Portuguese Mozambique - Carnation Revolution and Independence

Carnation Revolution and Independence

As communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of Mozambique's independence. Regardless of whether it was exaggerated anti-Portuguese/anti-"Colonial" propaganda, a dominant tendency in Mozambique, or a mix of both, these movements claimed that since policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the Mozambican ethnic Portuguese population, little attention was paid to local tribal integration and the development of its native communities. According to the official guerrilla statements, this affected a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Portuguese Mozambique's whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority, but the late 1950s, the 1960s and the early 1970s, were being testimony of a gradual change based in new socioeconomic developments and equalitarian policies regarding underprivileged rural black communities.

The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), headquartered in Tanzania, initiated a guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule in September 1964. This conflict, along with the two others already initiated in the other Portuguese overseas territories of Angola and Portuguese Guinea, became part of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974). Several African territories under European rule had achieved independence in recent decades. Oliveira Salazar attempted to resist this tide and maintain the integrity of the Portuguese empire. By 1970, the anti-guerrilla war in Africa was consuming an important part of the Portuguese budget and there was no sign of a final solution in sight. This year was marked by a large-scale military operation in northern Mozambique, the Gordian Knot Operation, which displaced the FRELIMO's bases and destroyed much of the guerrillas' military capacity. At a military level, a part of Guinea-Bissau was de facto independent since 1973, but the capital and the major towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique, independence movements were only active in a few remote countryside areas from where the Portuguese Army had retreated. However, their impending presence and the fact that they wouldn't go away dominated public anxiety. Throughout the war period Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community. For the Portuguese society the war was becoming even more unpopular due to its length and financial costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it had always played as a factor of perpetuation of the Estado Novo regime. It was this escalation that would led directly to the mutiny of members of the FAP in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 - an event that would led to the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. A leftist military coup in Lisbon on 24 April 1974 by the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA), overthrow the Estado Novo regime headed by Prime-Minister Marcelo Caetano.

As one of the objectives of the MFA, all the Portuguese overseas territories in Africa were offered independence. FRELIMO took complete control of the Mozambican territory after a transition period, as agreed in the Lusaka Accord which recognized Mozambique's right to independence and the terms of the transfer of power.

Within a year of the Portuguese military coup at Lisbon, almost all Portuguese population had left the African territory as refugees (in mainland Portugal they were known as retornados) – some expelled by the new ruling power of Mozambique, some fleeing in fear. A parade and a state banquet completed the independence festivities in the capital, which was expected to be renamed Can Phumo, or "Place of Phumo", after a Shangaan chief who lived in the area before the Portuguese navigator Lourenço Marques founded the city in 1545 and gave his name to it. Most city streets, named for Portuguese heroes or important dates in Portuguese history, had their names changed.

Portuguese population's rapid exodus left the Mozambican economy in disarray. In addition, after the independence day on June 25, 1975, the eruption of the Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992) destroyed the remaining wealth and left the former Portuguese Overseas Province in a state of absolute disrepair.