ling racist troops from racist South Africa and racist Rhodesia
in Mozambique. Portugal, which is always screaming that our
struggle is financed and sustained from abroad, is not only
bringing mercenaries to Mozambique, but is also begging its
imperialist masters for money and aid.
Two countries have already sent their troops to Mozambique:
South Africa and Rhodesia. Only this April, the Rhodesian
government itself announced the death of its soldiers and destruction of its vehicles during operations in Mozambique. Aircraft and helicopters from these two countries are taking part
in countless operations against our forces. Foreign mercenaries are being used in our country. Foreign military advisers
are coming to Mozambique disguised as civilian technicians.
Showing consistent contempt for the interests of the peoples
of Mozambique, Angola and Guine, contempt for the Portuguese people's opposition and contempt for African and world
opinion, NATO is stepping up its criminal aid to Portugal. The
leaders of world imperialism — the United States, Federal
Germany, Britain and France — are no longer seeking hypocritical pretexts, but openly supplying Portugal with money and
arms, publicly training new war criminals and even sending
military advisers, as they did most recently last June. The
United States, France, Britain and South Africa are ringing
Mozambique with naval and air bases, on the pretext of defending the Cape route, which is threatened by no one more
than imperialism. This growing internationalisation of the
war of aggression against our people is aimed at prolonging the
war against Mozambique and at making our people capitulate
before the demands and manoeuvres of imperialism.
We are mobilised to fight and win a protracted people's war.
We are in a position increasingly to transform our growing
political consciousness into a material force which will crush
the enemy, no matter how powerful they may be. The unity
achieved among us, the dividing line that has been drawn between us and the reactionary elements, the clarification of our
political line and the purification that has taken place within
our ranks, have given our organisation new vigour, strengthening the masses' confidence in FRELIMO and the leadership,
making the people deeply aware of the objectives of the
struggle.
All this created the conditions for the masses to assume our
revolutionary ideology, that is, for them to transform correct
ideas into a material force, a material force which gave rise to
the vigilance which exposed infiltrated subversive agents, a
material force which has defeated the enemy's criminal offensives, a material force which has resulted in our present successes.
Finally, our enemy would like to foment subversion, to sow
confusion in order to divide, weaken and ultimately annihilate
us, and this is certainly their major aim. The terrorist campaign of bombing and slaughtering our people, the destruction
of crops, granaries, school and hospitals, the infiltration of
agents, are all aimed at intimidating the people, at robbing the
people of the initiative and rendering them passive, forcing
them to capitulate, obliging the people to seek exile abroad or
to accept being imprisoned in concentration camps. The
planes with loudspeakers, the millions of leaflets dropped
and the constant radio programmes are aimed solely at weakening the morale of the fighters and sowing confusion among
the cadres. This situation, the enemy's present intentions and
actions, clearly proves two things: that we are working correctly and that our struggle is steadily advancing.
But this positive fact should not be a source of contentment.
We should not be filled with a feeling of victory. We should be
satisfied with the work done, but concerned about the work
still to be done.
Three provinces are at war, but six others are not. More than
a million Mozambicans are living in freedom, but another
seven million are enslaved. About a quarter of our territory
has been liberated, but three-quarters still has to be liberated.
There are still many unresolved problems in the liberated
areas. The medical care is not sufficient, the number of
schools is very far from meeting our needs and production
still falls short of meeting all the requirements of the people
and the war. We feel that there are still shortcominfs in our
political work among the masses, limitations in the <
ness of cadres and fighters and inadequacies in our
knowledge.
We are listing our weak points so as to locate the
order to treat them. Of course, if we look at our past weaknesses, we can certainly say that most of them have been eliminated. Yet if we look to the future, we will see that a lot
remains to be done.
We are entering our eighth year. During this year, we will have
to carry out three major tasks: step up work among the cadres,
expand our areas and strengthen our areas.
Cadres are decisive to the implementation of our political line,
our ideology. That is, those cadres who have already waged an
internal battle against the vices and shortcomings from the
past, those cadres who have already assumed our new mentality, our ideology, those who hold the people and the Revolution close to their hearts, who create new ideas and fresh
initiative through their work and who, among the masses and
fighters, are the most vital representatives of FRELIMO, its
objectives and methods.
Intensifying our work among the cadres means, in fact creating the conditions for stepping up ideological work among
the masses, to further unite the masses and make the war advance even more. Our task is to raise the cadres' level of political
consciousness and knowledge, uniting them even more with
the masses and the fighters. This can only be achieved
through the method of always combining the practice of combat and production with study, ensuring regular discussion,
criticism and self-criticism, not allowing them to fall into a
routine, ensuring study with practice.
We must continually democratise methods of leadership, so as
to reach decisions collectively and always avoid the use of
administrative methods to solve political problems. By doing
this work we will create favourable conditions for expanding
the combat zones. The more we advance into areas which are
vital to the enemy, the more difficult the fighting becomes,
the greater the abilities required of cadres and fighters and the
higher the degree of mass mobilisation and organisation needed.
By expanding the struggle and consolidating our areas, we
force the enemy to further disperse their forces and weaken
themselves. Our constant concern is to expand the struggle so
as to give freedom to more people.
During the tough year of victorious battles that we have had,
we gained very important successes. During the period from
June 1970 to July 1971, the FRELIMO fighters wiped out
1,507 enemy soldiers, destroyed 261 vehicles, shot down 2
aeroplanes and 1 helicopter, attacked 59 Portuguese posts and
destroyed 17 bridges and 4 trains.
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