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EDITORIAL
Ame'rico Toma's, the President of the Republic of Portugal,
is "visiting" Mozambique.
This visit takes place v/hen the war in Angola and
Guinea has already begun,when the people of Mozambique are
organising an armed struggle.  This visit takes place when
the morale of the Portuguese people in the colonies is extremely
low due to the realising of the inevitability of the loss of
their positions, when the nationalist forces will give a final
blow to colonialism.
The Portuguese people in Mozambiqe are afraid.  They
are hurriedly organising themselves into militias, they arm
themselves, they intensify their repressive measures against
our African brothers.  They have fear because they know they
represent a dying colonialism, and it is against them that our
guns are pointed.
The visit of Americo Tomas to Mozambique has, in this
context a clear purpose:  to uplift the morale of the Portuguese people settled there;  to remind them that the Portuguese
government is with them in defence of their interests and their
privileges;  to make them conscious of the presence of the
35,000 Portuguese soldiers in Mozambique and of ohe 17,600,000
dollars spent to finance that army.
Such a manoeuvre is well known, to send the head of
the colonialist State to the colonies in a time of crisis.
Through it, the colonists feel nearer   the protection of the
mother country, and the danger of the emancipation of the people
appears remote.  They become more active in repression, more
decided in exploitation, more rooted in "their" colony.
This visit is made with fanfare.  Journalists from
friendly nations were invited, prepared to see and to report
only what the Portuguese wanted them to see and to report.
Popular masses were mobilised to participate in
demonstrations.  The masses let themselves be mobilised.  They
went to the places they were told to go to, they applauded
when the signal to applaud was given, they even shouted vivas
to Portugal and Salazar when there were ordered to do so.
The people know what would be the consequence of
open refusal.  The massacres they have seen, the imprisonments
and the tortures that daily take place among them - often only
because the authorities suspected that one or another of them
was a 'nationalist1, the deportations that depended exclusively
on the will of the administrators.  All those events check the
people from open opposition - and make them go.
Moreover, the man that is "visiting" us today does not
have an active voice in the determination of the colonial policy
Of Portugal, though he has the title of President of the Republic.
/In...