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concentrating most of our attention, organising the centres of revolutionary instruction, using our political activists and the political commissars who work either with the population or with the guerrillas, specifically in order to change the way of examining problems, attitudes to life and to offer new perspectives to our people. There is, for example, the structures of traditional organisation with tra: ditional chiefs who were all powerful dictators. This structure was to a certain extent broken by colonialism, but some chiefs were kept to collect taxes and recruit forced labour. These chiefs were called Sobas and Sobetas. We still have traditional organisation in the occupied areas, differences between ethnic groups which although not fighting each other do maintain a certain rivalry and certain differences in social life. And when, we the MPLA, want to lead the way to a single nation of the whole people, we must make a considerable effort for everybody to understand that we are integrated within a political unit which cannot be split into tribal groups. On the other hand we have a very underdeveloped society, a society where industry almost does not yet exist, a society which lives virtually from day to day without seeing the progress the rest of world is making. Because of the colonialists we were very isolated from the world. It was them who kept us in this isolation which thereby helped them to keep quiet our war of independence. But in order to keep up with the pace of world development, it is necessary to raise the level of education, the level of political consciousness and also the concept of the nation. And therefore there must exist within each militant, within each Angolan, that new mentality. Education is a fundamental problem; more than 90 per cent of our people are illiterate. Those illiterate people were kept as such by the colonialists. Only after 1961, did the colonialists hurriedly start building schools to show the world that they were developing our country. Only recently have they built high schools and some secondary schools and technical schools, but the great majority of our people do not use these schools, and it is we the MPLA, who have to organise education for the people. We have set up primary schools, and since last year we h?ve had a secondary school and gradually we are introducing technical instruction, professional preparation for our young people. This is one of the aspects of national reconstruction to which we pay a great deal of attention, that is, making men conscious and aware, men aware of the necessity of defending what we are gaining at the cost of our blood - independence. After independence there will of course still be much work to make our country a modern state. We must maintain a high revolutionary mobilisation of all the people in order to undertake the important tasks required for the development of the country. We must not think that with independence everything will come. It will be necessary to work, and work hard, greater and greater efforts will be needed to preserve the conquests of the present struggle and to advance further. In material terms, obviously to reconstruct means to establish industries, to increase the expansion of the cultivated areas, to train the workers for new tasks. It means to organise the administration of the populations, to have well established organised machinery to direct the whole struggle, a struggle which has many forms and which therefore presents many problems requiring daily attention. But I stress again, that for us the essential is the reconstruction of man by man himself, the fundamental factor of our revolution. Q: Enemy action in Mozambique has been directed towards ((winning over» the people in the war zones in three ways. First, brutal repression to intimidate them: second, their concentration in strategic hamlets: and, third, promises of political and economic privileges and advantages. What are the main enemy tactics towards the people in Angola? A: As far as the people are concerned, the enemy acts in Angola precisely as he acts in Mozambique, using the same tactics and with the same strategic goals. They have formed units which are called ((Special Groups)) to fight against us. They have tried to corrupt our people by offering them better standards of living than they had before. They have tried to offer positions in the civil service, much better than those offered before the war. They have tried to foster among our people the idea that sooner or later Portugal will leave Angola and there will be autonomy. All of us know the meaning of Marcelo Caetano's proposal which pretends to change the constitution in favour of a greater autonomy for the colonies. This is a guise the Portuguese use. They use material and moral corruption on the one hand, ond on the other hand they repress the people with total violence. As regards repression of the people, there is a distinct difference in their actions now compared with the beginning of the war. At the beginning of the war, the Portuguese used to massacre, destroy everything. They used an indiscriminate scorched earth policy. Today they do not destroy everything immediately, but investigate first what may be of use to them. Thus, if they attack a village, they do not destroy everything in it immediately. First of all they arrest some and take others to the strategic hamlet, and only then do they act, and with a great violence, committing atrocities, killing those who show themselves firm patriots, who do not give in to their methods of corruption. And the colonialists keep the other part of the population under their domination, their control, so that they can use them against the patriotic forces. Sometimes former guerrillas and members of the movement after passing through this process of corruption betray the organisation and give information not only on the location of bases, but also on the structure of the organisation itself. This does not happen often, but it must be emphasised that it does happen sometimes, thus a constant awareness of conspiracy must be maintained in our organisation so that we are not undermined by the weaker elements in our struggle, those who are politically weaker, or who have the spirit of betrayal. The enemy uses these methods, but we observe with pride that in the case of the strategic hamlets, for example, called "Ndandandas" by our people, they cannot keep these for any length of time. In the beginning they used to give enough food and good means of life to the people in these strategic hamlets. But now they lack these means. The Portuguese are embarrassed by the population which they have to gather around themselves to protect their headquarters. For the people are in fact put there to protect the military installations, not to be protected by them. And so there is lack of food. Yet at the same time in our zones our people are much better dressed than the people who live in the "Ndandandas" — who have to come to our fields to get some cassava or to hunt in areas which we control. Thus a large proportion of those who are captured by the Portuguese Special Commandos in helicopters to go and live in the Ndandandas, immediately go back to a free life in the independent territory of Angola - not only because living conditions are better, but because their patriotism forces them to return to the areas where the people exercise control. In this way the situation in Mozambique and Angola is similar. Moreover, there is also a great similarity in the attitudes of the people who are fighting for their independence in Angola and Mozambique - their firm determination to win their freedom. 6
Object Description
Title | Mozambique revolution, no. 49 (1971 Oct.-Dec.) |
Description | Contents: Editorial - FRELIMO's visit to socialist Asia (p. 1); War communique - A military report (p. 3); Angola: Facets of the freedom struggle - An interview with MPLA's president (p. 5); The growth of a new culture - FRELIMO at a Unesco seminar (p.10); Images of the visit to the socialist Asia (p.12); Our internationalist duty (p.14); Visitors in free Mozambique - Comments on FRELIMO's activities by foreigners (p.15); Sowing the seeds of liberation - Directives issued by FRELIMO's president for the new production cycle (p. 20). |
Subject (lcsh) |
Nationalism -- Mozambique Self-determination, National Mozambique -- History Portugal -- Politics and government -- 1933-1974 |
Geographic Subject (Country) | Mozambique |
Geographic Subject (Continent) | Africa |
Geographic Coordinates | -18.6696821,35.5273467 |
Coverage date | 1960/1971-10 |
Creator | Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) |
Publisher (of the Original Version) | Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO). Department of Information |
Place of Publication (of the Origianal Version) | Dar Es Salaam, U.R. of Tanzania |
Publisher (of the Digital Version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
Date issued | 1971-10/1971-12 |
Type |
texts images |
Format | 28 p. |
Format (aat) | newsletters |
Language | English |
Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
Part of collection | Emerging Nationalism in Portuguese Africa, 1959-1965 |
Part of subcollection | Mozambique Collection |
Rights | The University of Southern California has licensed the rights to this material from the Aluka initiative of Ithaka Harbors, Inc., a non-profit Delaware corporation whose address is 151 East 61st Street, New York, NY 10021 |
Physical access | Original archive is at the Boeckmann Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies. Send requests to address or e-mail given. Phone (213) 821-2366; fax (213) 740-2343. |
Repository Name | USC Libraries Special Collections |
Repository Address | Doheny Memorial Library, Los Angeles, CA 90089-0189 |
Repository Email | specol@usc.edu |
Filename | CENPA-347 |
Description
Title | CENPA-347~08 |
Filename | CENPA-347~08.tiff |
Full text | concentrating most of our attention, organising the centres of revolutionary instruction, using our political activists and the political commissars who work either with the population or with the guerrillas, specifically in order to change the way of examining problems, attitudes to life and to offer new perspectives to our people. There is, for example, the structures of traditional organisation with tra: ditional chiefs who were all powerful dictators. This structure was to a certain extent broken by colonialism, but some chiefs were kept to collect taxes and recruit forced labour. These chiefs were called Sobas and Sobetas. We still have traditional organisation in the occupied areas, differences between ethnic groups which although not fighting each other do maintain a certain rivalry and certain differences in social life. And when, we the MPLA, want to lead the way to a single nation of the whole people, we must make a considerable effort for everybody to understand that we are integrated within a political unit which cannot be split into tribal groups. On the other hand we have a very underdeveloped society, a society where industry almost does not yet exist, a society which lives virtually from day to day without seeing the progress the rest of world is making. Because of the colonialists we were very isolated from the world. It was them who kept us in this isolation which thereby helped them to keep quiet our war of independence. But in order to keep up with the pace of world development, it is necessary to raise the level of education, the level of political consciousness and also the concept of the nation. And therefore there must exist within each militant, within each Angolan, that new mentality. Education is a fundamental problem; more than 90 per cent of our people are illiterate. Those illiterate people were kept as such by the colonialists. Only after 1961, did the colonialists hurriedly start building schools to show the world that they were developing our country. Only recently have they built high schools and some secondary schools and technical schools, but the great majority of our people do not use these schools, and it is we the MPLA, who have to organise education for the people. We have set up primary schools, and since last year we h?ve had a secondary school and gradually we are introducing technical instruction, professional preparation for our young people. This is one of the aspects of national reconstruction to which we pay a great deal of attention, that is, making men conscious and aware, men aware of the necessity of defending what we are gaining at the cost of our blood - independence. After independence there will of course still be much work to make our country a modern state. We must maintain a high revolutionary mobilisation of all the people in order to undertake the important tasks required for the development of the country. We must not think that with independence everything will come. It will be necessary to work, and work hard, greater and greater efforts will be needed to preserve the conquests of the present struggle and to advance further. In material terms, obviously to reconstruct means to establish industries, to increase the expansion of the cultivated areas, to train the workers for new tasks. It means to organise the administration of the populations, to have well established organised machinery to direct the whole struggle, a struggle which has many forms and which therefore presents many problems requiring daily attention. But I stress again, that for us the essential is the reconstruction of man by man himself, the fundamental factor of our revolution. Q: Enemy action in Mozambique has been directed towards ((winning over» the people in the war zones in three ways. First, brutal repression to intimidate them: second, their concentration in strategic hamlets: and, third, promises of political and economic privileges and advantages. What are the main enemy tactics towards the people in Angola? A: As far as the people are concerned, the enemy acts in Angola precisely as he acts in Mozambique, using the same tactics and with the same strategic goals. They have formed units which are called ((Special Groups)) to fight against us. They have tried to corrupt our people by offering them better standards of living than they had before. They have tried to offer positions in the civil service, much better than those offered before the war. They have tried to foster among our people the idea that sooner or later Portugal will leave Angola and there will be autonomy. All of us know the meaning of Marcelo Caetano's proposal which pretends to change the constitution in favour of a greater autonomy for the colonies. This is a guise the Portuguese use. They use material and moral corruption on the one hand, ond on the other hand they repress the people with total violence. As regards repression of the people, there is a distinct difference in their actions now compared with the beginning of the war. At the beginning of the war, the Portuguese used to massacre, destroy everything. They used an indiscriminate scorched earth policy. Today they do not destroy everything immediately, but investigate first what may be of use to them. Thus, if they attack a village, they do not destroy everything in it immediately. First of all they arrest some and take others to the strategic hamlet, and only then do they act, and with a great violence, committing atrocities, killing those who show themselves firm patriots, who do not give in to their methods of corruption. And the colonialists keep the other part of the population under their domination, their control, so that they can use them against the patriotic forces. Sometimes former guerrillas and members of the movement after passing through this process of corruption betray the organisation and give information not only on the location of bases, but also on the structure of the organisation itself. This does not happen often, but it must be emphasised that it does happen sometimes, thus a constant awareness of conspiracy must be maintained in our organisation so that we are not undermined by the weaker elements in our struggle, those who are politically weaker, or who have the spirit of betrayal. The enemy uses these methods, but we observe with pride that in the case of the strategic hamlets, for example, called "Ndandandas" by our people, they cannot keep these for any length of time. In the beginning they used to give enough food and good means of life to the people in these strategic hamlets. But now they lack these means. The Portuguese are embarrassed by the population which they have to gather around themselves to protect their headquarters. For the people are in fact put there to protect the military installations, not to be protected by them. And so there is lack of food. Yet at the same time in our zones our people are much better dressed than the people who live in the "Ndandandas" — who have to come to our fields to get some cassava or to hunt in areas which we control. Thus a large proportion of those who are captured by the Portuguese Special Commandos in helicopters to go and live in the Ndandandas, immediately go back to a free life in the independent territory of Angola - not only because living conditions are better, but because their patriotism forces them to return to the areas where the people exercise control. In this way the situation in Mozambique and Angola is similar. Moreover, there is also a great similarity in the attitudes of the people who are fighting for their independence in Angola and Mozambique - their firm determination to win their freedom. 6 |
Archival file | Volume22/CENPA-347~08.tiff |