as the official euphemism / has it, costs about $217m a year. The Portuguese are fighting to maintain their right to exploit the Africans and in the mines, to suck the natural wealth of Mozambique into the pockets of Lisbon bankers and fascist politicians, leaving : the people of Mozambique illiterate, diseased and totally without basic rights.

Behind the threadbare Portuguese dictatorship stands the wealth and power of NATO, which provides the weapons and the know-how for the Mozambique war.

NATO is protecting the strategic port of Beira, through which the Rhodesian racialists get their sanction-busting oil supplies, and the railroad to Johannesburg, which links the colonial administration with its racialist friends in S Africa.

Portugal's war against the Mozambique people is aimed at protecting the big. British, African and US investments in the plantations and mineral resources. Perhaps even more important. Portugal is protecting the vulnerable flanks of white supremacy and apartheid throughout southern Africa.

Many of Mozambique's 8 million black inhabitants work on the vast 'concessions' owned by Portuguese land-owners. On these tracts of land a combination of plantation agriculture and forced cultivation of crops for tribute operates.

Other workers are sent under contract to man the mines and industries of S Africa-the Portuguese colonial authorities get fl a man for these human exports, who are forced to live separaied from their families for years at a time under the most appalling prison-like conditions.

Mozambique produces sugar, maize, copra, sisal and cashew nuts. The aluminium ore bauxite, gold and precious stones are mined there. But perhaps the most important natural resource now being developed there is the hydro-electric power of the Cabora Bassa dam on the Zambesi river, an immense project involving British, European and S African capital on a vast scale. Two-thirds of the cost of the dam is being borne by E Africa, which will take virtually all the electric power produced. wear S African uniform, but are conspicuous because they speak Afrikaans.

The dam is among the guerrillas' prime targets, and its construction is already way behind schedule because of constant harassment by the Frelimo fighters and the difficulty arranging firm contracts with European construction companies.

Portugal 1s understandably reticent about the human cost of the war: official estimates of the death toll in the three African colonies amount to ten soldiers lost every day. Most of these deaths are officially attributed to 'road accidents'. In fact, the news that leaks through the regime's heavy press censorship makes it clear that the guerrillas are rapidly expanding their sphere of operation and now control the better part of the country's four northern provinces, Cabo _Delgado, Niassa Zambesia and Tete.

Frelimo itself makes no pretence to socialism, even of the 'African' variety once patronized explained by the movement's character as a coalition of various anti-Portuguese interests. But as a result, Frelimo has undergone a serious split from which its present leaders claim to have emerged strengthened.

Frelimo is almost ten years It held its first congress in September 1962, in the wake of the brutal repression of African strikers by the Portuguese colonial authorities. Strikers in Lourenço Marques, the capital were gunned down by troops when they demonstrated basic democratic rights. This followed the killing of some 500 demonstrators in the Cabo Delgado province at Mueda in the far N.

The movement's early cadres received training in military and technical questions in Tanzania and Algeria and after two years of preparation decided to launch armed actions against the colonial rulers.

Its original force of 250 armed men infiltrated into the provinces of Cabo Delgado, Niassa, Tete and Zambesia. The movement was to go deep into the country and establish base areas, winning over the local people to the aims of the movement and carrying out systematic propaganda against the Portuguese.

Recruits In this way, Frelimo won recruits and a firm basis of popular support. Now the movement claims 'several tens of thousands' of fighters-perhaps 10,000 under arms and many others waiting for acquire the means to fight.

In its base areas, its cadres wage the battle against illiteracy - by teaching a common language, Portuguese - and do ment. Things came to a head with the death of its founder, Eduardo Mondlane, killed by a bomb which was almost certainly posted to him by Portuguese security agents.

Mondlane, expelled as a student from S Africa for his political activities and hounded out of university in Lisbon, finished his education in the United States where he became a university teacher. He was elected the movement's president at the first Frelimo congress.

His assassination in February 1969, set off a full-blown leadership struggle which brought to a head long-standing differences between factions in the moveAs one Frelimo central comsubstantial land-owner and merchant, Cabandame organized the execution a tribunal appointed by the Frelimo leaders to investigate charges that he was profiteering at the peasants' expense.

He later defected to the Portuguese and may have played a part in the assassination of Mondlane, who was killed shortly after Cabandame's defection.

But Mondlane's death only served to bring the basic split to the fore. The spokesman of the movement's most opportunist wing, the Rev Uriah Simango, a Lutheran priest, became one of a triumvirate set up to lead Frelimo after Mondlane's death. Left: Frelimo's military commander, Samora Machel with recruits. Above: Girl recruits in Niassa Province. for a while with only nominal status, before finally breaking with Frelimo and leaving Tanzania to found a splinter moveHe is now in the United States seeking . support for a policy of negotiations with the Portuguese. The sharp struggle at the top appears to have strengthened the Frelimo organization on the ground. In 1970 it was able to withstand a major Portuguese offensive in which 35,000 soldiers were used to try and drive the