EDITORIAL
building up victory
FRELIMO's great successes during the past few
months represent not merely the continued effectiveness of strategies and tactics developed over a much
longer period; equally important, they demonstrate
a qualitative advance in the nature of our struggle.
For these recent achievements have sprung from the
consolidation of a feeling of confidence among our
people and our fighters in the certainty of final victory. This is a subjective element, to be sure, but it
is an increasingly crucial one. Moreover, such confidence finds its basis in objective reality, in the concrete situation of our struggle.
One aspect of this reality is the great victories which
we achieved in 1971, the most dramatic of which
can be readily seen in the military field. Thus, during
1971, we killed about 2,900 enemy soldiers, destroyed 479 vehicles, shot down 4 aircraft and 5
helicopters, destroyed 27 bridges, attacked and destroyed 49 posts and camps, 6 trains and 14 boats.
These are statistical data of great importance, since
they indicate a substantial reduction in the human
and material forces of the enemy. If we then combine these losses in Mozambique with the decrease
in the population in Portugal itself, especially of those
who emigrate to other countries to escape the colonial wars abroad and misery at home, and combine
these also with other losses suffered by the colonial
forces in Angola and Guine, it becomes evident that
Portugal approaches a point where her human reserves will be exhausted. This at a time when our own
forces grow constantly as we liberate new zones.
By the end of 1970 we had already taken the war
south of the Zambezi river in Tete Province.    But
1971 saw the struggle spread, within a few months,
like wild-fire so that today it covers the whole of the
Province. As a result we are now attacking the enemy
at his most sensitive point - we are vitally affecting
his economy! Tete is our richest province in minerals,
yet a South African mining company, Comocmin, has
already withdrawn its workers from certain zones of
that province simply because it considered the Portuguese authorities incapable of ensuring the physical
security of the workers against the guerrillas. Others
will withdraw. And the confidence of foreign investors will be even more badly shaken.
Linked to this, and even more crucial, is a growing
failure of nerve on the part of the Portuguese themselves. Witness the complete failure in 1971 of the
colonialist plan of «building roads to win the war».
The Portuguese rested great hopes on this scheme,
even to the extent of appointing in 1971 an expert
in road-building to be governor-general of Mozambique. Yet a few months later the Portuguese themselves lost faith in the plan, finally admitting to themselves a fact that had been apparent for many months.
Of course our own experience had taught us, as the
enemy came belatedly to see, that roads, like pipe
lines and rail lines, are the most vulnerable of targets;
today we are certain that such roads will not be constructed.
Moreover, the disarray in the Portuguese camp has
been reinforced by those anti-colonial and anti-fascist forces who are organising themselves within
Portugal itself and who have begun to launch heavy
blows against the colonial war machine. And this in
turn  is  merely  one  among  a  number  of external