Mozambique - not then but now

I first knew Mozambique through close contact in Dar-es-Salaam with Frelimo in the early and difficult years - the 1960s and the first-half of 1970s - of its armed liberation struggle. At that time Mozambique was seeking both to unite itself and to find political and military purchase against an intransigent and arrogant Portuguese colonialism. And Frelimo did indeed manage, by 1975, to lead the country to victory. Along the way, Frelimo succeeded in liberating zones in Mozambique adjacent to its rear bases in Tanzania and Zambia where it built a new social infrastructure of agricultural coops, schools and health services. Equally important, it forged an impressive corps of politically conscious and disciplined leadership cadres (see Cabaço 2001, 2009).|Then, in the very first year of Mozambique's independence, Frelimo also launched a bold experiment in socialist development. The intention: to implement a society-wide programme that would liberate the country's economic potential while also meeting the needs of the vast majority of Mozambique's population. The result? As Norrie MacQueen would firmly state of former 'Portuguese Africa', the initial plans of Portugal's 'guerrilla enemies' did offer 'a clear alternative to the cynical manipulation defined African governance in the 1970s and 1980s'.