History and Politics

Current Government: The government is a multiparty republic. The President since November 1986 is Joaquim Chissano.  He was re-elected in October 1994 and December 1999. Pascoal Mocumbi has served as Prime Minister since 1996. The People’s Assembly is the main political body overseeing the 10 provinces and 1 city (Maputo). In June of 1998, Mozambique President Chissano spoke to an international business association,  “I say this knowing you want to help us, please help make our people a bit happier.  We still have a big amount of poverty in Mozambique despite what you call our successes.”  

Current Political Parties: Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO); National Resistance of Mozambique (RENAMO); Liberal and Democratic Party of Mozambique (PALMO); National Union of Mozambique (UNAMO).  

History: People have lived in what is now Mozambique since 4000 BCE (Before the Common Era).  Bantu-speaking people settled there before AD 100, and are the ancestors of the indigenous people found there now.  The Portuguese arrived in 1497 and began 500 years of their colonial rule.  Independence came on June 25, 1975, after a 15-year armed struggle begun by the founder of FRELIMO, (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique), Dr. Eduardo Mondlane.  Dr. Mondlane studied at the Methodist Cambine Boys’ Boarding School in Inhambane Province, where he developed his revolutionary ideas.  He later obtained a United Methodist Crusade Scholarship to study at universities in Lisbon, Portugal and the United States.  Dr. Mondlane was assassinated in 1969 and his successor, Samora Moises Machel, a Maoist, led the country to independence.

When the Portuguese government withdrew its troops and most Portuguese nationals left Mozambique, they took with them the nation's resources of gold, diamonds, and semi-precious gems. The Portuguese destroyed a great deal of property and infrastructure before they left. Modern agricultural machinery was also taken; leaving agricultural practices reverting to primitive methods.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in a pact with Portugal, precluded the U.S. and other western nations from assisting the emerging nation. The new rulers established a rigid single-party form of government under President Machel, once he garnered support from the former Soviet Union and Cuba.  Immediately, a South African government-backed guerrilla movement, calling itself the National Resistance Movement of Mozambique (RENAMO) began a bitter war of destabilization against the Mozambican government.

Guerrilla warfare caused much death and suffering. Out of a total population around 18 million, as many as six million people sought refuge in camps in neighboring countries.  Over one million people were killed and another million abandoned their homes and villages in the bush and fled to refugee camps near urban centers.  Both sides in this conflict used land mines.  Mozambique, until a few years ago, had one of the largest concentrations of land mines in the world.

Droughts and the combined malicious destruction of crops, roads, bridges, rail, telephone, and electricity lines wrecked the country’s infrastructure and brought life in Mozambique to a near standstill.  The national literacy rate was only four percent at the time of independence, which meant that the country lacked the elements necessary for building a modern economy. Critical social and economic problems remained unaddressed.

In 1986, President Machel and several members of his cabinet were killed in a plane crash orchestrated by the apartheid government of South Africa.  Joaquim Alberto Chissano succeeded Machel. He managed to bring about changes in the original FRELIMO Marxist constitution, replacing it with a multi-party democratic constitution. FRELIMO and RENAMO signed a peace accord in 1992, made possible by these constitutional changes, as well as by the thawing of the Cold War, and by both factions' trust in the churches operating in Mozambique. In 1994 the elections resulted in FRELIMO and President Chissano remaining in power (51% of the vote), but also gave RENAMO political legitimacy (43%).