enemy - the Portuguese soldier; tools with which to teach
themselves and their children how to read and write;
tools with which to cure diseases, etc* One old man in
Niassa, who had walked for 12 days to come to the meeting
put it thus: "the hoe is a much more deadly enemyto the
Portuguese than a bazooka for with it you can feed thousands of freedom fighters*1'  The region of Niassa Province alone needs more than 3? 000 hoes, and the same
number of pangas and hatchets this year*
In both. Cabo Delgado and Niassa the organisation of
the masses is undergoing a revolution * In the old days,
before the armed struggle started, we used to depend on
the traditional structures, and leadership* Now an awareness has developed for the establishment of new institutions which put more stress on political devotion than
on traditional legitimacy of power* As we were discussing
problems with the various committees in the two regions
we became more and more aware of the need for some kind
of formal training of the leaders: training in politics,
administration and at least simple accounting in order
to enable the local officers to better direct the people*
Even though the two provinces are very rich in agricultural resources and their potential for production is
very high, the lack of trained agricultural officers
makes it difficult for our people to do more than just
scratch the surface of the land* When we tried to criticise them for not doing this or that, or for doing
wrongly this or that, they kept answering,"Why don't you
send us someone who knows how?11 Well, we had to keep
quiet for we knew that we had not yet produced trained
personnel in those fields of work which have practical
relevance to the struggle in Mozambique*
From reports of the district chairmen and secretaries who came to our meetimgs in both Cabo Delgado and
Niassa, and from reports of the freedom fighters in
these two provinces, it is clear that FRELIMO has managed to get the overwhelming majority of the masses on
its side and more than three-quarters of the land is
under the control of the liberation forces* The Portuguese forces are isolated in the few European towns and
garrisoned in special fortresses encircled by Africans
living in concentration camps*
As the Liberation Forces receive more and better
weapons and as they capture many more from the enemy himself, we must help the peasants with more simple agricultural tools with which to put our rich land under production, using modern methods of farming; we must train our
youth in our schools and abroad in those fields of knowledge which can be of direct and immediate use in the**/
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