The Crystalization of a Struggle for Freedom - Page 2
The Mozambique Liberation Front or FRELIMO therefore, is the organization called upon to shake up this whole situation and move the people
towards not only independence, but also establish a system of government
which will steadily direct them towards a mere prosperous, just and
happy life.
It might be necessary for me to give a brief outline of the geography and history of our country in order to enable some of you to -understand what FRELIMO is facing.
Mozambique is a long coastal strip of land, v/ith a coast-line of
about 1,700 miles, a north to south stretch of 1,250 miles and an
average east to west width of 400 miles, v/ith a maximum of 718 miles
in the Tete area, and a minimum of 56 miles in the Lourenco Marques area.
Most of the country is within the coastal strip which is rather low and
warm, while a small proportion falls in the plateau of the interior
which has a comfortably mild climate.  While the interior plateau is a
grassland in which thousands of wild animals graze, the coastland
alternates between the thickly forested north and the progressively
thinning bushland of the south, with patches of sandy areas here and
there.  Agriculturally the north and the centre are fertile and rich in
minerals of all kinds, including bauxite, oil, coal, cobalt, and gold.
The population for Mozambique is estimated at 7 million, including
100,000 Europeans, 35,000 Asians, 25?000 Coloured and the rest being
of the Negroid stock.  The mqst densely populated areas are the north
and the centre, with an overall average density of 9 persons per square
mile.
For many hundreds of years before the Portuguese colonialists
occupied our country our people were organized in various linguistic
and ethnic kingdoms whose economic base was mainly agricultural, with
livestock as the mainstay.
The colonial history of Mozambique dates from the end of the 15th
century when, in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached an island called Mozambique.  However, for the next 300 years the relationship between Portugal
and Mozambique was mainly commercial, for Portugal's main interest was
India and the Far East.  At that time the principal trading centres in
East Africa were Pate, Malindi, Mombasa, Kilwa, Zanzibar, Pemba, the
island of Mozambique and Sofala, all of which were populated by a combined population of Arabs and Africans, with a sprinkling of Persians
and Indians.  Also at that time, most of East Africa was part of an
Indian Ocean commercial complex in which Arab, Indian and African goods
were traded back and forth by middlemen v/ho spoke a language very
similar to the present-day Swahili.  By the middle of the 17th century
the Portuguese had been able to weaken, if not altogether destroy, the
power of the various sheiks and princes who separately controlled the
political and economic life of the coastal people.  However, Portuguese