Mozambique
Uneasy days
Elizabeth Morris
No amount of blandishment from Portuguese Premier Caetano can conceal the fact that the situation in Mozambique is causing grave concern. It is now the focus of attention in all political speeches. Claims by the Mozambique Liberation Movement (Frelimo) to have opened a fourth front in Manica-Sofala in July have been ignored in official bulletins and Frelimo communiques reporting Portuguese soldiers killed and vehicles destroyed in this central area near the Rhodesian frontier have not been refuted. Speculation on the extent of Rhodesia's involvement in Portugal's war in Mozambique, particularly on this new front, heightened last month when Mr Ian Smith arrived in Lisbon with two secretaries for talks with Premier Caetano.
It is accepted that Rhodesian forces are helping to police the south of Tete where Frelimo guerrillas aim at disrupting supplies and communications to the £150 million Cabora Bassa dam. However the new area of operation brings the liberation war right on to Ian Smith's doorstep, Manica-Sofala carries the main railway from the Portuguese port of Beira to Salisbury and also the controversial oil pipeline to inside the Rhodesian frontier.
With Frelimo active in four areas — Cabo Delgado, Niassa, Tete and now Manica-Sofala — Mozambique is the hot spot for the Portuguese in Africa. Despite the arrest of some 1,800 alleged Frelimo agents in the south of the colony by Portuguese security forces (DGS) in July, preceded by an amnesty for 1,500 captured guerrillas in an attempt to placate Fremilo, the Portuguese were ineffective in preventing this fourth front which Frelimo announce began on July 25 last. The Portuguese have studiously avoided mentioning this area. Indicative however of the concern in Lisbon is the decision to prolong the term of office of Mozambique's Commander in Chief, Kaulza de Arriaga, for another year. A military hard-liner, he refuses to admit defeat. but announced curiously a couple of weeks ago that the situation could change if Chinese and Tanzanian forces attacked Mozambique, an " eventuality " for which Portugal should be prepared.
Portuguese military losses in Mozambique are now half as many again as in Angola, while civilian casualties from sabotage are on the increase. A rail disaster in north Mozambique last month killed ten and injured thirty-two despite the recent formation of a military detachment to permanently patrol the railways. Although the guerrillas have no air cover, use home-made landmines and bullets of melted down metal from Portuguese vehicles, General Kaulza admits to recent attacks on Portuguese barracks at Mueda in the north and Chicoa on the Zambesi. The fact that 1914-18 war weapons are among those captured by Frelimo would seem to indicate that Portugal's defence spending of £236 million a year — a figure given by Jornal do Comercio of Lisbon — is stretched to the limit; add to this a record trade deficit for Portugal of £327 million in 1971, then somewhere there must be cause for alarm.
This chain of events has prompted a move to the right in Caetano's government; the premier's soft line on prudent liberalism has hardened perceptibly of late. In August he dropped the only two ' progressives' in his cabinet, Snrs Xavier Pintado and Rogerio Martins, respectively Secretaries of State for Commerce and Industry. These young ' technocrats ' brought in by Caetano in 1958 to revitalise the economy had made disapproving noises about the cost of the African wars and stressed the need for Portugal to look to Europe for her future. Another extension of government iron-fisted policy was the introduction this year of 'security measures' for political prisoners in Mozambique and the other colonies which could mean prison in perpetuity for high risk offenders after they have served their original sentence. Hitherto these measures have been applied only in metropolitan Portugal. Pressures however from international consortiums now developing Portuguese Africa to underwrite their security are now so strong that Lisbon is having her political arm twisted.
Chief of the consortiums is Zamco, responsible for the Cabora Bassa hydroelectric complex, which is determined to meet its deadline and deliver electricity to Pretoria in 1975. Work is on schedule and concrete is being used at the rate of 400 tons a day to build up the wall of the dam, at the same time operation 'Noah's Ark' is evacuating wild life from some 2,700 square kilometres in preparation for filling the reservoir in 1974. Re-settling the native population in military controlled villages or ' aldeamentos ' is a less easy task with Frelimo guerrillas operating in territory more familiar to them than the Portuguese.
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