SEPTEMBER
A message from the
President of FRELIMO
to the fighters and
people of Mozambique
Comrades,
Today we are celebrating our Revolution's most important
day. We are celebrating the day on which our armed struggle
for national liberation started. We are celebrating the day
which enabled us to become what we are: a conscious and
united people, a people with a country, a people creating a
new society through struggle and sacrifice.
The companies that are disappearing, the machila that is beginning to be forgotten, the administration, the palmatoria
the colonialist taxes, the forced labour — all that started to die
on 25 September.
The schools and hospitals, the co-operatives — everything that
has been created and is growing in our country was born on
25 September.
It is true that most of our country is still not free, is owned by
the companies. It is true that most of our people are still not
free, are enslaved people sold to the mines in South Africa,
imprisoned people held in concentration camps, humiliated
people receiving orders from foreigners.
All this is true, what we have accomplished and what remains
to be done.
And we already know, we can already measure, the concrete
and real advantages that the struggle is bringing to our people;
this enables us to understand the direction in which we are
heading.
The seventh year of war is ending, the eighth is beginning. A
year is ending in which our struggle has been consolidated and
expanded. With the seventh year, our certainty of victory
grew and the confidence in our political line grew as well.
With the eighth year, our freedom will become even more real,
just as the ignominous defeat of Portuguese colonialism will
become more real.
In 1970, the enemy tried to win a quick victory and met with
defeat. This year, 1971, they have tried to be more flexible,
less adventurous, they have attempted to combine crimes
against our people with political manoeuvres aimed at sowing
confusion. This too has failed.
After the end of the dry season, our fighters south of the Zambezi had created the conditions for expanding the armed
struggle. By the end of the year, the flames of war had already attained the southern bank of the Zambezi. Nothing
succeeded in preventing the spread of the war, neither the
aircraft criss-crossing the Zambezi, the constant patrols along
the banks, the driving out of the population, the destruction
of boats, nor the murder of peasants and fishermen crossing
the river in the course of their daily work.
South of the axis Montepuez — Porto Amelia, south of
Mecanhelas, along the outer limits of the eastern zone of
Niassa, south and east of the Zambezi, the great fire which
consumes colonialism is spreading, touching even more the
enemy nerve centres. Faced with this expanding struggle, the
enemy are trying to reorganise the deployment of their forces,
evacuating certain positions, reinforcing others, intensifying
bombing raids with more than two dozen aircraft and stepping
up their helicopter incursions into our areas.
As a result of the constant attacks against their posts, as a result of the ever greater losses they are suffering, the enemy are
now withdrawing from certain strategic posts. But this situation must not create a feeling of victory, leading to a superiority complex and a slackening of vigilance and discipline among
the fighters and people. We must always remember that the
enemy's withdrawal from certain strategic positions does not
mean that they are withdrawing from Mozambique. The
enemy are withdrawing because our struggle is advancing. By
withdrawing they are enabling us to gain ground but, in so
doing, they would also have us believe that they have become
weak, so as to promote the growth of ambition, division and
corruption, making some think that we are already independent just because the enemy have already evacuated their
region, as if an arm could live severed from its body. This
situation in which the enemy are stepping up their political
manoeuvres at the same time as evacuating certain regions is
one that cadres need to seriously study.
This year, because the enemy armed forces suffered heavy
reverses, because the combat zone expanded and because our
forces maintained a consistent offensive, despite all their intentions and threats, the enemy were incapable of launching
any large-scale ground offensive. Hence the intensification of
their criminal and barbarous acts against the people: massacres
of the population, bombing raids, incursions against granaries
and cultivated plots, and the burning and looting of villages.
Portuguese terrorist action is being cynically combined with
psychological action aimed at leading the people astray with
political promises which are as demagogic as they are devoid of
content, like the promise of autonomy, for example. This
situation, this new tactic of enemy duplicity, requires that
we analyse the present situation.