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triotism? Why was alcoholism made widespread and prostitution and the disintegration of the family encouraged, and why were whole families removed from their home regions and forced to abandon their ancestral lands, their cattle, houses and few possessions? Why did all this happen in many places in our country, as the unmistakable mark of the Portuguese colonialists? Could this have been a sadistic manifestation of the evil genius of a people, the result of the bestial wickedness of a man or group of men? Let us not deceive ourselves about this. Portuguese colonialism was the form that imperialist domination assumed in our country, the exploitation of a whole people and their resources by foreign capitalism, both Portuguese and from other countries. It was in order to exploit our labour power that thousands of Mozambicans were enslaved and taken to the coasts of the Americas, where the few who arrived were sold as commodities. It was in order to exploit our sweat that the colonial administrators seized us and sent us into forced labour. It was in order to appropriate the wealth of our soil that entire regions were set aside for certain crops, such as cotton, which the people were forced to grow, dying of hunger while the big concessio- narv companies accumulated fabulous profits. It was in order to plunder our sub-soil that the big multinationals were granted concessions and mining facilities which they used to drain our country of its wealth. It was in order to keep our people subjected to its domination that colonialism tried — in some cases, particularly in the urban areas, with some success — to destroy our personality, sow division and create a slave mentality towards the foreigner. Assimilation was not merely the fascist caprice of a senile dictator, but was in fact mental enslavement to the foreigner in its purest form, a deliberate process of negating all the culture, history and traditions of our people. A man thus spiritually destroyed became a living corpse, a docile receptacle for the colonisers' way of thinking, acting and living. Religion, and especially the Catholic church, was a powerful factor in the cultural and human alienation of the Mozambican, to make him a docile instrument and object of exploitation, and smash any display of resistance in the name of Christian resignation. This is the heritage we are reaping today. A heritage of poverty and social and economic backwardness which the superficial beauty of the skyscrapers and grassy hills can never hide. One need only travel the length and breadth of our country, one need only know that the expression «from the Rovuma to the Maputo» is not a mere slogan for us, but a reality we feel in our flesh and blood, to understand that the age-old backwardness, disease, nakedness, hunger and ignorance are the bountiful fruit of the very tree that sprouted, grew and thrived together with colonialism, and which is known as exploitation. It is an evil and noxious tree which we have not as yet uprooted; it is a leech which is still sucking our blood, weakening our resistance, ability and intelligence. It is a python which is today dressing itself in the skin of the very same victim that it would have swallowed yesterday. We are not going to trace here the history of the national liberation process through the events which took place in it. But a recapitulation of the political process involved, albeit brief, is needed in order to understand the birth today of the People's Republic of Mozambique and the line that guides it. In Mozambican history, the fight for a revolutionary political line has been intrinsically bound up with the fight for unity. The struggle to defend and consolidate unity, the driving force of the liberation struggle, demanded permanent vigilance and action to neutralise and eliminate the manoeuvres of the enemy and of national opportunist and reactionary forces. This same struggle required a constant fight to clarify and develop FRELIMO's political line, especially as regards the definition of who is the enemy and the nature, methods and objectives of the fight. The successive dividing lines that were drawn within FRELIMO and the process of cleansing our ranks which was established, revealed in practice that the contradictions which arose reflected antagonistic interests, the contradiction between the working masses and a handful of new exploiters who wanted to take the place of the colonial bourgeoisie as an exploiting class. By defining racism, regionalism and tribalism as enemies to be fought against, just like colonialism, the Central Committee meeting held in October 1966 deprived the opportunists of the chief instruments of their anti- -people manoeuvres. The same meeting put an end to the contradiction between political militants and military militants by defining the struggle as a politico-military one, thus enabling the most vanguard elements to free themselves from the control of marginal reactionary elements. The historic decision to entrust the People's Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique with creating the Women's Detachment, women's instrument in their historic struggle for emancipation, broadened the base of mass support for our struggle and brought new decisive forces into the revolutionary fight. These ideological victories permitted the impetuous advance of the liberation struggle, the destruction of substantial enemy forces, the expansion of the armed struggle to Tete Province, the transformation of the semi-liberated areas into areas free from the system of exploitation and the beginning of the process of creating operational bases. Our politico-military victories having made Portuguese colonialism more desperate and increased the isolation of the strata among us with exploitative designs, the contradictions between the masses and the exploitative system became more marked. In a desperate attempt to stave off their inevitable defeat, the colonialist and reactionary forces joined forces and launched an offensive of manoeuvres and crimes against the correct political line headed by Comrade Eduardo Mondlane. The Second Congress of FRELIMO, which was held in the liberated areas of Niassa Province in June 1968, exposed and neutralised the reactionary forces and their ideas, enabling the broad masses to consolidate their unity behind FRELIMO's just and clear objectives. This fresh victory unleashed a wave of reactionary violence in which new national exploiters, now openly allied with the colonial-imperialist forces, started a process of physical liquidation of revolutionary militants and leaders, a process which culminated in the barbarous assassination of Comrade Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane on 3 February 1969. The assassination of the leader who embodied the national and revolutionary dimension of our struggle and the actual implementation of FRELIMO's line and practice, was aimed at decapitating the Mozambican Revolution 19
Object Description
Title | Mozambique revolution, no. 61 (1975 June 25) |
Title (Alternate) | Mozambique revolution - Independence - The People's Republic of Mozambique, no. 61, 25 june 1975 |
Description | Contents: Editorial: With our people's victory over colonialism and the establishment of the independent State of Mozambique, a new phase of struggle has begun (p. 1); FRELIMO delegations visit five socialist countries (p. 3); President Samora in Tanzania and Zambia, two bastions of support and solidarity during the armed struggle against Portuguese colonialism (p. 5); In the month which preceded independence our President toured Mozambique, holding meetings with the people in every province from the Rovuma to the Maputo. Pictures of the tour (p. 6); Independence was marked by celebrations and cultural activities throughout the country. Report and pictures (p. 9); The National Anthem of the People's Republic of Mozambique (p.13); Proclamation of Independence and the birth of the People's Republic of Mozambique. Full text (p.14); By decision of FRELIMO'S Central Committee Comrade Samora Moises Machel was entrusted with the task of President of the People's Republic of Mozambique. Declaration of the CC, read by Comrade Marcelino dos Santos, Vice-President of FRELIMO (p.17); The President's Message to the Nation on Independence Day (p.18); The Constitution of the PRM (p. 24); The first Council of Ministers of the (p. 28). Special independence issue. |
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 | -18.6696821,35.5273480 |
Coverage date | 1975-06-21/1975-06-29 |
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 | 1975-06-25 |
Type |
texts images |
Format | 32 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-360 |
Description
Title | CENPA-360~21 |
Filename | CENPA-360~21.tiff |
Full text | triotism? Why was alcoholism made widespread and prostitution and the disintegration of the family encouraged, and why were whole families removed from their home regions and forced to abandon their ancestral lands, their cattle, houses and few possessions? Why did all this happen in many places in our country, as the unmistakable mark of the Portuguese colonialists? Could this have been a sadistic manifestation of the evil genius of a people, the result of the bestial wickedness of a man or group of men? Let us not deceive ourselves about this. Portuguese colonialism was the form that imperialist domination assumed in our country, the exploitation of a whole people and their resources by foreign capitalism, both Portuguese and from other countries. It was in order to exploit our labour power that thousands of Mozambicans were enslaved and taken to the coasts of the Americas, where the few who arrived were sold as commodities. It was in order to exploit our sweat that the colonial administrators seized us and sent us into forced labour. It was in order to appropriate the wealth of our soil that entire regions were set aside for certain crops, such as cotton, which the people were forced to grow, dying of hunger while the big concessio- narv companies accumulated fabulous profits. It was in order to plunder our sub-soil that the big multinationals were granted concessions and mining facilities which they used to drain our country of its wealth. It was in order to keep our people subjected to its domination that colonialism tried — in some cases, particularly in the urban areas, with some success — to destroy our personality, sow division and create a slave mentality towards the foreigner. Assimilation was not merely the fascist caprice of a senile dictator, but was in fact mental enslavement to the foreigner in its purest form, a deliberate process of negating all the culture, history and traditions of our people. A man thus spiritually destroyed became a living corpse, a docile receptacle for the colonisers' way of thinking, acting and living. Religion, and especially the Catholic church, was a powerful factor in the cultural and human alienation of the Mozambican, to make him a docile instrument and object of exploitation, and smash any display of resistance in the name of Christian resignation. This is the heritage we are reaping today. A heritage of poverty and social and economic backwardness which the superficial beauty of the skyscrapers and grassy hills can never hide. One need only travel the length and breadth of our country, one need only know that the expression «from the Rovuma to the Maputo» is not a mere slogan for us, but a reality we feel in our flesh and blood, to understand that the age-old backwardness, disease, nakedness, hunger and ignorance are the bountiful fruit of the very tree that sprouted, grew and thrived together with colonialism, and which is known as exploitation. It is an evil and noxious tree which we have not as yet uprooted; it is a leech which is still sucking our blood, weakening our resistance, ability and intelligence. It is a python which is today dressing itself in the skin of the very same victim that it would have swallowed yesterday. We are not going to trace here the history of the national liberation process through the events which took place in it. But a recapitulation of the political process involved, albeit brief, is needed in order to understand the birth today of the People's Republic of Mozambique and the line that guides it. In Mozambican history, the fight for a revolutionary political line has been intrinsically bound up with the fight for unity. The struggle to defend and consolidate unity, the driving force of the liberation struggle, demanded permanent vigilance and action to neutralise and eliminate the manoeuvres of the enemy and of national opportunist and reactionary forces. This same struggle required a constant fight to clarify and develop FRELIMO's political line, especially as regards the definition of who is the enemy and the nature, methods and objectives of the fight. The successive dividing lines that were drawn within FRELIMO and the process of cleansing our ranks which was established, revealed in practice that the contradictions which arose reflected antagonistic interests, the contradiction between the working masses and a handful of new exploiters who wanted to take the place of the colonial bourgeoisie as an exploiting class. By defining racism, regionalism and tribalism as enemies to be fought against, just like colonialism, the Central Committee meeting held in October 1966 deprived the opportunists of the chief instruments of their anti- -people manoeuvres. The same meeting put an end to the contradiction between political militants and military militants by defining the struggle as a politico-military one, thus enabling the most vanguard elements to free themselves from the control of marginal reactionary elements. The historic decision to entrust the People's Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique with creating the Women's Detachment, women's instrument in their historic struggle for emancipation, broadened the base of mass support for our struggle and brought new decisive forces into the revolutionary fight. These ideological victories permitted the impetuous advance of the liberation struggle, the destruction of substantial enemy forces, the expansion of the armed struggle to Tete Province, the transformation of the semi-liberated areas into areas free from the system of exploitation and the beginning of the process of creating operational bases. Our politico-military victories having made Portuguese colonialism more desperate and increased the isolation of the strata among us with exploitative designs, the contradictions between the masses and the exploitative system became more marked. In a desperate attempt to stave off their inevitable defeat, the colonialist and reactionary forces joined forces and launched an offensive of manoeuvres and crimes against the correct political line headed by Comrade Eduardo Mondlane. The Second Congress of FRELIMO, which was held in the liberated areas of Niassa Province in June 1968, exposed and neutralised the reactionary forces and their ideas, enabling the broad masses to consolidate their unity behind FRELIMO's just and clear objectives. This fresh victory unleashed a wave of reactionary violence in which new national exploiters, now openly allied with the colonial-imperialist forces, started a process of physical liquidation of revolutionary militants and leaders, a process which culminated in the barbarous assassination of Comrade Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane on 3 February 1969. The assassination of the leader who embodied the national and revolutionary dimension of our struggle and the actual implementation of FRELIMO's line and practice, was aimed at decapitating the Mozambican Revolution 19 |
Archival file | Volume24/CENPA-360~21.tiff |