Abstract
The struggle of Mozambique’s ruling elites to resolve the dilemma posed by dependency upon neighbouring South Africa is the principal theme of modern Mozambican political history. This motif resounds across a hundred years of exploitation and development, repression and revolution —linking the machinations of Portuguese nationalists bent on wresting the colony from foreign domination with that of Frelimo militants committed to grafting foreign ideologies onto African soil. The conflicts which resulted from this struggle not only gave rise to economic dislocation, social strife and war in Mozambique but ultimately were to set the stage for comprehensive international intervention.
The Province Mozambique now lives almost exclusively on the Lourenço Marques railway and the profits of (African) emigration to South Africa.
Governor-General of Mozambique in 19091
This poor country will soon be turned into nothing but a corridor.
Mozambican government minister in 19902
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Notes
Quoted in J. Hammond, Portugal and Africa 1815–1910: A Study in Uneconomic Imperialism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966) p. 294.
Quoted in Kenneth Hermele, Mozambique Crossroads: Economics and Politics in the Era of Structural Adjustment, Christian, Michelsen Institute Report, Bergen: May 1990, p. 37.
Eric Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa 1488–1600 (Johannesburg: Struik, 1973) p. 1;
A.H. de Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal, 2 vols (New York: Columbia UP, 1972) pp. 232–3.
see A.F. Issacman, The Africanization of a European Institution: The Zambesi Prazos, 1750–1902 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1972);
Malyn Newitt, Portuguese Settlement on the Zambesi (London: Longman, 1973);
E.A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (London: 1975).
Barry Munslow, Mozambique: The Revolution and Its Origins (London: Longman, 1983) pp. 28–9;
D. Abshire and M. Samuels (eds), Portuguese Africa: A Handbook (London: Praeger, 1969) pp. 75–6.
A. Issacman and Issacman, B. Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983) p. 25.
Malyn Newitt, Portugal in Africa: The Last Hundred Years (London: Hurst, 1981) pp. 83–5.
Leroy Vail, ‘Mozambique’s Chartered Companies: The Rule of the Feeble’, Journal of African History, vol. 17, 1976, p. 396.
Leroy Vail and Landeg White, Capitalism and Colonialism in Mozambique (London: Heinemann, 1980) pp. 113–14, 153;
Vail and White, op. cit., p. 113.
James Duffy, Portuguese Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959) p. 333.
For the background to the development of this relationship, see Simon Katzenellenbogen, South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, Railways and Trade in the Making of a Relationship (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1982).
Thomas Henriksen, Mozambique: A History (London: Rex Collings, 1978), p. 120.
K. Middlemas, Cabora Bassa: Engineering and Politics in Southern Africa (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1975) p. 27.
kept Mozambique ‘an economic colony — a Bantustan, almost — of South Africa’ (Newitt, 1981, op. cit., pp. 184–5; also see Vail, op. cit., 394–5).
A. Smith, ‘Antonio Salazar and the Reversal of Portuguese Colonial Policy’, Journal of African History, vol. 15, 1974, pp. 663–7.
American University, Mozambique: A Country Study (Washington, DC: US Government, 1985), p. 43.
(See also John Paul, Memoirs of a Revolution (London: Penguin, 1975).)
See also Barry Munslow’s Mozambique: The Revolution and Its Origins (London: Longman, 1983) p. 47.
See Thomas Henriksen, Revolution and Counterrevolution: Mozambique’s War of Independence, 1964–1974 (New York: Greenwood, 1983).
See also Eduardo Mondlane, The Struggle for Mozambique (London: Penguin, 1969) for an insider’s account on Frelimo’s formation and its early years.
For documents from that era see Ronald Chilcote, Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa (Stanford, CA: Hoover, 1972).
See Douglas Porch, The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution (Great Britain: Redwood Burn, 1977).
Colin Legum (ed.), Africa Contemporary Record: Annual Survey and Documents 1975–1976 (London: Rex Collings, 1976) B274–B278.
David Ottaway and M. Ottaway, Afrocommunism (New York: Africana, 1981) p. 76.
H. Dolny, ‘The Challenge of Agriculture’ in John Saul (ed.), A Difficult Road: The Transition to Socialism in Mozambique (New York: Monthly Review 1985) pp. 213–2.
Eric Adams, ‘Mozambique: Reform Policy — A Way Out of the Crisis’, Aussenpolitik, vol. 39, 1988, p. 184.
J. Quan, Mozambique: A Cry for Peace (Oxford: Oxfam, June 1987), p. 10.
World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth (Washington, DC: World Bank 1989), pp. 24–5;
Economist Intelligence Unit, Quarterly Review of Tanzania, Mozambique, No.1 (London: Business International, 1984), p. 19.
Ken Flower, Serving Secretly: Rhodesia’s CIO Chief on Record (Johannesburg: Galago, 1987) pp. 300–2.
James Barber and John Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990) pp. 180–1, 215.
Robert Jaster, The Defence of White Power: South African Foreign Policy Under Pressure (London: Macmillan, 1988) pp. 119–20;
Deon Geldenhuys, Some Foreign Policy Implications of South Africa’s ‘Total National Strategy’ (Braamfontein: South African Institute of International Relations, March 1981), pp. 23–4.
Michael Radu, ‘Mozambique: Non-Alignment or New Dependence?’, Current History, March 1984, p. 132.
Tom Young, ‘The MNR/Renamo: External and Internal Dynamics’, African Affairs, 1990, p. 499.
For a comprehensive study of Renamo see Alex Vines, Renamo: Terrorism in Mozambique (London: James Currey, 1991).
For additional material on Renamo see Margaret Hall, ‘The Mozambican National Resistance Movement (Renamo): A Study in the Destruction of a Country’, Africa, vol. 60, 1990, pp. 39–63.
M. Bowen, ‘Economic Crisis in Mozambique’, Current History, May 1990, pp. 217–18.
Economist Intelligence Unit, Mozambique Country Profile 1990–1991 (London: Business International, 1990), p. 35.
See G. Erasmus, The Accord of Nkomati: Context and Content (Braamfontein: South African Institute of International Affairs, October 1984) pp. 15–21.
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, No. 98, 13 February 1987.
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, 3 December 1987;
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, No. 108, 2 July 1987.
A. Gumende, ‘Making Ends Meet in Maputo’, Southern African Economist, April/May 1989, p. 15.
Government of Mozambique, Update of the Emergency Situation in Mozambique and Provisional Assessment of 1991 Relief Needs, prepared by the Government of Mozambique in collaboration with the United Nations, December 1990, pp. 1–3.
See reference to Jacinto Veloso’s visit to Cape Town in August 1987 in Mozambique Information Office, News Review, No. 130, 26 May 1988.
L. Maveneka, ‘Marching with Pretoria’, Southern African Economist, April/May 1989, p. 18.
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, Nos. 149/50, 16 March 1989.
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, No. 158, 13 July 1989.
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, No. 120, 21 December 1987.
P. Machungo, ‘Mozambique: Looking in New Directions’, New Era, October 1989, p. 27;
Mozambique Information Office, News Review, Nos. 183/4, 2 August 1990.
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© 2001 Chris Alden
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Alden, C. (2001). Colonialism, Socialism and War: the Making of Mozambique. In: Mozambique and the Construction of the New African State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230500945_1
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