• Mozambique:
• History

Mozambique - History

From the 10th century or earlier, Arabs and Indians traded with populations in the Mozambique area. Portuguese traders took prominence from the 15th century onwards, vying with Arabs and Swahili people along the coast in the commodity and slave trades. In time, Portuguese settlers came, establishing large estates. However, Portuguese control was fiercely resisted and by 1885, when the colonial powers met for the Berlin Conference to formalise colonial boundaries, Portugal only controlled coastal strongholds and a few scattered inland areas. After a series of military campaigns to subdue the African population, Portugal auctioned off land concessions. The Mozambique Company, the Niassa Company and the Zambezi Company, representing largely non-Portuguese (especially British) capital, established plantations in north and central Mozambique, using forced local labour. Many Mozambicans from the south found employment in South Africa’s expanding mining industry.

In 1951 Portugal declared Mozambique to be its overseas province and by 1970 some 200,000 Portuguese settlers – mainly peasant and working class people – had been brought to the country by the Portuguese government.

Nationalist groups began to form in the 1960s; three banned groups merged to form Frelimo, the Frente de Libertaçâo de Moçambique, which led a war of attrition to win independence. Frelimo’s first president, Dr Eduardo Mondlane, was assassinated by the Portuguese in 1969. After the 1974 revolution in Portugal, the new government soon started negotiations with the liberation movements in the overseas provinces on self-determination. Mozambique became independent on 25 June 1975. Some 90% of the Portuguese settlers left the country, creating a skills vacuum.

Frelimo, under Samora Machel, the country’s first president, came to power with strong socialist ideals and the aim of rapid development; initially it made considerable improvements in health and education. However, authority was rigidly centralised and some policies were heavy-handed – in particular, the forced creation of communal rural villages.

Civil war broke out in the late 1970s between the government and Renamo – the Resistência Nacional Moçambicana. Renamo was first supported by the white regime in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and later by South Africa. Commanding widespread support from the disaffected, Renamo was especially active in central provinces such as Sofala, Manica and Zambézia, and later on in the south. Through sabotage, Renamo managed to destroy much of the country’s economic and social infrastructure: roads and railways, schools and health centres, houses, shops and factories. Millions of Mozambicans fled as refugees into neighbouring countries, or became deslocados (the internally displaced people). More than 1 million people were killed. Machel was killed in a mysterious air crash in 1986 and was succeeded as president by Joaquim Chissano, the former foreign minister.