11.
In agriculture, the people of Cabo Delgado are now
producing more cereals, beans, oil seeds and small livestock than ever before. In spite of the constant
harrassment from the Portugese bandits sent by the desperate and decadent colonial administration in Lisbon,
the people of Cabo Delgado are fighting courageously on
all three vital frontiers: the political, the military
and the economic♦Puring the year ending 1966", the people
of Cabo Delgado "cultivated more land than ever before,
and planted the fields with those crops which are of mone
direct use to the people than the cotton and sisal
plantations which the Portugese colonists used to impose
on them.
As it may again be recalled, Mzee Lazaro Kavandame
told this committee in 1965 that the Portugese tried
to force the people of Cabo Delgado to produce only
those cash crops which were of immediate value to the
Portugese European industries such as cotton and sisal.
In so doing, the cultivation of subsistence crops had
to be sacrificed, with the result that the people suffered
frequent periods of famine.
It v/as necessary that the people b.- politically
organised first, then a programme of military action
had to be instituted, in view of the refusal of.the
Portugese government to discuss the people's demand for
freedom. Now in that part of the country which severed its
relations with the Portugese administration, the people
are sufficiently free to remodel their economic life in
accordance with their needs and wishes. Now that the
people cultivate the land in order to produce v/hat they
need and want they work more and produce more.
Consequently, it can be said without fear of contradiction that, during the current agriculture,! year, the
people will reap more in both variety and tonnage that ■
ever before,- especially in the districts of Mocimboa
do Ruvuma, Mocomia, Nangade, Sagal, Muidumbe, Miteda,
Mutamba Dos Maeondes, Chia, Negumand,etc, in Cabo
Delgado Province.
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In order to encourage more agricultural activity in
this province, we devised various techniques, besides
organizing cooperatives. We had to redistribute as much
of the arable land as it v/as possible, to the people who
were eager to increase their cultivated acreage, including
those areas which the Portugese colonialists had set aside
for the exclusive cultivation of cotton and sisal. Also
it was necessary for FRELIMO to help the people in