Mozambican Civil War Script

Prologue

For a research project, I’m researching about a war that occurred in my country. To give some context, the country that I’m from is a nation located along the coast of southerneastern Africa called Mozambique. Mozambique is a Y shaped country neighboring South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, and Swaziland(Eswatini). Mozambique was one of Portugal’s African colonies. Mozambique is 7 poorest country in the world with a current population of 30 million people. In researching the history of the country we can uncover a lot about why Mozambique is where it is today and also help us understand the causes of all wars in general.

Chp. 1: The rise of Frelimo

It’s the early 1960’s and you’re in Portuguese colony Mozambique, there’s Palmiers, Feijoada and Rice and cotton farms everywhere, the economy is booming and colonial Mozambique is one of the most developed nations of Subsaharan Africa.

One day you happen to meet a man by Samora Machel. Samora Machel has always seen how the colonials mistreated the indigenous people and he’s always wanted Mozambique to be an independent state, so he and his fellow nationalist buddy Eduardo Mondlane formed a group along with a couple of other people like Julius Nyerere; They called their group “Frente de libertação de moçambique” or Liberation Front of Mozambique, abbreviated that’s Frelimo. with an objective to free Mozambique from colonial rule

Frelimo would continue to grow to receive a lot of support from the indigenous population and it eventually received international recognition.

Up to this point, Frelimo doesn’t have any political ideology on how to run the country.

You’re in post world war USSR There are sarafans, Pirog, and winter, and the Soviet Union and China just plotted a plan on how to destabilize the western powers. The plan that they came up with was to support uprisings in the African colonies of western powers and help them gain independence. And with the support of the USSR and the People's Republic of China, this will cause the creation of new Socialist states and add more countries to their USSR alliance.

Back in colonial Mozambique, Frelimo just revived a letter from the Soviet Union that they’re willing to help them gain Independence. Frelimo would end up getting military equipment from the soviet union and the people’s republic of china and military training in the USSR.

And from then Frelimo was a Marxist party destined to gain independence and set up a oneparty socialist state

Chp. 2: The Independence, Signs of the Civil war

It’s 1964 after receiving equipment and training form the soviet union, Frelimo is now going to remove the colonials by force. And in September of that year, The war of independence began. The war of independence raged on until 1974 when The Portuguese surrendered and gave the government to Frelimo and in 1975 Mozambique was a fully independent nation. The Independence war took a heavy hit towards the country’s economy and infrastructure, so Frelimo immediately got to rebuilding the ruined infrastructure and restoring the country’s economy. Frelimo, as I mentioned, was to set up a one-party socialist state, but this decision for the country to be run by a one-party socialist state was not discussed with anyone and some people who fought in the war of independence didn’t like the idea of the country being run by only one party. Due to this conflict, an anti-communist group was formed called “Resistencia Nacional Mocambicana” or national Mozambican resistance or Renamo for short.

Chp. 3: The Civil war, A brewing plan

It's 1976 and you’re in post-colonial Mozambique, a group of extremist indigenous people just raided and killed some of the white Portuguese population, and that ended up driving most of the Portuguese investors out of Mozambique. As Frelimo is attempting to rebuild broken infrastructure and trying to create more farms to feed the growing population, They now have a problem on their hands. With Renamo Growing in popularity, they demanded that Frelimo change their political ideology to allow multi-party elections but Frelimo didn’t comply, so Renamo got a handful of exindependence war troops and equipment and in 1977 the civil war had begun.

Now, you’re in apartheid South Africa and (colonial Zimbabwe) Rhodesia, and to the east, your neighboring nation just went from being a colony of Portugal to being an independent nation led by the natives and you’re seeing them recover the country from the war. This is bad for Rhodesia and South Africa because they put in the mind of the natives that they can’t run their own country and they need you to be led by them but if they hear news of their neighboring country gaining independence and successfully rule a country under a native government then that will cause an uprising and something similar might happen in their own country. So South Africa and Rhodesia came up with a plan, if they can destabilize the country and show their population that a native government cannot rule their own country, that would show their population that they needed them to have a successful country.

Rhodesia and Africa set out a plan, they just heard the news that the country just broke out into a civil war and they decided to use this as an opportunity to destabilize the nation. So they set their sights on Renamo. They planned to support Renamo and make them an aggressive guerilla group that would spark a large scale war and put the country in economic shambles.

Chp. 4: A Sponsored Renamo awakens

It's the early 80’s and the Rhodesian regime just fell but there is still a group of ex-Rhodesian powers in the country. South Africa just made a deal with Renamo, they would provide military equipment, bases in their territory, and training. Now with Renamo having more resources, they immediately kicked it up into high gear, they began bombing and destroying roads, railway lines, and power lines all over the country. They stopped supply trains and trucks, Renamo would ultimately take control of the rural areas by taking control of rural villages all over the country and force the men and women there to fight. Now with Renamo on the loose, Frelimo had to put more resources into the war, Frelimo would end up losing all of its rural lands to Renamo, but they vigorously defended the urban areas, Renamo would never end up with an urban city. Renamo would continue to rampage like this, they would end up raiding and destroying schools, hospitals, health clinics, and farms that supplied Frelimo forces. With the drought of the 1980s, there wasn’t enough water to grow crops along with the destruction of farms during this war, caused the The famine of 1984. With a famine going around both Frelimo and Renamo had adopted more extreme measures; Renamo would end up adopting something called Gandira, Gandira is a method in which Renamo would invade a village and force the people there to comply with Renamo’s demands and if any refused they would be killed, some of the people that would participate in gandira would perform two tasks: 1. produce food for Renamo 2. Transport food and goods( usually over long distances ). Due to Renamo destroying farms that supplied Frelimo forces, Frelimo created a community village, where Frelimo forces would enter villages and force the villagers to move to their community village; and in those villages, they would produce food for Frelimo.

Chp. 5: War Crimes, The Struggle to keep afloat

It's the mid-80s and you’re in a civil war Mozambique, there’s low morale among the population, everyone is hungry, there are very limited healthcare facilities, schools in rural areas have been destroyed and people in rural districts live in fear. During this war, numerous human rights crimes have been committed by both Frelimo and

Renamo forces particularly in the gandira system; According to the paper “Curse on the land: A history of the Mozambican civil war” In the gandira system, Renamo troops would invade villages, and usually, if the village had young boys, they would force them to fight in the war and commit violent acts to their own families; up to one-third of Renamo’s were young boys often misled or lied to on who the enemy is. In the gandira system, there are two requirements for the people in it, and it is to produce food and transport goods. The people in the gandira system were miserable, the ones who produced food would be forced to give all their produce to Renamo leaving little to no food of them and famine was a common problem among the farmers; and the people transporting the goods would often walk for kilometers after kilometers with little to no breaks and death by exhaustion was a very common cause in the people used to transport goods; Also, a very common act in the gandira system, mainly towards the women and young girls in a raided village, the soldiers would often use the women as sex slaves and rape was a very common practice among the soldiers, usually done as a means to “boost morale” On the Frelimo side, it wasn’t any better. In the community villages, according to the (Victor Igreja The cultural dimension of war traumas in central Mozambique: The case of Gorongosa) In the communal villages the people say that they live like pigs, the people there are in crowded facilities , and when they produce the food they are forced to give all the produce away, leaving very little for the people; The crowded living conditions made it easy for disease to spread, and rape was a common issue in the villages, the people there would often flee to the countryside knowing about the threat of the Renamo but the people there said: “I’d rather live in constant fear than live like pigs”. With the people living in fear and being abused, the country was in shambles, most roads, railway lines, and power lines were destroyed by Renamo forces, and the ones that were left were vigorously defended, but Renamo continues raids on the defended roads, and they would frequently succeed to get past the defenses and stop and supply shipments and destroy the roads; this lead to the country has little to no roads left, so Frelimo made a last-ditch effort to provide the bare minimum amount of roads and powerlines functional, so they made corridors, these corridors were fortified, with military personnel guarding them form Renamo attacks, Frelimo managed to establish 3 main corridors, they managed to secure the Beira - Tete Corridor, the Beira Nampula corridor, and the Beira zimbabwe corridor; there were a few other corridors like the Maputo - Beira corridors but Renamo Frequently attacked that one and sometimes breached through the defenses. These corridors that were formed were essential, as they provided electricity, food, and fuel to be transported.

Ultimately The human cost was devastating, over 1 million people died of famine or in the war and 5 million relocated.

Chp. 6: The road to piece

It’s the late 80’s and you’re in a civil war Mozambique, everyone is still hungry, there is little to no support infrastructure, but the war still rages on; It’s 1986 you’re with the president/leader of Frelimo, Samora Machel, you two and 31 other people board a plane in South Africa headed for Mozambique. About 30 minutes after the plane took off it crashed in the hills komatipoort. You’re in South Africa now, and in the south African parliament, there’s a lot of debate about the support of Renamo, especially since Rhodesia is now fully independent and that made South Africa the only sponsor for Renamo. The South African parliament is now split, by the ones who want to support Renamo to reduce the risk of more uprising in South Africa and the ones who fear the continuation of this plan will only increase Mozambique’s dependence on South Africa, and now that the apartheid is gaining less popularity within the South African parliament.

You’re in the soviet union, and they just got a new leader by Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and he had a new perspective on where the future of the soviet union, he planned on giving the people of the soviet union the option of choosing their nation’s future, he let the separate nations of the soviet union decide if they wanted to remain in the union or not, and slowly the soviet union was dismantling. Now We’re in Independent Rhodesia or Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwean government was against supporting Renamo as they were destroying the county’s infrastructure, especially the roads and railways as for Zimbabwe was dependent on the ports of Beira and Maputo for most of overseas import and exports. This caused Zimbabwe to switch sides and support Frelimo’s operations to keep the infrastructure intact. With the death of the president of Frelimo, decreasing support from the soviet union and South Africa along with the fall of the Rhodesian regime and the poor state of the nation, attacks began to decrease, and scales of operations began to shrink. The gandira system and communal villages began to slowly lose support; and with the country in shambles in 1988 both parties agreed to stop any attacks and divert to a path of peace and restore the country. And so, in October of 1992, the civil war was officially over.

Chp. 7: Conclusion, The Aftermath

With the war officially over, the fall of the soviet union and apartheid, the country in peace, Frelimo adopted a new political ideology: Democratic socialism; soon after Renamo followed

and changed theirs to right-wing populism. And soon the first multiparty elections were held in 1994. With the countries, political issues being mostly sorted, Now everyone could focus on the recovery of the country; excluding the issue regarding the infrastructure, there was an issue that was affecting the lives of many people, especially in rural areas. During the civil war, both parties heavily relied on landmines, they used land mines to both attacks the enemy and defend their areas and this led to lots of landmines being placed around the country; most of the time landmines were placed without any regard for the people there. In consequence of doing so, lots of people were accidentally stepping on landmines, often losing a limb(s) or even their lives, so a company called HALO trust, a US and UK landmine removal company helped in removing all the land mines and in 2015 the last land mine was found and the country was declared landmine free. As the years passed the country recovered, infrastructure was rebuilt, international companies began once again began investing in the country and the country is developing. In summary, the Mozambican civil war was a war fought due to one party taking power, and it happened due to a group of people disagreeing, the cold war, neighboring countries, and the independence of the nation, and due to the war the countries economy and infrastructure was decimated, and at the end, due to the war multi-party election were held. It’s 2020 now, and the country has been transformed. Today the country is a much better place to live, although we still have a long way to go to becoming a fully developed nation. The country is definitely in a better position than it was 28 years ago.

Epilogue

The Mozambican Civil war was an interesting and very entertaining research topic, It was nice to learn about my country and its history. Knowing more about the history of my country has opened my eyes and made me have a whole different perspective of my country. Learning about the war also explains a lot about the current status of the country and the disputes that occur within it. In regards to my research process, I found it rather difficult to piece all the information and give a timelined explanation of the events; the only source that had a complete timelined explanation of the civil war was Wikipedia, and because of that most of my information follows a similar sequence to the Wikipedia page. Piecing together all the information in a way that made sense was a difficult task because some of the sources that I used had a different version of the civil war than the other, an example of this is with two sources I had, one of them said that the United States was planning to support Renamo and the other one said that the United States did support

Renamo. In regards to the availability and quantity of resources, It was difficult to find information, If you just searched Mozambican civil war the, there would be a very limited quantity of search results that gave you information talking about the civil war, the rest of the information are events that are related to the civil war, and if you wanted to know about an event that occurred in the civil war you’d have to be very specific on what you wanted to know. As for biases related to the information about the civil war; most of the information that the sources had referenced were civilian reports, news reports, or government papers, which were usually from foreign nations. So there weren’t any obvious biases, but there was a significant amount of bias, especially coming from government papers and civilian reports as they usually tend to have more of a who is the enemy perspective; that can be reflected by seeing how Renamo is portrayed more negatively than Frelimo throughout this presentation. The last issue that I faced was in the research process, during the research, I didn’t make a concrete plan or have any guiding questions to help, and because of that, it made it more difficult to piece together all the information. But in the end, I had a lot of fun looking into the war and learning a bit more about my country.