Cl^diiorial
Needs of the Liberated Areas.
I have just completed two visits to the liberated
areas of Mozambique; one in February and another in
May 1968c During the first of these two visits I was .
accompanied by a Swedish journalist, Mr. Anders Johansson
, who has since written four interesting articles,
published in, among others, the Daggens Nyheter of
Stockholm, telling of the exciting experiences which
he had with our liberation forces as well a^s with the
masses of one region of Cfebo Delgado Province.In the
second trip I visited the Lake Region of Niassa Province.
It is the policy of FRELIMO that the members of the
Central Committee should visit all regions of Mozambique
where political and military action is taking place in
order to acquaint themselves as much as possible with
the problems and difficulties which the masses and the
armed guerrillas are facing. In this way we are better
able to work out programmes of action which are more
realistically related to the actual situations. Eventually we hope to establish the national headquarters
of the movement within Mozambique itself, from where
it can be possible to control and direct all parts of
the liberation struggle.
Of the many problems which harass the freedom
fighters labouring within the country the most baffling
of them all is communications. So far the "bush teleg-
rammeM is the most efficient and most reliable system
of communication in usee Through the nbush telegramme"
all the movements of the enemy are detected and foiled.
It is through this traditional African system of communication that our people are able to live a more or less
normal life in a country in war, thus making it possible
for the guerrillas to ambush enemy forces as they try
to terrorise the civilian populations, while the people
go about cultivating the landf trading amongst themselves, the children attending school and the old taking
care of the many family chores at home.
At the meetings which we had in Cabo Delgado and
Niassa, in some of which there came more than 3,000
people, the people's cry was for all kinds of tools:
tools for tilling the land, such as hoes, pangas,
hatchets; tools with which to fight against the main../
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