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WAR REVIEW
On the 23 December, 1971, during an
inspection tour of Mozambique, the Portuguese minister of the Navy, Admiral
Pereira Crespo stated on his arrival in
Nampula that he was very happy to visit
the «military capital)). It was only a few
months later, for the stated reason that
changes had taken place in the military
situation, that the headquarters of the
general staff of the armed forces was
transferred from Nampula, in the north,
to Beira, in the centre of the country.
This small incident shows the extent to
which improvisation and disarray are
prevailing within the colonialist high command in the face of what a South African
journalist has called «the disturbing rapidity)) with which the armed struggle is
progressing in Mozambique.
Indeed, one of the predominant features
of the present situation is the spread of
the struggle to new regions towards the
south, both in Niassa and Cabo Delgado
and in Tete. In this latter province the
armed struggle, which was launched south
of the Zambezi River at the end of 1970,
has now spread to the whole province.
What is more, the extensive and far-
reaching nature of the struggle in this
province created the support bases needed
for the launching of armed struggle in
yet another province.    It was on 25th
July this year that the FRELIMO fighters
carried out the first operations in the
central province of Manica e Sofala,
during which posts were destroyed, arms
captured and members of the population
liberated from strategic villages into which
they had been herded. This advance of
the struggle is changing the strategic
situation in the whole of the region. In
fact, the Portuguese system of defence is
based on the establishment of boundary
lines south of the fighting zones, roughly
following favourable natural obstacles.
In the centre-west of the country, the
most important line was the one running
along the Zambezi river. Raised to the
level of a major line of defence, not only
for Mozambique, but also for the whole
of White Southern Africa, the river zone
has been invested with a network of defence posts aimed at preventing the FRELIMO  fighters  from crossing the river.
They cleared large strips of land along
the river at spots thought likely to serve
as crossing points for the guerrillas. They
destroyed all the boats of the population
and established fixed crossing points controlled by them. The ultimate goal of
this plan is the construction of the Cahora Bassa dam, which we have on countless occasions denounced for its avowed
aim   of  creating   conditions  for  white
settlement, which would be used as a
human barrier against the expansion of
the armed struggle for liberation.
It is therefore not hard to understand thc
panic which seized the Portuguese command when they realised that FRELIMO
operations south of thc Zambezi were no
longer taking the form of sporadic operations but were showing continuity, and at
the same time meeting with the response
and growing involvement of the population. Their disarray was all the more
understandable in that the Portuguese
strategists found themselves confronted
with insurmountable contradictions arising out of the nature that armed action
assumed in Tete province. It is important
to analyse these factors.
In the first place, there were the actual
tactics adopted by the FRELIMO fighters
in this province.Taking into account the
high concentration of Portuguese troops
in this area, the guerrilla units adopted the
tactic of successively dividing up their
forces. Each time when, by the establishment of the struggle in a certain area,
the numerical strength of the fighting
group was increased through local mobilisation, it then sub-divided immediately
and a new group set off to operate in a
fresh zone. In this way, while stepping
up the number of operations and expanding the fighting area, the FRELIMO
units made all enemy counter-guerrilla
action impossible or ineffective, because
the many small units remained elusive.
This was all the more successful owing to
the very nature of the colonial presence
in Tete Province and the system of oppression and exploitation which provided
the nationalist forces with many targets.
Indeed, far more than Niassa and Cabo
Delgado provinces, Tete is one of thc
centres of settler economic exploitation
and therefore offers the FRELIMO forces
a wide field of action. We may take the
example of the Angonia area, which is
the major potato growing area in Mozambique. It was sufficient to step up sabotage operations along communication
lines in the region for potatoes to completely vanish from the markets in
Lourenco Marques. This situation has
deprived the Portuguese army of the
initiative and doomed it to undertaking
defensive actions at the economic centres
and along communication lines, in order
to protect the apparatus of exploitation
and to keep it running, for fear of losing
what is the very reason for the colonialist presence. Furthermore, the political
repercussions of armed action in this
province have been very great throughout
Mozambique, as these are  regions which